nurturing

What a great Christmas. G's birthday went smoothly. We ran out of punch but had enough pizza so that people were able to grab a slice when the party was over and we didn't have left overs. Not like pizza left overs are bad, but it's expensive to buy way more than you need. The kids ran back and forth and the good old parachute made an appearance. We also played limbo and that was hilarious.

Today we had a great musical program at church. It had a family number, a sister duet, a guitar vocal duet, the primary, the choir and then we finished it out with an American Idol style vocal showdown with the choir and then congregation chiming in at the end. And despite the worries we had at practices we had a good group and it was lovely.

The P family are so generous to us. They give us all so many wonderful and useful gifts. This year they had opened their gifts before to make room for all the gifts they were bringing us. I felt awkward having all the gifts, but it grateful. P is barely into giving gifts at all and it causes more harm to our relationship to push him there. So we just move along and hope the P family will still come back another year.

Grandma L gave me 6 strawberry plants. And this leads us to a discussion on nurturing. I'm not great with plants. OK, they die. P's family kept reminding me to not just forget them in the fire pit area. So as soon as they left I started to get them planted. I got 4 in the ground before it started to rain. 2 more I will get in the ground tonight. Now I need to make an effort to take care of them. It's a good thing I'm better at kids than plants. But plants don't tell me they are hungry. And I don't take my plants out in public to endure public censure. Maybe I should. Because if I could go to a plant play date and get some advice and feel that nurturer's sense of "can't let the other nurturer's think I'm a bad nurturer" peer pressure, maybe more of my plants would live.