Category: Holidays

santa claus, the tooth fairy and the chippendales

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the truth is, one of my biggest pet peeves on this earth is… [insert drum roll here]
lying.
…
skirting around the issue. 
beating around the bush.
fudging the details.
liar liar pants on fire.
yep. all of the above.
…
growing up, my parents were always honest with me and taught me the value of honesty.
they trusted me and i knew that trust was a gift. so thankful.
when i was around 9 years old, i stole a piece of gum from the local market.
my mom knew it. i tried to hide it with a lie. 
but there was no denying. i was caught blowing a bubble.
i felt remorse for my actions. 
sure. it wasn’t that big of a deal to take a 5 cent piece of gum… or was it?
it was about more than simply obeying the 9th commandment. 
for me, that *sweet pink sugary bubble gum* was a game changer.
…
fast forward 18 years and P.A. and i became parents for the first time.
we had always valued honesty as individuals and in our marriage… but now…
as parents, we were suddenly thrown into the tempting world of ‘lying to our children’.

‘when does santa claus come to town?’
‘how much money will the tooth fairy bring me?’
‘do cats go to heaven?’
‘mommy, what are chippendales?’ 

suddenly opportunities to lie abound around every corner. 
at what age do we tell our kids ‘santa claus’ doesn’t exist?
how many lose teeth go under the pillow before they figure out the ‘tooth fairy’ is really dad?
what do we say after the cat died during thanksgiving break?…and how do we explain what a ‘chippendale’ is?
 …
last thanksgiving, we went out of town to visit my family in Oklahoma. we left our cat *clancy marie* at home, and a friend came over to check on her. clancy was an older cat. we had thought about ‘what if she dies while we’re gone?’ sure enough, she did. 
when we came home, we found her. it was late. the kids were tired and ready to come inside the house. after all, we had just returned from a 16 hour road trip.
what better time to break the bad news?!
we wasted no time.
‘sorry kids, clancy has died.’
simple. short. to the point.
we said good-bye and daddy buried our sweet clancy marie.
then we came inside and talked thru how everyone was feeling as we prepared for bed that night.
you might have guessed- our kids know that santa claus and the tooth fairy aren’t real. and now they know what chippendales are.

we love the show Amazing Race. we watch it as a family on Sunday nights. this season there is a team of friends who are chippendales. we knew the question would come- ‘mommy, what are chippendales?’
…

the truth is…
you’re never too young to know the truth.
in fact, if we are grounded in truth as kids, we will grow up with a stronger foundation of truth.
it’s not just about being a ‘moral person’ or checking the 9th commandment off your list of things to do.
it’s about developing a lifestyle of truth.
it’s the need for an epidemic of honesty to break out. and break all the lies we believe.
it’s about raging against a culture of facades.
television, movies, books, magazines, facebook – they are all stories. some true, but most false.
most are a perception of truth over shadowed by a curtain of fluff.



it is what it is. and 

if it’s not true, it is false.
…
above all, we want our lives to be rooted in truth. God’s truth.
and we desire to instill the value of honesty in our kids.
the truth can hurt. but the lies {even the little ones, meant to do no harm} can hurt more.
lying can breed sin.

‘Gah! are you saying that telling our kids that santa and his elves bring gifts to good boys and girls is a sin?’
no. but start with the little things.
‘sorry kids, life isn’t fair.’
‘sorry kids, i don’t know the answer.’ 
as parents, there is a freedom in telling our kids we don’t know everything.
but we do know santa isn’t real.
sorry kids. he’s not the reason for this season.
‘Gah! well, now you’re just ripping away imagination and fun from their childhood and Christmas!’
no. we’re teaching them the truth. 
don’t worry, our kids still have plenty of creativity and imagination. 
and it’s rooted in truth.
…
start young. share truth. break lies.
life is a gift santa claus can’t give.
Jesus is the only life giver. Jesus is truth.
He is the greatest gift we could ever receive.
the way. the truth. the life.

Does God really care about my $4 Mocha?

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This is the last of my 3 Panera stories… I know you are saddened, but no worries – I am sure we will go to Panera again soon, and some sort of Chronicle will emerge out of our visit there…

After visiting the Grands in Oklahoma over the holidays, we set out for our long drive home.  We made it 3 seconds down the road… and decided to turn around.  After packing all of our crap up the night before, we had planned to leave by 10am the next morning.  So, about 2 hours later, we were really leaving right on “Bab time”.  We always hope to get somewhere sooner than we ever do.  We have high expectations, but rarely meet them.  We are okay with this fact about ourselves.

So, 3 seconds down the road, we realize we are already hungry for lunch and that our original plan of leaving at 10am – 10:30am at the latest – left us on Bab time leaving at noon and we really should have eaten lunch before we left the Grands house.  We go back to their house, I knock on the door and enter the kitchen to find my mom saying, “I hope you didn’t come back for that coffee you left in our fridge…” She is saying this as she is pouring out $4 worth of peppermint mocha into her sink.  GAAAAHHHH!!!!!!  Crap!!!  As she is pouring, I am remembering that I had left my leftover $4 mocha in her fridge and I had planned to re-warm it and take it with me!

Originally, my plan was to come into their house, slap together a few pb&j’s and be on the road again.  But as I’m listening the $4 mocha drip down the drain, my plan is suddenly highjacked by a range of emotions.  I hold in my frustration with my loss as I  throw together the pb&j’s, holding back tears.  Stay calm, Leslie.  Calma-down-down.  It’s not that big of a deal, you can buy another coffee, I tell myself.  My mom didn’t know I had planned to keep the coffee – I had forgotten it on our original departure in the first place!  Had we not decided to go back for pb&j’s, I would have never known the mocha was tossed away like a meaningless piece of trash.  Don’t be upset with your mom, Leslie.  Keep your cool.  I tell my mom, “It’s no big deal, it’s not your fault, you didn’t know…”  But even as I am speaking the words, there is a part of me that is still upset.  I am not moving on…

A few more minutes down the road and P.A. decides he wants to stop by Taco Bueno.  Ugh!  I say, “Why can’t you just be okay with a pb&j?”  Seriously!  We really need to get on the road, get out of town, be done with this place already!  But P.A. is stubborn, so we stop at Taco Bueno.  The T.B. in my parents town is always busy.  It is located across the street from the church I grew up in, so my youth group friends and I were regulars there.  And it was always packed.  And today was no exception.

We drive up and the drive thru is about 15 cars long, so P.A. decides to “run in” and get the food “real quick” while me & the 3 wee Babs wait in the car. HA!  About 25 minutes later he returns with anxiety thinking I am going to deck him for making us stop at T.B. in the first place and for it taking so stinkin’ long to get our food.  But my response isn’t anger.  It is peace.

While P.A. was running into T.B. “real quick”, I had myself some quiet time with Jesus.  The wee Babs were content eating their pb&j’s I had slapped together earlier. The smallest Bab was now sleeping, and I was journaling to Jesus.  I was asking Him to take away the anger & disappointment I felt about “losing” my $4 mocha, the money wasted, the feelings I had toward my mom for accidentally throwing it away.  I didn’t want to be upset.  I didn’t want to feel those things (Romans 7:15).  I didn’t want to feel ridiculous.  There are so many things in life that produce emotion.  A $4 mocha shouldn’t be one of them.
While P.A. was in T.B., God was doing a work in my heart and soul.  He was changing my thoughts.  He was settling a battle between my flesh & spirit.  He was replacing my anger with His Peace.
  
So we set off on our journey.  We finally left town.  We made it to our half way stopping point – a Panera.  We went inside, got settled, ordered our food, went to the bathroom and saw poop on the toilet seat.  (btw, if you missed this chronicle, it was the one I posted a few days ago called “Poop and Panera”).  After getting our food – this time at  a much more timely rate (btw, if you missed this chronicle about our late food at Panera, read my recent post called “Back off old lady”), I realized Panera was prepping to close.  Oh no!  I’d better order my coffee for the rest of the evening’s journey.  I went up to the register and noticed they all said “closed”.  Oh no!…  But I wasn’t going to flip out.  I calmly asked the Panera worker if I could still order a peppermint mocha and I would pay cash, but didn’t need any change.  He said, “Sure.” He made me the best peppermint mocha I’ve ever had from Panera.  And he gave it to me.  For Free.

Whoa.  I was floored and thankful.  After the fit I threw earlier behind gritted teeth, a battle in my mind, and anger in my heart… God replaced my $4 mocha.  I felt like He was telling me, “I see and care about every detail of your life.  Even the menial ones.  Trust Me.”  What a gift.  

Some of you reading this might think, who cares about a $4 mocha?  Why would you get upset about that in the first place?  Why would you even take the time to write a blog post about it?… But what are the menial things you value?  a tv show?  maybe you get upset when your child is wanting your attention while you’re trying to watch?  a material possession you want?  maybe you get upset because you can’t have it?  or even time wasted on something you regret doing?

Many times our anger is exhibited as an underlying lack of Trust.  We lack Trusting God and that He knows what is best and He is taking care of our every need, the menial ones and the most important ones.  Matthew 6:25-34.  God is always teaching me how to trust in Him.  He really does care about my $4 mocha.

Noted. By Les Babs

Back Off Old Lady

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On the morning of Christmas Eve, we visited another Panera, a few towns away from ours. You might be thinking – “Geesh, the Bab’s sure do go to Panera a lot.”  And well, yes, we do…when we have a gift card.  For Christmas we were generously given a $50 gift card to Panera – and we blew that money so fast on pumpkin muffins, egg sandwiches and coffee, it didn’t last the week.

So at 8:30am, we arrive in the Panera parking lot, hungry and ready for a fun fam day.  P.A. goes in for a parking spot and is cut off by a car that he thought was pulling out, but was really backing into that said parking spot.  So, we move on and find another spot after affectionately nick-naming the driver of the other car “mustache guy”.  As we are unloading the wee babs to go into Panera, I hear P.A. grumbling things like, “I can’t believe mustache guy wasn’t watching where he was going” and “mustache guy should’ve just parked normally, instead of backing in”, etc…

Once inside Panera, P.A. gets in line – which was long – behind mustache guy. I take the 3 wee babs to find a good table.  Soleil & Salem head toward the comfy chairs next to the fireplace, disturbing an older lady who was sitting there.  I call them over the booth I’ve found closest to the fireplace… (it’s all about sitting near the fireplace when you go to a Panera on a cold winters day).  The wee babs are on one side of the booth, peeking over the top trying to see daddy while he’s waiting in line, and I am on the other side.  A few minutes later another guy, who I am affectionately calling “santa hat” guy, comes over to say “hello” to the kids.  He assumed they were looking at him, and I assumed he thought that because he was wearing a santa hat.  When he says “hello”, they dive into the booth, hiding from him.  I kindly explain, sorry santa hat guy, they don’t care about santa and know he’s not real.  We don’t really care about your santa hat, they were just looking for their daddy in line.  He smiles and goes back into the line with his wife, who I’m affectionately naming “wife of santa hat guy”.

Then I hear P.A. talking and saying “no, you can have it…(response) but if you don’t want it, we will buy it.”  A few minutes later, he comes over with the muffins and declares, “Mustache guy just took the last souffle!  We ordered it at the same time. He wasn’t even sure he wanted it, and I had to wait for him to discuss with his wife (wife of mustache guy) whether or not they wanted it, when I knew we wanted it!”

Dilemma: this was a crisis moment for me.  I could either get upset, flip out and say something like, “Oh great! Now our breakfast is ruined!”  Instead, I calmly said, “It’s no big deal, the kids can eat their muffins and share my egg sandwich.”  After all, it was nice for P.A. to give up his rights to the last souffle and let mustache guy have it.

So the wee babs started eating their muffins while P.A. was waiting for our egg sandwiches to be made.  Then all hell broke loose.  He waited. and waited. and waited. After waiting some more, he went up to the counter and the Panera worker confessed, I’m sorry sir – we forgot your order.  Now P.A. was fuming.  He came back to the booth explaining the situation to me, upset that he was missing Christmas Eve breakfast with our fam.  He calmed down a few minutes later when the first egg sandwich was delivered.  As the Panera worker handed us the sandwich, she realized we had ordered 2, so she offered to give us a 3rd egg sandwich on the house.  She also brought the wee babs tubes of yogurt and chips to appease the situation.  Nice, nice girl.

As we are waiting for the last 2 egg sandwiches, the kids are eating the yogurt and finishing up their muffins.  Selah now has yogurt all down her shirt and on her new blue purple suede boots.  I switch places with Salem and move over to sit by her and clean her up.  By this time, Salem has decided he is done with this wonderful family breakfast and does not want to sit back in the booth.  He has decided he wants to go home and is now sitting on the floor, arms crossed, lips pouted.  This upsets P.A., so he grabs Salem and pulls him up off of the floor to make him sit down in the booth.  Meanwhile, Selah is crying because I took away her yogurt.  Salem rebels against P.A.’s advances, flings his head back and hits it on the wooden edge of the booth, and is now screaming/crying.  Selah is still bawling and Soleil is cowering in the corner of the booth, wishing she was part of a different family.

As I calmly try and mom-mediate the situation saying things like, “It’s gonna be okay” and “everyone just calm down” or “calma down-down”, thru gritted teeth and a fake smile, I see P.A. put up his hand and say “Mam, please don’t.”  I turn and see standing beside me the older lady from the comfy chair beside the fireplace.  She starts to talk and P.A. cuts her off again, “Mam, please don’t, no thank you.”  She then responds, “Oh, I was just going to tell the kids about santa clause”.  P.A. just looks toward Salem, and I give her a fake smile with worried eyebrows, while thinking – please just go away.  We’ve got this situation under control.  The kids don’t care about santa clause.  They know he’s not real.  They will stop crying in a minute. and they did. And she did.  She just walked away.

A few moments passed and the wee babs calmed down.  Then, as we were watching the older lady leave Panera, she says good-bye to every worker, and a few of the other customers. Yep, she was a “regular”.  They all knew her name. Whew!  We were just thankful this whole incident had not happened at “our Panera”.  No one knew us at this Panera. Then P.A. started to question his actions, “Was it rude of me to cut her off?” I said, “No way, you did the right thing.”  This woman – however well intentioned she might have been – did not have a right to “speak” into our lives or “comment” on the situation.  I imagined if we would have let her talk she might have said something like, “Oh little children, if you’re crying and upset, santa can’t come and visit you tonight.” Blah, blah, blah.  Had she said that, I would have flipped.

In this ‘day and age’, people think they have the right to comment or speak into others’ lives probably more than any other time.  And we allow it, sometimes to a fault. Much of this is because of facebook or blogs or other communication avenues in which we ‘put ourselves out there’ and wait to hear what people have to say about it.  But mostly I want to hear from God, and I value most what He thinks of me, my life, my blog, my facebook.  I do welcome and enjoy comments on my blog or my facebook page from all of you.  It’s fun to get feedback.  But I have boundaries.  So don’t cross them.  Or I will have to say “Back off old lady”.

Noted. By Les Babs

Poop and Panera

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Over the holidays, we traveled to and fro, over the river and thru the woods to Grammy & Grandpa’s house in Oklahoma.  Really, we drove west thru 5 different states, for 18 hours stopped along the way at 4 different Panera restaurants.  We plotted our stops out carefully with the help of Yelp.  We timed our intake of liquids and held our pee in order to only have to stop at a Panera.  Because We are food snobs.  and coffee snobs.

But we are not poop snobs.  We deal with shit on a daily basis, sometimes several times a day. For the last 7.5 years, our lives have been enhanced by experiences with shit.  Thanks to our 3 wee Babs, we are experts at changing diapers, in any position, on any surface and wiping up their 
shit poop.  You get the picture.  And if you don’t, you can come over and visit anytime.

We regularly joke about poop.  It’s a daily part of our lives.  Our son plays with dolls – wait, did I just say that?  He plays with dolls by squeezing them, flying them around the room and chasing his sisters, while holding the doll over their heads, saying “I’m gonna poop on you!”.  The other day our 2 year old stepped into her own poop I had neglected to see and clean up.  It ended up on her heel, and tracked around the house as she came to find me and tell me her struggle.  I cleaned it up.  Shortly after, our family engaged in a wrestling cuddle match, one in which we rolled around on the carpet and rug that had just been cleaned. Yelling and laughing so hard we were crying saying, “Don’t roll in the poop!”

But I digress…back to our stop at Panera.  My oldest daughter and I went to use the Panera restroom, as custom before getting back in our van for the rest of our looooong drive.  As we were patiently waiting for an open stall, I gently told her, “Soleil this is your last chance to go potty before we get to Grammy & Grandpa’s.”  There are no more Panera’s along the way.  This may seem harsh for a mother to tell her daughter on a long road trip, but have you ever been in a Panera restroom?  They are NICE!  And given the options along I-70 and I-44, they are the definitely the best option.  No stoppin’ at Wendy’s, Love’s or Kum & Go gas stations for us – Panera all the way!  Though, Cracker Barrel is a close 2nd.

But I digress…again.  So we enter the “big” stall together and prepare to take care of business when what do I see on the toilet seat?  SHIT!  I mean, POOP!  Whatever you want to call it!   There it was, and it was the last thing I expected to see.  For a Panera bathroom, I had higher standards.  Sooo, I calmly took out a baby wipe and scrubbed down the toilet.  Then I proceeded to go first, in order to absorb any germs that might be lingering, so that Soleil wouldn’t have to.  Maybe all of this is TMI?  But I’m making a point, people.
We have lived many places, traveled to other countries, and poop is something I would expect to see in a bathroom in… India or another country.  Heck, I don’t even expect a toilet when we travel to India.  But not in the good ol’ US of A, and certainly not at a Panera!

But we are not poop snobs.  I left that Panera thankful.  Thankful for a toilet I had to clean first, thankful for toilet paper, thankful for soap & water to wash with, thankful for my family I have to travel with.  Thankful.  Even for the poop we have to deal with in our lives.
Note: this is the first of 3 Holiday Stories involving Panera, which I am affectionately calling “The Panera Series”…stay tuned!


Noted. By Les Babs