I know we’re not talking politics 😱 but I was drawn to the reporting work & I watched a bit of that Miami herald documentary and wow. Unreal. Awful. This is so much bigger than the individual people involved & I completely understand the desperation for systemic accountability.
Less of a tradition and more of a Lazy Genius decide once - crockpot hot chocolate from Sally's Baking Addiction. My 7 year old is ALL about the hygge and insists that hot chocolate goes with snow days. Making the individual mugs was annoying. Making it on the stove was fine but a little risky when I've got a toddler who might interrupt at any moment. But the crockpot? Perfection! You throw it in and leave it and everyone gets their mug when they want it.
Also, the snowy, Thanksgiving to Christmas weekend we just had was about as good as it gets for kicking off the holiday season. I feel like everything else is icing on the cake at this point!
MTG - I just think it's way too early for any of us to call this one. She has done a lot of harm with seemingly little to no regret. However, I always want to leave the door open for people to change or for their hearts to soften. One thing I will say about MTG that you don't see hardly any politicians do - she admits she was wrong about something. Before I come off sounding too gracious, privately in our home we all have our own hypothesis about what we thought this was all about. I believe she releases some big news on January 6th - 1 day after she resigns - because, hello!? It's January 6th!
This whole Epstein thing, I myself, find myself in the camp of you didn't care before why do you care now? Well, honestly, I didn't nearly as much until our President started to turn himself in knots over it, and I thought, "Well I didn't care until he cared THAT much, so now I am curious." And it's not that I didn't care, but when he died, even then (don't follow any of the conspiracy theories) I remember thinking "they" gave them choice, we do it or you do. Who is the they? I don't know - I figured he wasn't a lone wolf in that entire scheme. And the girls even then were definitely not defined as children but as young women who made poor decisions. I never got the gist that he was preying on young girls in distress or even older children - that never made it to my orbit around the topic.
Traditions - what a good call on couple's traditions! I find that if I ask my kids if they want to do things with me pending their moods I too, get kind of "meh" responses but if I go off, basically set the mood. Turn on some music, start singing along (i.e. enjoy myself) before I know the honey does indeed attract one if not both of my little bees. And if they don't join me, they do ask what I am doing, and I tell them, and when I'm done they compliment me on it lol. Last year Christmas blew past me and I was a little bummed about it so I did "plan" to be better this year. Tree was up and decorated by Thanksgiving (big win for me) and I bought presents and will wrap some this weekend (also BIG win for me). Our Elf will show up this week along with St. Nick gifts (I hate Wisconsin......stupid St. Nick) and I will miss so many things about my kids being little and the "magic" of Christmas. This Elf is not one of them.
Parenting is such a journey - and it's so rude. The rules and regulations are constantly changing! I figure, as long as we're willing to change too, we'll be alright. Probably-ish.
My kids are basically the same ages as yours... ideas for y'all- decorating a gingerbread house, going to a local performance of the Nutcracker, & finding an organization where you can sponsor/shop for a child that needs assistance & do this with your kids.
Mine are 9 and 15, and I think my 9 still believes a little but is definitely questioning but she is still excited to look for the elf and open her adventure calendar. My 15 year old still plays along for her though he seems to be less interested in his advent calendar. Someone really needs to make better advent calendars for teen boys. They still enjoy a movie night and going to see lights. The tween enjoys baking and the teen enjoys eating the cookies. When my teen was 9 I really struggled with him letting go of the holiday a little. Now I embrace it knowing that it gives us opportunities to do new things. We went to London and Brussels over Thanksgiving to see some Christmas markets and it was so special. We are heading to Disney’s few days after Christmas as a test of “can we travel over the holiday” in hopes of making that a Christmas tradition when they are older. All this to say I often listen to Where Are You Christmas and cry a little every year that goes by .
I feel the complete opposite about MTG. I'm with Sarah's husband. That is all I will say about MTG...LOL!
I was listening to you both talk about Congress, the corruption, Trump, MAGA, and how so many Republicans are jumping ship, all of it. It's so gross what is going on in Washington D.C.
Sadly, even with how chaotic and corrupt everything is in Washington, D.C. right now, I still do not believe the Democrats will take back the House or Senate next year, and I do not believe a Democrat will win in 2028. I feel Democrats continuing to do and say the same things they have been doing and saying for almost 10 years. They are not moving people. That is worrisome to me.
It’s been hard to watch our family traditions change with our two teenagers. During five of the six years we lived in Texas, we celebrated Campsgiving instead of standard Thanksgiving and it was a family tradition that gave us a lot of closeness and good memories. Three of those years we also headed west during Christmas break and spent time with just the four of us exploring west Texas (Big Bend and Palo Duro). Now that we’re back in Indiana, we really miss those late fall/early winter camping trips.
Our autistic 16-year-old LOVES tradition and she won’t let us forget some of them. Both our 14 and 16-year-old still love decorating the tree, mostly because I started getting them ornaments every year when they were just babies. They love pulling out their old ornaments and remembering what they were into every year of their lives. (Although my 14-year-old is getting a little tired of sports ornaments to commemorate his yearly activities, so I need an idea for something new this year.) And our 16-year-old still sets up the Fisher Price Little People nativity and keeps the holy family out of the stable until Christmas. The Wise Men stay where they are in a different room of the house until Epiphany. It has been that way since she was little.
And like Sarah, I might be crying next Christmas because it will be another “last” before we ship one off to college.
I am sure other listeners have wonderful creative ideas for Christmas traditions with older kids. Can’t wait to read those! But my biggest tip (for Christmas! And allllll year round!) with older kids is to be the house that hosts your kids and their friends. They’re starting new traditions - be the setting for those whenever the opportunity arises. Friendsgivings (where they really just want Cane’s chicken tenders and Mac and cheese), home from college hangouts, last minute movie nights, etc. Be ready with good drinks (diet coke, dr pepper, and Izze are popular with the teens here - sorry Sarah!), easy snacks, and a willingness to order pizza! Let them make a mess in your kitchen then ask them to throw their trash away. Just be chill and welcoming and loving. I love my kids and also love their friends - my life is more full because of them!
My husband and I have a tradition of staying up late on a weekend to watch adult Christmas movies together. Our favorites are The Night Before and Office Christmas Party.
Something my older kids seem to enjoy is a Christmas Eve dinner made from each person choosing one dish and putting them together for dinner. It just can’t be anything super expensive or super complicated to make. We traditionally have done a daily activity from an advent calendar type of thing for December 1-24 since they were very young, which has become more difficult as they’ve gotten older, so we just do a more loose version where a lot of days just get missed in busyness, but we hit the highlights of their favorites.🤷🏻♀️ One activity they definitely enjoy is the plastic wrap ball game. It does have a waste component that I don’t love, but they really have fun doing it.
Now I’ll just sit back and hold my breath waiting for the “whole other episode” Sarah mentioned about Nancy P.’s fantastical “luck” in the stock market while she was in office.🙃
This was a great episode to accompany me on a long drive.
I’ve been following the Epstein case since a podcast series in 2018(?). I just finished Nobody’s Girl last week and still feel a little wrecked by it. Like Julie, I’m very worried that Maxwell will be pardoned.
I did not grow up celebrating Christmas other than performing a cute Nativity play at church on Christmas Eve. So, I didn’t really have a traditions and a demanding in-law made starting our own a constant challenge until I quit cooperating.😅 Now, we celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah. I’ve always bought pajamas that the kids open on Christmas Eve after a candlelight service (and the Nativity play!) at church. They are not usually Christmas pjs and sometimes they are even football shorts and a T-shirt. 😂 My kids are 22, 25, 27 & 29 so I asked if they were over it with the pjs and they said no, even though they aren’t always at home. In recent years, we usually have brunch with my family and then some of us work on Christmas dinner. I love that part of it - the community/connection parts After Christmas dinner is cleaned up, we go to someone’s (it rotates) house and play games.
Same! I’ve got a 14 month old this year. Last year we decorated the tree together (her in her baby bjorn) but that was about all she could do. I’m so looking forward to taking her to see some lights this year!
So the one specific to Christmas in the year old our Lord 2025 thing I had to add, has anyone watched A Very Jonas Christmas Movie? I know please stay with me.
I had very low expectations but proposed it to my kids over the weekend as a why not and it is surprisingly funny. My 10yo and 8 yo have been listening to the soundtrack on repeat and I gotta say every time the duet from the (fake) Home Alone the musical comes on I kind of giggle to myself.
Please keep your expectations low but it's good for cameos, some bops and some giggles.
Might I suggest, watching the Thanksgiving day Macey’s parade in comfortable clothes with yummy food as a wonderful and flexible holiday tradition? It has been my personal one that I have now shared with my husband, children, and now neighbors.
I know we’re not talking politics 😱 but I was drawn to the reporting work & I watched a bit of that Miami herald documentary and wow. Unreal. Awful. This is so much bigger than the individual people involved & I completely understand the desperation for systemic accountability.
Less of a tradition and more of a Lazy Genius decide once - crockpot hot chocolate from Sally's Baking Addiction. My 7 year old is ALL about the hygge and insists that hot chocolate goes with snow days. Making the individual mugs was annoying. Making it on the stove was fine but a little risky when I've got a toddler who might interrupt at any moment. But the crockpot? Perfection! You throw it in and leave it and everyone gets their mug when they want it.
Also, the snowy, Thanksgiving to Christmas weekend we just had was about as good as it gets for kicking off the holiday season. I feel like everything else is icing on the cake at this point!
MTG - I just think it's way too early for any of us to call this one. She has done a lot of harm with seemingly little to no regret. However, I always want to leave the door open for people to change or for their hearts to soften. One thing I will say about MTG that you don't see hardly any politicians do - she admits she was wrong about something. Before I come off sounding too gracious, privately in our home we all have our own hypothesis about what we thought this was all about. I believe she releases some big news on January 6th - 1 day after she resigns - because, hello!? It's January 6th!
This whole Epstein thing, I myself, find myself in the camp of you didn't care before why do you care now? Well, honestly, I didn't nearly as much until our President started to turn himself in knots over it, and I thought, "Well I didn't care until he cared THAT much, so now I am curious." And it's not that I didn't care, but when he died, even then (don't follow any of the conspiracy theories) I remember thinking "they" gave them choice, we do it or you do. Who is the they? I don't know - I figured he wasn't a lone wolf in that entire scheme. And the girls even then were definitely not defined as children but as young women who made poor decisions. I never got the gist that he was preying on young girls in distress or even older children - that never made it to my orbit around the topic.
Traditions - what a good call on couple's traditions! I find that if I ask my kids if they want to do things with me pending their moods I too, get kind of "meh" responses but if I go off, basically set the mood. Turn on some music, start singing along (i.e. enjoy myself) before I know the honey does indeed attract one if not both of my little bees. And if they don't join me, they do ask what I am doing, and I tell them, and when I'm done they compliment me on it lol. Last year Christmas blew past me and I was a little bummed about it so I did "plan" to be better this year. Tree was up and decorated by Thanksgiving (big win for me) and I bought presents and will wrap some this weekend (also BIG win for me). Our Elf will show up this week along with St. Nick gifts (I hate Wisconsin......stupid St. Nick) and I will miss so many things about my kids being little and the "magic" of Christmas. This Elf is not one of them.
I love thinking of this as the honey attracting the bees! That's going to be my mental shortcut from now on!
Parenting is such a journey - and it's so rude. The rules and regulations are constantly changing! I figure, as long as we're willing to change too, we'll be alright. Probably-ish.
My kids are basically the same ages as yours... ideas for y'all- decorating a gingerbread house, going to a local performance of the Nutcracker, & finding an organization where you can sponsor/shop for a child that needs assistance & do this with your kids.
Mine are 9 and 15, and I think my 9 still believes a little but is definitely questioning but she is still excited to look for the elf and open her adventure calendar. My 15 year old still plays along for her though he seems to be less interested in his advent calendar. Someone really needs to make better advent calendars for teen boys. They still enjoy a movie night and going to see lights. The tween enjoys baking and the teen enjoys eating the cookies. When my teen was 9 I really struggled with him letting go of the holiday a little. Now I embrace it knowing that it gives us opportunities to do new things. We went to London and Brussels over Thanksgiving to see some Christmas markets and it was so special. We are heading to Disney’s few days after Christmas as a test of “can we travel over the holiday” in hopes of making that a Christmas tradition when they are older. All this to say I often listen to Where Are You Christmas and cry a little every year that goes by .
I feel the complete opposite about MTG. I'm with Sarah's husband. That is all I will say about MTG...LOL!
I was listening to you both talk about Congress, the corruption, Trump, MAGA, and how so many Republicans are jumping ship, all of it. It's so gross what is going on in Washington D.C.
Sadly, even with how chaotic and corrupt everything is in Washington, D.C. right now, I still do not believe the Democrats will take back the House or Senate next year, and I do not believe a Democrat will win in 2028. I feel Democrats continuing to do and say the same things they have been doing and saying for almost 10 years. They are not moving people. That is worrisome to me.
Colleen, I think you might really be into Friday's episode!
It’s been hard to watch our family traditions change with our two teenagers. During five of the six years we lived in Texas, we celebrated Campsgiving instead of standard Thanksgiving and it was a family tradition that gave us a lot of closeness and good memories. Three of those years we also headed west during Christmas break and spent time with just the four of us exploring west Texas (Big Bend and Palo Duro). Now that we’re back in Indiana, we really miss those late fall/early winter camping trips.
Our autistic 16-year-old LOVES tradition and she won’t let us forget some of them. Both our 14 and 16-year-old still love decorating the tree, mostly because I started getting them ornaments every year when they were just babies. They love pulling out their old ornaments and remembering what they were into every year of their lives. (Although my 14-year-old is getting a little tired of sports ornaments to commemorate his yearly activities, so I need an idea for something new this year.) And our 16-year-old still sets up the Fisher Price Little People nativity and keeps the holy family out of the stable until Christmas. The Wise Men stay where they are in a different room of the house until Epiphany. It has been that way since she was little.
And like Sarah, I might be crying next Christmas because it will be another “last” before we ship one off to college.
I am sure other listeners have wonderful creative ideas for Christmas traditions with older kids. Can’t wait to read those! But my biggest tip (for Christmas! And allllll year round!) with older kids is to be the house that hosts your kids and their friends. They’re starting new traditions - be the setting for those whenever the opportunity arises. Friendsgivings (where they really just want Cane’s chicken tenders and Mac and cheese), home from college hangouts, last minute movie nights, etc. Be ready with good drinks (diet coke, dr pepper, and Izze are popular with the teens here - sorry Sarah!), easy snacks, and a willingness to order pizza! Let them make a mess in your kitchen then ask them to throw their trash away. Just be chill and welcoming and loving. I love my kids and also love their friends - my life is more full because of them!
Writing down "Just be chill and welcoming and loving"
My husband and I have a tradition of staying up late on a weekend to watch adult Christmas movies together. Our favorites are The Night Before and Office Christmas Party.
„We don’t make people our projects.“ öhhh, I am going to borrow that, Sarah. Thank you.
Something my older kids seem to enjoy is a Christmas Eve dinner made from each person choosing one dish and putting them together for dinner. It just can’t be anything super expensive or super complicated to make. We traditionally have done a daily activity from an advent calendar type of thing for December 1-24 since they were very young, which has become more difficult as they’ve gotten older, so we just do a more loose version where a lot of days just get missed in busyness, but we hit the highlights of their favorites.🤷🏻♀️ One activity they definitely enjoy is the plastic wrap ball game. It does have a waste component that I don’t love, but they really have fun doing it.
Now I’ll just sit back and hold my breath waiting for the “whole other episode” Sarah mentioned about Nancy P.’s fantastical “luck” in the stock market while she was in office.🙃
You really can't produce more delight than with the plastic wrap ball
This was a great episode to accompany me on a long drive.
I’ve been following the Epstein case since a podcast series in 2018(?). I just finished Nobody’s Girl last week and still feel a little wrecked by it. Like Julie, I’m very worried that Maxwell will be pardoned.
I did not grow up celebrating Christmas other than performing a cute Nativity play at church on Christmas Eve. So, I didn’t really have a traditions and a demanding in-law made starting our own a constant challenge until I quit cooperating.😅 Now, we celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah. I’ve always bought pajamas that the kids open on Christmas Eve after a candlelight service (and the Nativity play!) at church. They are not usually Christmas pjs and sometimes they are even football shorts and a T-shirt. 😂 My kids are 22, 25, 27 & 29 so I asked if they were over it with the pjs and they said no, even though they aren’t always at home. In recent years, we usually have brunch with my family and then some of us work on Christmas dinner. I love that part of it - the community/connection parts After Christmas dinner is cleaned up, we go to someone’s (it rotates) house and play games.
Gah, I’m getting emotional reading all these lovely posts as I’m about to celebrate my first Christmas as a mom 🥹🥹🥹
Same! I’ve got a 14 month old this year. Last year we decorated the tree together (her in her baby bjorn) but that was about all she could do. I’m so looking forward to taking her to see some lights this year!
So the one specific to Christmas in the year old our Lord 2025 thing I had to add, has anyone watched A Very Jonas Christmas Movie? I know please stay with me.
I had very low expectations but proposed it to my kids over the weekend as a why not and it is surprisingly funny. My 10yo and 8 yo have been listening to the soundtrack on repeat and I gotta say every time the duet from the (fake) Home Alone the musical comes on I kind of giggle to myself.
Please keep your expectations low but it's good for cameos, some bops and some giggles.
Sometimes watching the same great movie for the 200th time is awesome. Sometimes, you just need something new. Now I know one to look for!
Might I suggest, watching the Thanksgiving day Macey’s parade in comfortable clothes with yummy food as a wonderful and flexible holiday tradition? It has been my personal one that I have now shared with my husband, children, and now neighbors.
Julie K. Brown has done some vital work, and I am so grateful for her.