Tag: Christmas

Favorite Holiday Things: What Are We Doing & Gifting?

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I love a good gift idea, give me all the clever, cute, fun, unique gift ideas PLEASE!! When Kendall mentioned sharing our combined list of our favorite gifts and traditions this year I thought it was genius. Reminded me of the guide we created in 2022 which you can find here if you are interested. Again, we are sharing a few of our favorite things so that you can benefit from what we’ve learned, how we’ve celebrated, and what we are looking forward to giving this year.

Shari’s Top 4 favorite things:

  1. A Sauna! I joked on my personal Instagram that I am not an influencer but if I was… I would say “BUY THE SAUNA” because let’s be honest, the benefits are extensive. Want to listen to a book all about winter and why to purchase a sauna? Check out “How to Winter” by Kari Leibowitz. But seriously, I liked above the exact sauna that my husband and I purchased and I can confidently say it was the best purchase of 2025!
  2. Tradition – Family Dinner with the Christmas “holly” Lennox set. Last year we started a tradition with some family members to celebrate our late Aunt Kory. I inherited all her Christmas Lennox dishes and I wanted a reason to use them so we call it “Aunt Kory Christmas” and we serve ham and potatoes and a variety of side dishes and exchange gifts in honor of Aunt Kory who would have beamed with joy that we kept her Christmas traditions alive! Doing something in honor of someone we love just fills my cup so full during the busy holiday season.
  3. For the kids – we are in an interesting stage of life with the big kids being pretty “big” these days and gifting for them is harder than I care to admit. I wanted to make sure I kept the magic from our 18 year old to our 3 year old so I have to be strategic with gifts they wont know about. I still follow a lot of activities listed in this past post on advent activities and try to keep the Christmas feeling alive during the month of December in our home.
  4. For my girlfriends I have had so much fun putting together a little set of my favorite things… think tiny, cute, and practical. After I gift them all I can share exactly what I am gifting but it is literally a bunch of my favorite tiny useful gadgets from travel to everyday use items. I will tell you a few… my favorite Jack Black lip balm and hand sanitizer… just to name a few. I am having so much fun putting these little sets together and can’t wait to see what my friends think of all my tried and true must-haves! Bonus they are small and actually useful!

Kendall’s Top 4 favorite things:

  1. In recent years I have embraced this time of Advent. Every year it means something different but this year in particular I have embraced the idea of spiritual preparation ahead of Christ’s birth. I’ve gone to confession, contemplated where my heart needs to be, and examined my life as a whole. It’s more somber than the typical in your face Christmas season but this focus has allowed me to open my heart in different ways. Family time, keeping things in moderation (no going overboard on gifts), and prayer have actually caused me less anxiety than I normally have. In past years I have felt like a failure for not hitting all of the things on the Christmas to do list. I was in competition with a version of myself that just doesn’t matter. Implementing little things like weekday mass, doing the Theo app at night with Rosemary, and taking moments to really sit with my husband and my family and spend time together have felt incredibly healing and emphasized the reality of what is important in our lives. Advent looks different for everyone and this is just where I am this year.
  2. Gifts. I used to love gift giving. Now, I really don’t. People already have so much stuff. My children already have so many things. This year, Issy and I are keeping things simple. We aren’t doing a lot of gifts. BUT something I do love to give people is food. I love cooking for our friends and family. I will do a few batches of different things between now and Epiphany to give to people. Think homemade salsa, cookies, etc. The storage of food is usually temporary AND it is being made with love.
  3. Every year, Issy and I watch “White Christmas.” It’s our favorite movie. We love to pour something tasty and snuggle up and get lost in Irving Berlin’s genius. This time together means so much to me. The tree is lit up, our house is cozy, the kids are safe and in bed, and Issy and I get to just be for a few hours.
  4. The Polar Express. ALL ABOARD… ALLLLLLLL ABOARD! It has become a yearly tradition to take the kids on the Polar Express. They love it. Riding a train, listening to a read aloud of the book, meeting Santa and getting their very own bell are the things that they look forward to every year and will talk about all holiday season.

‘Twas a Few Days Before Christmas and…

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I, Kendall, am a hot mess. Where did I put all the presents I bought over the past few months? Why am I behind on baking? Is that gift for my dad cool enough? Did I get the right thing for my husband’s stocking? Is the grocery shopping list for Christmas Day finalized?

Due to some life circumstances, I have been more sleepy than usual and, thus, I am a bit behind. Somehow today, I got my butt in gear. I found all the presents and grouped them together by person. I rifled through a storage bin to find all of the donation items for our neighborhood’s Christmas morning coat drive for charity. My Christmas shopping is officially done. Everything has shipped. Now, my husband just has to use his superior gift wrapping abilities (he’s a bit of a perfectionist) and wrap it all up. I won’t make him wrap his stuff… in fact I will probably just hand it to him since I loathe wrapping and hate the waste.

Our house smells like Christmas thanks to delicious candles. We have done Christmas-y things! We are enjoying the season as much as we can in the midst of an unsettled pandemic, nausea, exhaustion, and super cold weather. Despite being behind on a few things, I am on track to get a lot of stuff done today and tomorrow so that we are ready for Christmas Eve. This is my favorite time of the year and it’s hard for me to get too down and overwhelmed. Especially when friends drop me large boxes of cookies… that I don’t share with my family because I, Kendall, am a cookie hoarder.

Merry Holidays!

Kendall’s Reflections on Losing Her Mom (7 Years Later)

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Kendall’s Reflections on Losing Her Mom (7 Years Later)

December is one of my most favorite months of the year. I LOVE the holiday season. It has also become one of the most challenging months for me. As many of you know, my mother passed away a while ago. December 7th marks seven years since her passing. Every year I feel something different. Sometimes there is a peace I experience with her being gone. Some years I feel angry. This year, I feel… alone. 

My mom did not believe in being a best friend to her daughters. She believed in making us tough. She wanted us to chase after everything and anything we wanted and she never wanted us to settle. Rosemary Barnett was not perfect. But she was my mom- and that’s perfect for me. I was sometimes scared to tell her things because I was worried about letting her down. Her expectations for us were pretty gosh darn high. Looking back, I am glad for it. She made me have a backbone. She encouraged me to live my life on my terms- even when other people might not like it. Mom used to say that if you change your mind just because someone else has a problem or issue with what you are saying or doing, how you can be certain of what you stand for or what it is you truly want. And she would say it all in that tone. You know what I am talking about, right? The tone that intimidates and comforts us all at once. It’s the tone of mothers.

When you experience the loss of a loved one, the emotions are all over the place. Everyone experiences grief differently. At the time of her passing, I wasn’t really able to grieve. I had to hold it together. Everyone (not just me) had lost someone; a wife, a daughter, a friend, a sister, an aunt, a cousin, a coworker, etc. My grief was also slower to appear. The realization of her not being here has hit me hard. It hit me hard when I married my husband. It hits me hard when I realize she will never meet her grandchildren. It’s almost unbearable to think too much about. She spent so much time shopping for the babies of her friends and family. She loved it. Like, LOVED it. She was an excellent gift giver (something I have not inherited). Grammy Rosemary will never get to shop for her grandbabies. That thought is a true kick in my gut.

Since having baby Rosemary, I have missed having a consistent and maternal woman in my life. The truth is, no one can take her place. Honestly I am not sure I would let anyone try. I miss her no nonsense attitude telling me to toughen up. I miss her tickling me with her toes. I miss the way she would give Bella the last of her yogurt (I can assure you Bella misses this too and to this day still goes ape sh*$ when she sees us eating yogurt- thanks for that, mom). I miss having someone to ask questions too or recall things about life when we were little. She had a knack for remembering everything. This was very helpful unless she was pulling something out of the mental filing cabinet against me!! Haha. 

I am not much like my mom. I look like her. I sound like her. But I am nowhere near as strong as she was. I am nowhere near as even tempered with people as she was. Her kindness was known to everybody from her coworkers and family to the grocery store checkout clerk at the local Safeway. Having to tell people that she had passed is also what kept me pretty hardened with my grief. A few days after she had passed, she missed an eye appointment. She had seen Dr. Peck for years. He knew her and his staff knew her. Having to call and explain this to the receptionist turned into one of the hardest moments of my life. Telling my family we had let her go was excruciating. Telling her best friend, Joan, was so painful my throat hurt from holding back tears. Yet, telling Dr. Peck’s receptionist became one of the hardest moments for me when this poor woman broke down into tears… this is a woman that, sure, knew my mom but didn’t even know her as well as others. That’s when I knew my mom left an impression. 

As I have grown our family, I have missed her. The truth is, it’s lonely not to have your mom to talk to. In the past year, that’s the grief emotion I have felt most: lonely. I am lonesome without my mom. I could really use her right now. I also really want to care for her. I wish I could give her all the grandbaby snuggles and kisses. I wish I could cook for her. I wish I could do something for her- the way she did everything for me. 

The last feeling I want to talk about with grief is shame. Sometimes, I feel shame. I feel a little bit of shame in that it took us so long to really connect. It’s not all my fault, but I do feel bad and naive for thinking that we had all the time in the world. I also feel deep shame in wondering if I made her proud. How vain is that? Yet, it’s what I want to know most and will never get an answer to. There was a lot left unfinished for not just us but for her. She was on the cusp of doing so many things- she had plans! And I feel shame that I couldn’t help her do those things or live out those things more when she was alive. Again, thinking you have all the time in the world is normal but not always true. 

To honor my mom best, I try my hardest to make Christmas a jolly time for my family. While I don’t have the talent for gift giving (or wrapping for that matter) that she did, I do know how to make the spirit of the season burst from the seams of my house just like she did. I am different from her. But I am who I am because of her. For that, I am thankful.

Kendall on Holiday Celebrations

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Full disclosure: I celebrate Christmas. But, I feel like the following applies to any holiday gathering or day you might be partaking in this year! 

My name is Kendall and I have an obsession with Christmas. I have inherited this said obsession from my mother and grandmother. As a kid, Christmas was magical. My grandmother had this epic tree, stunning decorations, delicious cookies, and there would be presents overflowing from underneath her tree into her whole formal dining room. It was a kid’s dream. My mom had the tradition of always setting up her tree the day after Thanksgiving. I would huff and puff at having to help my dad bring boxes up to her. But the end result of her tree was always so special. She really knew how to decorate a tree. It was worth the huff and puff. 

As the years have gone by, we have all added to our families and traditions have changed. Even being an adult has changed Christmas celebrations! Today, I have a kiddo to think about. Meals need to be timed around naps and bedtime… to a point at least. We have a fair amount of flexibility with Rosemary but there is a point of no return and, then, potentially losing the day! So, we have to be thoughtful about how we celebrate. We can’t do all the things we did growing up because Rosemary is her own kid. She is helping us carve out new traditions! She loves hot chocolate and Christmas movies. She adores warm and cozy holiday pajamas. She abhors opening gifts; she gets so overwhelmed that she can’t focus and then she goes into a complete meltdown. Thus, we have to rethink Christmas! This year, while she is still in the thick of toddlerdom, we have opted to do gifts slowly over the month and up until Three Kings on January 6th. We have also started doing chocolate advent calendars. There is even a dog advent calendar for Bella (thank you Trader Joes!). Every night Rosemary gets at least one holiday story. Our puzzle board has Christmas themed puzzles and “Run Run Rudolph” has become the Arguello house theme song. 

Logistically, celebrating a holiday can be hard. There are so many different gatherings that some days it can feel like you live out of your car instead of enjoying the day! I suggest avoiding the holiday burnout by not overcommitting to things. Prioritize what is important, compromise if you have families involved, and try to remember that the holiday season is supposed to be about being together- not being perfect. There is no such thing. As kids, we think there is but as we grow up, we know better. Food might be delayed. Presents might be stuck in a port somewhere, the tree may have some lights that are out, or maybe you just can’t make it to every gathering. This is all ok. Just enjoy the moments with the people you love. Snuggle in with a cup of cocoa or a great glass of something stronger, watch that favorite Christmas movie, and allow yourself to feel the spirit of the season. 

I would also like to take a moment to say that for some, the holidays are hard. There are a variety of reasons for why this season can be difficult for someone. I also struggle with missing loved ones and can get pretty down. If you need anything, Shari and I are here. And if you need help urgently, please reach out to a trusted source or 1-800-273-8255 (National Suicide Prevention Lifeline).

“Though I’ve grown old, the bell still rings for me, as it does for all who truly believe.”
– Chris Van Allsburg, The Polar Express

Shari On Christmas Traditions

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Shari On Christmas Traditions

What establishes a tradition? Well, Google states that it is a custom or recurring activity passed through generations. I would argue that in our minds we all have traditions that are simply considered yearly activities or events that we enjoy doing with our families. This year it may not be so easy to keep some event-based traditions alive but there is always time to create new traditions… At least that is my philosophy! 

Let’s take it back to my childhood… I have so many great memories of Christmas. Mostly the excitement to be with family, opening gifts, and decorating the Christmas tree (which was always taken down from the garage rafters and was quite the production to set up). The ornaments that pre-dated my arrival to the family were always some of my favorites and each year we would add another personal ornament to the tree. Those personalized ornaments were my favorite to hang each year after that. Although our house rarely had Christmas lights on the outside, my mom always made sure it looked like a holiday explosion inside! My mom’s love for Christmas could be an entire blog post all on its own. Our family usually made an effort to go drive through the “Christmas Lights on James Street” every year. It was a local mobile home neighborhood that would get all lit up to THE extreme; from the lawns to the rooftops, the driveways and often even the cars, the James Street houses did not disappoint. We would ohh and ahh over the bright magical displays and talk about any other neighborhoods that might also be decorated nearby, I think we just liked driving around as a family.

One Christmas tradition that stands out above the rest is decorating sugar cookies with my mom. Since my mom is an amazing cook, she would make an effort to bake and decorate sugar cookies with me. We’d pull out cookie cutters, food coloring for frosting and ALL the sprinkles in the baking cabinet. Bless my mom’s heart because it was always such a mess and I rarely helped clean it up. I remember having the best time and getting extremely excited when my dad picked out his favorite frosted cookie that happened to be one I decorated. As an adult, I like to buy the premade Gingerbread house kits for the kids and now my mom typically will still do sugar cookie decorating with the grandkids. So sweet…literally!

Are you ready for my favorite Christmas tradition OF ALL TIME? The Christmas Eve Service at my Grandparents Church, trust me it was quite the production. I still remember the smell of the church, the color of the carpet, the pews that were handmade by my Great Uncle Ed, and the slightly terrible childrens performances that made you both laugh and cringe at the same time. The youngest kids would sing “Happy Bells” which is the cutest little song when coming from a 3 year old who is simultaneously shaking the bells in their hand as fast and hard as possible. As a group (congregation) we would take out the hymnals from the back of the pew in front of us and open to whatever page we were instructed to sing “O’ Holy Night” and numerous other Christmas songs. What made this so special was the unique sound of the organ piano. They save the best for last and as you left the ushers would give you a bag full of hard candies, peanuts (with the salty shell), and an orange. I loved this Christmas tradition and even typing about it makes me ache deep down inside, I miss it so much! The church built a new building and it just doesn’t have the same feel (or smell). 

Although those are some of my more treasured traditions from childhood, the beauty of growing up is incorporating new traditions and evolving your knowledge and understanding of a holiday. Over the past few years I have poured myself into my Scandinavian heritage only to learn about the Norwegian Nisse, the Rommegrot porridge that the Nisse eats, Krumkake baking, candles and the (quite popular) concept of Hygge. It’s been so much fun to incorporate what I am learning back into my family traditions, hoping that something I am doing was what my great grandmother’s family did back in Norway. 

Traditions can be beautiful and special when passed down from generation to generation. They can be a memory that you hold dear, or they can be something you just started doing this year. I would love to know (in the comments below) what holiday traditions are your favorite? What are some traditions that you are hoping to create?

Kendall On Holiday Traditions

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Kendall On Holiday Traditions

Tradition. Traditions. They are important to our lives- especially around the holidays. Whether it’s a big meal with family or an ugly sweater party with your closest friends, this year is a game changer for everyone. The holidays bring out a beautiful and sentimental side to people. The month of December is like a blanket of hope and generosity of spirit. 

My mom and grandma did traditions well. Decorating the trees, making Mexican Christmas cookies, shopping for gifts, hot cocoa… I miss those days. I miss the smell of it. As I got older, things changed and not all in bad ways. Life can’t stay the same! Neither can traditions. After my mom passed, we felt a little lost in terms of traditions… we never really got it “right.” There was a certain amount of pressure and shame (for me) that I couldn’t do it all the same way. Sure, we tried and we got some things right. Over time, we were okay with letting certain things go and modifying others. It was liberating to discover that we didn’t have to decorate the Christmas tree the exact same way! We got to play with the holiday season and try to figure out how to make it fun again… make it happy again. 

I feel like the Christmas of 2017 was the one that I finally started to see what I wanted the holiday to be. My husband and I were in Spain and my father-in-law was in town for Christmas. It was… simple. We watched our favorite movies, made different kinds of delectable sweets, socialized with friends, and made a Christmas Eve feast that was ON POINT. We kept the pressure low. That has very much been the key to us being happy during the season. We mostly just want to be happy- so we do the things that make us happy. We have been open to change- something that I think has made us fairly comfortable during this… crazy… year. 

This year, we have my dad with us. He’s been here in Vermont since September. We’ve decorated our home, are slowly purchasing gifts and last minute stocking stuffers, and are about to begin an intense week of baking cookies. This is also our second year of doing a Christmas puzzle. Settling down with a glass of wine or a cup of tea and focusing on a puzzle has proven to be a soothing pastime for me. It’s not just Issy and I anymore. Rosemary has started to discover the magic of the season. She is learning about the holidays through books and her favorite, so far, is “Charlie Brown’s Christmas.” She is SO my grandmother’s great granddaughter. Rosemary is also discovering the joys of snow, the perils of things freezing over, and the delights of cake pops shaped like snowmen from Starbucks. I very much want her to feel the same excitement and joy that I did as a kid. I want her to enjoy giving more than she does receiving. I want her to understand that this is the time of year where we open our wallets for not just gifts but for different causes… and sure!- this doesn’t have to be experienced only during the holidays, but it sure is a good time to show her the pleasure in giving to others. 

On Friday I have grand plans of going out and finishing ALL shopping, getting a Christmas eye brow wax, and meandering over to the wine shop to get the wine for our Christmas day meal. That’s this year’s traditions. Maybe next year, things will be different? Traditions don’t really matter… What matters is being with the people who make traditions worth doing.