Have Yourself an Imperfect Little Christmas...

I'm in a bit of a funk today.  It's only December 4th, and I feel like I've hit the pre-Christmas freak out already.  Not a good sign.  (As my family can vouch, the pre-Christmas freak out does not usually arrive until December 20th.) Too much to do, too little time, not enough money, too much stuff to buy. Ugh.  Stuff.  Gotta buy the stuff, wrap the stuff, hide the stuff, pack the stuff in the van and drive it 6 hours to the relatives' houses.  I'm feeling a bit bah-humbug about it all.

And to be honest, I'm feeling a bit bah-humbug about all the Christmas traditions that usually make me so happy.  We spent the past 2 nights decorating the house for Christmas, and it seems like each night it's ended up being the same peppermint-covered stressball we have to choke down with a glass of crappy eggnog: Kids spazz because they're SOOOOOO EXCITED and I stress because there's a lot of fragile stuff in the Christmas decoration boxes and I don't need another mess and puh-leeze don't get that out yet.  And then someone ends up getting on someone else's nerves and fighting breaks out, the baby Jesus goes flying though the air and the Phineas & Ferb ornament gets broken, and then I flip out and we all end up crying.

Merry Christmas.

I'm sure that anybody walking past our house and looking upon this scene through our large living room windows is less likely to think "Norman Rockwell holiday scene" are more likely to think "On the next episode of 'Cops'...").  And so I end up feeling guilty about tingeing the kids' holiday memories with freak-outs.  I should be the epitome of motherly calm, right?  I mean, it's the holidays.  And they're only young once.  I shouldn't be robbing them of this magic.

And then the cat decides to climb the tree and knock some of the ornaments off.  And I wonder if I should just take the tree down and forget about it for this year.  I look at one of my nativity sets.  Mary is always so calm and so serene.  I envy her.  Here she is, just having given birth among the cows and donkeys and lambs, entertaining magi and shepherd boys and angels, living in a barn for gosh-sakes, and she's just smiling.  She's so full of joy and peace.  But it's her serenity that I envy.  It's just absent from my life right now.

In place of serenity, I have stress.  I have the normal stress of daily living and meeting commitments, and then I have the holiday stress.  I have the "my teen doesn't want anything for Christmas that costs less than $200" stress.  I have the "my middle child hardly wants anything for Christmas, which you think would be great, but then how do you make Christmas morning fair?" stress.  I have the "my youngest child wants expensive and inexpensive gifts for Christmas and understands that Mommy and Daddy can't afford expensive gifts, but doesn't understand why Santa can't and so I need to work carefully at couching her expectations" stress.  And I haven't even begun to deal with extended family stress, or baking stress, or traveling stress. Oh gosh, I just remembered the "I gotta clean the van so we can pack the van so we can travel" stress.  I'm not even ready to deal with that stress yet.

So I sit here in my pajamas with my coffee cup and the couch and I try to avoid the stress, but I know it's out there and it won't get better with time.  I think about selling some plasma so that we have a bit more cash to spread around.  I look at the Nativity again and try to focus, focus, focus on the reason for the season.  

And then I unload my holiday funk onto my blog and unleash it all on the internet because I know that there are so many other moms out there feeling similarly (dads seem to be largely immune from the bulk of holiday stress for some reason, at least in my circle of friends).  I have mom friends who are doing this all as single parents.  Friends who are grappling with grief and the holidays.  Friends who are struggling with illness, or job loss, or money problems.  And I want to say to the people trying to get through the holidays with a big mountain of stress on their backs that you are not alone.  We're all just muddling through.  We look at the picture perfect Christmas cards our friends send and feel inferior because our kids couldn't smile and get along for the time it took to take one picture.  We see Facebook posts of sparkling trees that look like Martha Stewart flew in and decorated it personally while our trees are listing slightly and covered with clothespin reindeer and glittered-macaroni snowflakes.  We hear about the super-expensive or extravagant gifts someone is buying their child or spouse and feel guilty that we can't make our loved ones' Christmas dreams come entirely true.  We see pictures of happy family gatherings, and miss the people who aren't gathered at our table.

 It should come as no surprise that "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" is one of my favorite Christmas songs, precisely because it's not about perfect Christmases, but about hoping to have family near and hoping that all the small problems of life fly away, while at the same time yearning for the golden Christmases of our past.  But if you think about it, were those Christmases perfect?  Or have we just gilded them with fondness and nostalgia so that they seem to be?  Do we forget the freak-outs eventually and just remember the family and the fun? I don't recall my mom ever stressing over holidays, and yet she must have, being a single parent and working full time as a nurse and always having to work on either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, if not both.

So maybe for today I'll set aside the guilt.  I'm not a perfect mom on a Tuesday afternoon in mid-April, nor on a busy Thursday morning in early-October, so why should I expect myself to be a better version of myself simply because it's the holidays?  Santa stopped watching me years ago. And I'm going to try my hardest to let go of some of the expectations.  Maybe someone on my list doesn't need a perfect gift.  Maybe it's okay if they just know that I was thinking of them. (I just saw a commercial for a Chia Uncle Si.  Anyone interested?  Nothing says "I've given up on shopping for you" quite like a Chia Pet, but a Chia Uncle Si?  That's like saying "I remembered that you like Duck Dynasty while I was buying milk at CVS.")  Maybe the wrapping paper doesn't have to be perfect.  Maybe I won't adjust where the kids hung the ornaments and if the cat knocks the low-hanging ornaments off, I'll just hang them back up again and go about my day.  (Although if the cat knocks the tree down one more time, all bets are off and it is full-on Mommy vs. Cat War.  Seriously.)  I'll try to be more a bit more like Mary and try to capture more of her serenity.  And I'll try so very hard to keep my focus on her son.  Once I fish his manger out of the depths of the Christmas tree, that is.

Cake Balls and Care Packages

I sent out some care packages to a couple of Army soldiers and a Marine last week.  One of the soldiers is someone who served with my husband overseas and asked specifically for the cake balls I sent them for Christmas one year.  Posting about that on Facebook led to a request for the recipe.  They're so easy, y'all.

This recipe is for German Chocolate cake balls, but it's adaptable, and I'll show you how once we walk through the basic recipe.

German Chocolate Cake Balls

1 box of German Chocolate cake mix + ingredients needed to make cake
1 can of creamy coconut pecan frosting
1 and 1/2 pkg. of chocolate almond bark

Prepare and bake your cake according to package directions (I usually bake mine into a 9x13 size).  Allow cake to cool, then use two forks to tear it into crumbs.  Yes, you want to take a perfectly good cake and reduce it to crumbs.  They don't have to be fine crumbs, but the smaller your cake chunks are, the better.

In a large bowl, mix your cake crumbs with the can of frosting.  Mix well, making sure to thoroughly incorporate the frosting with the cake.  Using a spoon or melon baller to scoop out a bit of the cake mixture and shape into small balls using your hands.  I make mine fairly small, so that a cake ball can be consumed in 1 or 2 bites.  Some people like them bigger.  Whatever floats your particular boat is fine.  Allow balls to chill well in the refrigerator or freezer - this will help later on when it comes time to dip them.

Once the balls have had time to chill, you need to start melting your almond bark.  This stuff:

I usually melt about half a package at a time.  It's really important to make sure you don't over-melt your bark - the sugar will end up carmelizing - so if you use a microwave (instead of the double-boiler method), stir and check on it often.  Like every 30 seconds or so.  Also important to note: keep water away from your bark; it will cause melted bark to curdle (get lumpy) and it will be no good.

So once you have melted bark and a pan full of chilled cake balls, you're ready to dip.  Dipping methods vary.  I know a lot of people prefer the toothpick method (put your cake ball or item to be dipped on a toothpick or bamboo skewer and dip), but it never works for me.  Behold:

I did a couple with the toothpick method to show that it never works out for me.  The one in the bottom right corner was done using my fork method; the rest were done with the toothpick method.  Technically, they're fine.  They're still cake balls.  But they just aren't as pretty and uniformly coated.  So here's how I do it:

I drop an un-dipped ball into the melted bark and use a fork to roll it around until it's covered.  Then I slide a fork underneath the ball and lift it out of the bark.  I use a second fork to kind of wipe the dripping bark off the bottom of the first fork and then gently allow the now-coated ball onto a sheet of wax paper.

That's it.  Dip the rest of the balls, let them rest on wax paper, and allow the bark to harden.  Depending on the kind of bark you use and how big your cake balls are, the amount of bark you need will vary.  Making these balls took up about 1 and 1/2 packages of bark.  Just be prepared to melt more bark as needed.

The fun part about this recipe is that you can be as creative as you want and create custom flavor mixes.  Just change up the cake flavor, the frosting flavor, and the bark.   Some examples/ideas:

• Spice Cake + Cream Cheese Frosting + White Almond Bark
• Devils Food Cake + Chocolate Frosting + Chocolate Almond Bark
• Red Velvet Cake + Cream Cheese Frosting + White Almond Bark
• Lemon Cake + White Frosting + White Almond Bark
• Chocolate Cake + Peanut Butter Frosting + Chocolate Almond Bark
• Caramel Cake + Creamy Coconut Pecan Frosting + Chocolate Almond Bark
• Orange Supreme Cake + White Frosting + White Almond Bark

You can also get creative when it comes to decorating the cake balls - from super easy sprinkles or colored sugars to more complicated designs, a la Bakerella.  Just remember, sprinkles and such will stick better when your frosting is still "wet," so work accordingly.

So back to the care packages.  Believe it or not, these cake balls travel really well.  I first sent them overseas a few years ago to my husband and to a friend of mine, both of whom were stationed in the sandbox.  Their cake balls arrived in great shape and everyone who had one really liked them.  Many people asked for the recipe.  When I package them, I arrange them on a paper plate, slide the paper plate into a gallon sized ziploc bag, and then seal the bag, trying to remove as much air as possible.  If mailing with other items, I'll try to cushion the cake balls a bit so they don't get crushed.  

In addition to the cake balls, I sent my servicemen a few other treats that travel well: 

Peppermint Bark Popcorn - recipe here.

Cinnamon Pretzels - recipe here.

Cinnamon Bun Popcorn
I swear I don't know why there's a
 huge chunk missing in the middle of the pan. Recipe here.

I packaged these in quart sized ziploc bags and used them to cushion the cake balls.  Then I threw in some other assorted treats, sealed the boxes, filled out customs forms in triplicate, and sent the boxes on their way.