Take Heart

10 Tips for Thriving This Holiday Season

• Amy J Brown, Carrie Holt and Sara Clime • Season 2 • Episode 63

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As a parent of a child with special needs, the holidays can be particularly overwhelming. Amy, Carrie, and Sara will share their top ten practical tips for celebrating the holidays with your family. 

November 30, 2021; Ep. 63

Timestamps & Key Topics:

  • 0:20-    Intro
  • 1:14-    The “Perfect” Christmas
  • 4:14 -   Plan Well
  • 5:42-    Ruthlessly Eliminate
  • 8:49-    Pack Extra
  • 14:29-  It’s the Little Things
  • 17:58-  Find Time For Yourself
  • 20:30-  Pay Attention
  • 23:32-  Think Outside the Box
  • 27:26-  Reflection
  • 30:25-  Easy Traditions
  • 34:55-  Revel in Jesus
  • 36:09-  Outro

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Carrie M Holt  0:20  
Welcome to Take Heart where our goal is to offer encouragement, give hope and insight, so you can flourish in your journey as a special needs mom. As we explore monthly themes, share inspiring stories and practical tips, our desire is to continue to serve you and new listeners. Do you know we have a monthly newsletter each month? It contains a brand new encouraging Spotify playlist and a monthly prayer around our theme for the month. We also have an amazing new resource on our website called 7 Advocacy Practices and Pitfalls. Maybe you or a friend prefers reading to listening,  there is a full transcript of all of our episodes on our website under the episodes tab, and you can find that at www.takeheartspecialmoms.com/episodes. Please help us spread the word by subscribing, leaving a review and sharing the podcast with others. Amy, Sara, and I want to thank you for joining us today. 

Carrie M. Holt 1:14
So hello there. This is Carrie Holt, and I'm here with Amy and Sara today. We're doing something a little bit different. We are kicking off the month of December a little bit early, and today we're talking about our top ten suggestions for surviving the holidays with our children who have special needs. So before we start though, I want to read something from a book that I have read a lot with my children. It's called the best, well it slashes out the worst and calls it The best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson. So in this book, maybe you're familiar with it, but it was written I believe in about 1972. It is the story of the Herdmans who are the worst kids in history in the world. They lie, smoke cigars, swear and hit little kids. No one is prepared when this family decides to invade the church Sunday School and take over the annual Christmas pageant. Imogene is the sister, and she plays Mary in the pageant and her brother Ralph plays Joseph. Throughout the rehearsals, they cause all kinds of ruckus. They want to know why Jesus was born in a barn. They were bombed when they learned that King Herod died of old age after what he had done to all the children two and under, and they found out that he had also killed his wife. They think he needs a good beating,  and they want to change the story to include hanging Herod at the end. But when they enter the stage for the play on Christmas, it says this. "They looked like the people that you see on a six o'clock news-refugees, sent away to some strange ugly place, with all their boxes and sacks around them. It suddenly occurred to me that this was just the way it must have been for the real Holy Family, stuck away in a barn by people who didn't much care what happened to them. They couldn't have been very neat and tidy either, but more like this Mary and Joseph." I feel like we can connect a little bit with the Herdmans in that our Christmases sometimes never look the way that we imagined them to be. They're not Pinterest perfect or social media wonderful, kids get sick, we have children who can't handle crowds of people, or we have to pile our cars high with medical equipment just to go to grandma's house. Sometimes we have to avoid gatherings altogether because of sensory issues or mental health issues. We're gonna dive today into some of our tips, understanding that when I think about this book that I was just reading is that that's real life, right? The real-life is our kids not being able to handle Christmas and all of the things that we have to deal with during the holidays. So we're all going to start and share our top 10 Tips for Surviving Christmas and Sara is going to start with number 10.

Sara Clime  4:14  
Okay, so I will start with number 10 which is a big snoozer, I think, but it has served me well over the years and it is to calendar external Christmas social time. Anybody who knows me knows that I have my entire days blocked out in 15-minute increments. It doesn't always work that way, but I have everything from showering, working out,  everything in my calendar, and Christmas is no different. I found that before Christmas, I really try before Thanksgiving to sit down and calendar everything surrounding the Christmas break, actually the Christmas season: work parties, team parties, looking at Christmas lights, our church's Journey to Bethlehem, family parties, everything. What it does is it helps me to protect my time. It also forces me to see how much time I'm spending on the Christmas extras and not the actual Christmas season, and my family. It's really helped me to kind of ruthlessly eliminate the stuff that doesn't need to happen.

Carrie M Holt  5:16  
I love that, Sara, because I feel like sometimes once the kids are off school, you sort of run on this autopilot during Christmas break. Then time is wasted, or it fills up with, you're sort of willy nilly to the next person who calls to ask you to do something, or whatever that might be. Sara also has number nine.

Sara Clime  5:43  
We were joking before this, and mine originally was to lower your expectations, but that's not very Christmassy, but it's honest. Ultimately, what it comes down to is, you don't have to do it all. You can say no. Just because it's Christmas, and just because Jesus and Mary, and your kids, and family and work and your husband's work party and everything else, everything surrounds it, does not mean that it's an absolute yes. I had one time where Christmas had gone by. We had gone to Christmas parties and family parties and all the stuff. I looked at my husband, and it was Christmas evening, and I said, "I am so glad Christmas is over." It stopped me in my tracks. I thought I did not enjoy it at all. I thought, what do I need to do to enjoy it next year? It is to lower my expectations and say no. Oddly enough, it sounds horrible, but it really does. Again, just like the calendaring, it serves me well because it helps me to eliminate the stuff that doesn't need to happen.

Amy J. Brown 6:55
I think too that it seems like everything gets added in December. There are Christmas concerts and there's this and that. There's this idea that we can be impromptu, and we can't. People expect us to have more time. I always say the same thing, Sara. I have two birthdays, I have a December 23 birthday for one kid and a January 1 birthday. So I remember when my oldest was little, and we were still traveling back to Indiana to go see all grandma and grandpa's. By the fifth place, he was bawling his eyes out and screaming, "No more presents please." I agree with you. It's like I always say like they have an IEP at school, what is going to make Christmas work for your family in particular. I know kids with sensory issues or kids with attachment issues, they just can't go to a lot of things that have a lot of noise and lights. What's going to make it work for your family?

Carrie M Holt  7:53  
I would also like to add that it's okay to ask for help. Just like it's okay to say no. For instance, one of the things in our family that has happened for years, even I grew up with this, with my grandma hosting Thanksgiving. Everybody brings something. Everybody brings something, pitches in, and does a potluck. Even now, as my grandmother has aged, somebody else makes the turkey. We go over and help her set up, we go over and help her clean up. Let's say you're just going to have a couple of people over because your house is more accessible and you can't take your kids out. It's okay to ask people to help out with that. That's part of you saying no, that's it's us saying no to doing it all. I think sometimes we feel like we have to do it all and you don't. 

Carrie M. Holt 8:50
Number eight is a travel tip. I'm going to share number eight, and that is to have extra medical supplies stashed in a lot of places. So this is one of the things that I learned when my son was really little, we were a couple of hours from home visiting family at Thanksgiving. He had a feeding tube at the time and it had an extension that had to lock into the feeding tube. Well, I forgot the extension, which meant our baby couldn't get any food or eat. Thankfully, on my husband's side of the family, there are several nurses,  and they worked at the local hospital. Somebody was able to grab us what we needed. All that to say is, it taught me to stash extra medical supplies in my van. This actually saved us this summer when we were traveling for vacation because I forgot something that I was supposed to pack. We tend to travel to my parent's house quite a bit, which is several hours away. It's about a four to five-hour drive. We like to go a lot because it's the house I grew up in. I keep stuff out at my mom and dad's. Through the years, I have a kiddo who's almost 15, we've accumulated a lot of medical supplies through the years. I just leave stuff there. I have my list that's at grandma's, and then my list for home. Keeping a good packing list, keeping a good system can help make things less stressful, and then you don't have the decision fatigue, when your brain is already dead from Christmas and gifts and everything else that you don't forget the things that you need, medically if your child has medical needs. 

Sara Clime  10:41  
Kind of piggybacking on that...I feel like I'm the boring one. I have a digital task management system that I use for everything, and I have a packing list. I even have a Christmas packing list because, Amy, it's like you said earlier. You feel like all of a sudden it's Christmas, and you can just be spontaneous. It's like all of a sudden, we feel like we can get on a donkey and go to the star, but we can't. We have to pack stuff. One of the things that I do is I have a Christmas packing list. Fortunately, anymore, we don't really have to travel, but it's there anyway. I will never get rid of it. I actually updated it, we haven't traveled for years for Christmas. That might be another travel tip too is that it's to the point now where we can't get into all the family's houses. Even if the family says, "yeah, it's accessible." Then you get there and there are three steps. you're It's not accessible. When we travel, we travel with a ramp, a portable ramp, just in case. It's an extension one. Ultimately the past few years, we've just said, okay, here's the deal, you're gonna have to come to us. Again, I feel like I'm a big downer. Again, it's okay to say no. It's okay to say it's in our best interest. It's too difficult. Sometimes it's even impossible for you to come here. I think that that goes for people with behavioral or mental disabilities, allergies, because sometimes you go to other people's places, and you don't know what their spices have touched or they're cross-contaminated. So it's okay to just say nope.

Amy J. Brown 12:33
I would like to add especially here, kids with behavioral issues, because travel is kind of tricky with that, too. I think it's really important to say to the people that you're going to visit, this is what they can and can't do. When it's an invisible disability, sometimes people don't believe it. They think, oh, come on, they can have all this candy. It's Christmas. Your expectations of the people that you're traveling with are really important. Another travel tip that took us a while to figure out. We had six kids. Imagine getting six kids in the car. And the one child that has attachment disorder is up to no good just because she can because we're all getting our stuff in the car. We would have one kid take her outside and run while everybody else packed. At Grandma's house. David and I would say, "I can't. I wish I could be here for all this, but I can't, so I'm going to take her for a walk." We knew that was in our day. One of us was going to take her for a walk, or one of us was going to have quiet time. It is just what it is. If I try to push through and let my child have all the sugar and be in all that stimulus, it is awful. I mean, the payback of that, she can't handle that. So thinking through that. Like I said just a second ago, being really clear with the people in your family because sometimes it's your mom or your mother-in-law that's like oh, you're being too harsh. She can't have this big Christmas cookie.. You're like, no, she can't. I think that's a hard conversation to have, but it's necessary if you're going to be able to enjoy where you're going.

Sara Clime 14:16
I never even thought about that, Amy. Oh, it's Christmas, she can have five cookies. No, she can't. Just because it's Christmas doesn't mean that all the rules fly out the window. So, that's a good point.

Amy J. Brown 14:30
I guess I have number seven. It doesn't have to be perfect. It's the little things they will remember. So I have six kids, as you know. My oldest is going to be 29 which I can't believe. I have adult kids, and I always tried to make Christmas so magical for them. Some things were a success, some things weren't. Honestly, now that they're adults, some of the stuff I worried about they don't even remember. It's the little things they remember in our family. We have a tradition that when we put the Christmas tree up, we have what we call the snacky dinner, which literally means Cheez-Its and cheese slices. I make a really amazing homemade cinnamon roll, but my kids wanted cinnamon rolls in the can, so we did that. We do that when we put our tree up, I didn't make them homemade. Now, maybe our snacky lunch would not have been on the cover of Good Housekeeping or on a Pinterest board. They remember that. They remember that I wasn't stressed about getting the perfect little meal out for decorating the tree. To this day, I have adult kids, they all put the same ornaments on. I get to put the train on it. It's a tradition that we do. So I would encourage you, moms of little ones, first of all, this phase doesn't last forever. It's the little stuff that they remember. Don't stress yourself out with everything you see on Pinterest. The big stuff that I took a lot of time. Nah. So that's my tip.

Carrie M Holt  16:00  
I would like to add to that too, just to get in the pictures, Mom. Get in the pictures with your kids. Take the pictures, even if your special needs child is picking their nose. Take the pictures because I can remember, I think it was the first Christmas we had Toby home. We were trying to take a picture of all three of our boys which were like four, three, and one. For some reason that Christmas, Toby was afraid of the camera. He was afraid of saying cheese or something. We still cannot figure out to this day what he was afraid of, but every time we would group the three of them together and try to snap a picture. Toby was crying. We were trying to get this perfect picture for our Christmas cards. I look back at those pictures, and I just laugh because you know what? The picture was not perfect for the Christmas card that year. We could not get Toby to cooperate whatsoever. I'm so glad I still took those pictures. 

Amy J. Brown  17:06  
The other thing I would add is that recently, we were watching home videos of Christmas, and I appear so calm in the videos. I'm talking quietly. I think, why am I so calm? My kids said, "Mom, you were always calm." I thought to myself in my head I wasn't. So what they remember is me being calm. They may not remember that all the time. So I'm glad I was in those videos because a lot of times I wasn't. You're right, Carrie, get in the pictures, take the pictures. 

Sara Clime 17:37
I was getting ready to ask if you were medicated. Is that why you were calm? 

Amy J. Brown 17:42
I used to go on a run every Christmas Eve morning before it all started to kind of get myself going.

Carrie M Holt  17:49  
That's great. Amy, why don't we make that our next one. Let's make that number five because that goes right into your next tip.

Amy J. Brown  17:58  
Okay, find time for yourself. As I just said, I used to go for a run. I am a big introvert. I mean, I'm a lot of an introvert. I can't do all the fun. I just don't. I'm tired. I'm crabby if I have to do it. So I love early mornings by the tree with my tea and reading my Bible. There were also things I just didn't do. If it was a rough week, David takes the kids to look at the lights. I mean lights are lights. It's okay if you miss them for one year. I'd stay home with one kid, and he would take some kids to the early Christmas Eve service. There were just times when we had to divide and conquer. Honestly, I don't think my kids remember mom wasn't at the lights that one year because I needed that space, especially if you have kids with behavioral issues that are not in school during Christmas break you totally have to pace yourself. So my advice is it's not selfish to take a break. If you got Sara's calendar system, put it in the calendar system. I'm serious, it's not selfish. I remember. I want to go back to what Sara said, "I'm glad Christmas is over." Every year, I felt like I was running a marathon. When I crossed the finish line on Christmas morning, I'd be relieved. I remember thinking one time, this isn't how it's supposed to be. I knew a lot of moms and nobody enjoyed it. When I started to carve out time for myself then that made a huge difference in me being able to pace myself. 

Sara Clime 19:29
To add to that too, talking about the calendaring. Don't feel like it's selfish. I say this from experience because guilt is my go-to. I'm just being selfish, it's Christmas, I should want to be with them, and I should want to go do all the things. I'm with you, Amy, I mean, I can't do it, and I don't want to. Don't be afraid to sit down and look at your spouse and say okay, so on the 23rd, I'm going to set aside a couple of hours to myself. When do you want some time to yourself? Schedule his time. If you have somebody else, maybe you're not married, but you have somebody else, a friend, a neighbor, a parent, or a grandparent that can help you. Say, "Hey, I need a couple of hours to myself, can you be here at this time?" Don't be afraid to schedule it four weeks early. If everybody's aware of it, you can say it was on the calendar. 

Amy J. Brown  20:30  
Right? 

Carrie M Holt  20:30  
Yeah, that's really good. So our next tip, actually, I'm going to change up from what I was originally going to say. This tip is you need to pay attention to your body during the holidays. I speak from experience when I say that. My son was born just a few days after Christmas, my son with special needs. Honestly, once Christmas starts to hit, and the further out actually that we are away from the years of this happening, sometimes, the harder it is. I am dealing with situational and some seasonal depression because then it starts all the anniversary dates: the day of his surgeries, the day that he went back in the hospital, the day that our friends came to hold our baby before he had a trach. She's one of the only friends or family that got to hold him without a trach because he had a trach by six weeks. So once December through March 19th hits because March 19 is when we brought him home. It's a hard few months, and I have learned to ask; why am I feeling like doing nothing today? I literally don't want to get off the couch. Oh, this is an anniversary date. Sometimes I don't even know it mentally, but my body remembers. Your limbic system remembers. So I would say just give yourself a lot of grace and be aware of your body. Going back to what Amy was saying, I think it's number six. I can't remember what number we're on, but take care of yourself. I'm sure you guys probably have some things to add to that.

Amy J. Brown  22:19  
I think I would add that if I can't eat pounds of sugar during the year. It makes me feel terrible, then why am I eating it? I mean, I still try to do that. The practices that helped me stay sane, but they probably need to be doubled down a little bit during this season because it is so much more busy. I always try to make an intentional list of practices I want to keep up, whether that's time in the morning that's quiet or a walk or not eating sugar. I'm going to eat some sugar. I don't know why we think we should just throw it all out the window during Christmas. 

Sara Clime 23:01
You go to Christmas pageants or Christmas parties or anything and all of a sudden, I don't think I should have to eat gluten-free. You know, all of a sudden gluten should be just fine, and it's not. 

Amy J. Brown  23:14  
It's a Christmas miracle!

Sara Clime  23:15  
It is. It's a Christmas miracle, I'm no longer allergic to gluten or dairy.

Carrie M Holt  23:21  
Christmas cancels calories, don't you know that? I don't think Jesus came to cancel out the calories.

Carrie M. Holt 23:32
Tip number four is thinking outside the box. I feel like sometimes we always have this hyped-up thing in our minds of what Christmas should look like. My example of this is... It is an important thing in our family to go get a Christmas tree. Every other year when we're visiting with my family, around Thanksgiving time we will go get a tree. Some years, we just don't have the right wheelchair to do that in the mud. When we're in Michigan, this is where we're usually at when we're visiting family, there can best be lots of snow. There have been years where we've pulled out the sleds and picked up Toby because he can't walk, and we've put him in the sled to go get the Christmas tree. We found an off-road wagon and took him out. Like Sara said earlier, make sure you have your ramp or we've had, you know, two uncles lifting the wheelchair into grandma's house. Sometimes you kind of have to get creative and think outside the box. I will tell you I get a lot of anxiety and fear about accessibility because there have just been so many times, they'll say, "Hey, let's go do this activity." I'll just think there's no way it's accessible. I feel like I have to do all this planning. Sometimes that's just fatiguing enough that it just makes me not want to even do it at all. Being willing, I think sometimes to go, this is not going to be perfect, and we're just going to be creative, and we're going to figure out how to make it work, so we can just try to all have fun together. Do you guys have anything to add to that?

Sara Clime  25:23  
Well, and along those lines too. Our church, we have a special needs ministry, and we provide the battery-operated candles for the candlelight service. So I've told a few moms before, if you have children with sensory issues, or like Amy if you have behavioral issues, and you don't want to give them fire. Don't. Buy one of those from the dollar store. They're cheap and throw it in your purse, and that's part of your Christmas survival kit. Those are the kinds of things like you said. Just be creative.

Carrie M Holt  25:59  
Yeah, that's good. So actually, your little thing with fire leads into Amy's number three.

Amy J. Brown 26:06  
Number three. I wrote this as a joke, but it's true. This ain't Little House on the Prairie,  People is what I want to say. First of all, I always kind of want to have a Little House Christmas, because all Laura and Mary got was a bright shiny penny and an orange. When you're buying gifts for six kids, plus two birthdays, that sounds really appealing. Anyway, one year, we were reading Little House on the Prairie Christmas stuff. I have this bright idea that wouldn't it be fun after we did our Advent devotions to let our kids walk into their bedrooms with (I don't know why I did this) candles in little candle holders. It was the dumbest. My youngest at the time was three. Basically, it was a scalding wax on my carpet, a burning situation. So I don't know what Laura and Mary did. I don't really care now, because it just didn't work. So I think about that every year, I think what was I thinking? So that's my tip. You know, sometimes you see things on Pinterest and wouldn't this be cute, and old-fashioned? Well, no. I said, Would you guys have any stories like that?

Sara Clime 27:18
I can't imagine. All I can think of is you being like, let's all walk into your bedroom with fire. So no, I don't.

Carrie M Holt  27:30  
I don't think I can top that story. 

Sara Clime  27:32  
I think we just leave it at that. I think that's brilliant, 

Carrie M Holt  27:35  
We'll just leave that there.

Amy J. Brown  27:36  
Okay, well, then, I have the next tip, which is a little more serious. Sara just used the word Christmas survival toolkit, so I have a form of that. This is what I do. Every year I write myself a letter after Christmas, and I say these things. First of all, this is what worked, and this is what didn't work. This is what I need to do differently next year. This is what I always want to remember. So those four parts helped me realize what I need to change to make Christmas better. Obviously, the candles didn't work, so that went on that year. In the midst of all this crazy, I think sometimes I won't remember. So I always make sure I write this is what I want to remember. Then I usually write it in my journal, and then about mid-November, I'll go back to that journal, and I'll read it. I've tried all different kinds of ways to do things. We've tried Christmas shopping and having all that done by this date or Christmas shopping the week of. I've tried different things to see what works best and that changes with the season of your family. Definitely. That is my Christmas survival toolkit. It really does help me be intentional about how I want to live. I think sometimes it takes you a couple times to go, you know what, every time we do this thing, I'm crabby. Sometimes you don't notice it at the moment. You're just frustrated. A couple years ago in Chicago with our whole family, and my kid with attachment disorder sabotaged the whole weekend. It was just awful. I was annoyed. Then the therapist said it's too much. I thought okay, you're right. It still is too much. He's older now. I really thought he'd be okay. I didn't take into consideration that even as an older teen, it was still gonna be too much. I don't know why. So I wrote that down. So anyway, that's my survival tool.

Carrie M Holt  29:27  
Yeah. I think even along those lines, with just kind of making notes for next year. I always do this. I will get all of my decorations out, and then I didn't take pictures of what it looked like last year. Then I'm spending all this time trying to figure out where's this supposed to go and where's that supposed to go. Again, you can keep it really simple. I do enjoy decorating for Christmas. This might be totally silly, and maybe all of you listening do this on a regular basis, but I do try every year to snap pictures of how we put the Nativity out and where we put it, and where I put this certain thing. Then next year, all I can do is look at my pictures and go what went there, that went there. The kids can help because they don’t have to ask me a million questions. Then it's just, there. Again, I think the ways that we can cut down on decision fatigue are huge during the holidays, when there's a lot more going on than normally is. 

Sara Clime  30:36  
Carrie, my mom loves decorating for any holiday. I hate it with every fiber of my being, and I will prolong putting up the Christmas tree. As I'm putting up the Christmas tree, all I think is I have 12 days before I have to take this sucker down. That's all I can think of. This might go into the next one is, I incorporate this into our family traditions of decorating, but I also channel my inner minimalist. I decided one year, I'm not putting up two trees. Everybody's just gonna have to agree on the one tree, and it's the small tree, and it's the one that just pops up. Because let's all face it, I'm fighting you to put it all up and put it down. No, you can't go with your friends right now, because it's our tradition. The number one tip is to have easy and inexpensive traditions for the entire family. I have a 21-year old that will come home, and he loves just the simplest things. I thought for sure we wouldn't be doing it anymore. I quickly found out that's not the case. So one of the things we do is a birthday party for Jesus on Christmas Day. It's his birthday party, and we make the dessert as a birthday cake. We do non-traditional meals. So it's either a pizza party or a taco bar or a pasta bar or my husband decided one year we were going to do this. Maybe it's not quite like the fire in the bedrooms. He decided he was going to do Cornish game hens. I have no idea. It was the biggest flop. We can look, we can look back at it now, and we laugh. The kids say, "What are we having for Christmas? I hope it's not Cornish game hens." There are certain things like that that will become part of your family. Decorating the Christmas tree or decorating the birthday cake. Last year, we were, fortunately, able to get together with my nieces. The first thing was, "where's the where's the birthday cake?" They wanted to help decorate it. We actually have toppers that were from whenever I was a child because that was a tradition my mom had with us. We sing Happy Birthday to Jesus. Wrap up some gifts in birthday wrapping paper, like a family board game or just something really inexpensive. I think the kids will just love it. We go looking at Christmas lights. We don't do this so much anymore, because well, sometimes the traditions don't last. When they were little we would do Christmas lights, and we would do it in our PJs or we might bring hot chocolate for them. Another one that we did was we would start doing this earlier like around Thanksgiving, but we would buy rolls of butcher paper because it was so cheap. You tape them on tile, like in your kitchen. You give your kids markers and crayons and let them go to town. They color all of this butcher paper and then you roll it back up and that's what you use to wrap. I remember being on the floor with my kids laughing because we would tear some of the paper or you know, they would decorate it and they would think it was funny. Start some of those traditions that will carry through, and it's really cool to see them when they're generational traditions.

Carrie M Holt  34:01  
Yeah, I love that. So that's our last tip is to have these inexpensive traditions. Again, they don't have to be vast plans of things, but just simple things that you can continue to carry on because like Amy said, it's the little things that your kids will remember. Amy, do you have anything you want to add to that before we wrap up?

Amy J. Brown 34:25  
I just have one quick story. It's not my family, but we know a family that reads the Christmas story every year - the kids do. They each have their part, and the youngest one is a boy. He's 21 or 22 now and 6'3", but he's always baby Jesus. To this day, his sister's pick him up and hold them like a baby. It's hilarious to get the pictures every year. That's something they started as little kids, and they still carry it through. You'd be surprised when they get older the things they still want to do.

Carrie M Holt  34:55  
Yeah. Well, thank you for being with us today and going through our top 10 tips for surviving the holidays. So I am going to read a little spoiler alert from the end of our book from the Best Christmas Pageant Ever. Towards the end of the play, when the Herdmans had kind of taken over, and Mary and Joseph, you know, weren't necessarily doing the things that they were supposed to do, but this is what it says. "As for ruining the whole thing, it seemed to me that the Herdmans had improved the pageant a lot, just by doing what came naturally - like burping the baby, for instance, or thinking that a ham would make a better present than a lot of perfumed oil." So our prayer for you is that your Christmas will not be perfect, but what it is meant to be because you're reveling in the truth that Jesus came for you, and that He comes to us in our hard places. It doesn't have to be perfect, but that we're living out our real-life with Emmanuel, God with us. "For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord." 

Carrie M. Holt 36:09
So, thank you for joining us this week on Take Heart. Our prayer each week is for your heart to be encouraged. We are so grateful you're walking on this journey with us. Be sure to subscribe to our monthly newsletter at www.takeheartspecialmoms.com. Follow us on Instagram or Facebook @takeheartspecialmoms. If you have any questions or comments, you can follow the links in our show notes. We love hearing from our listeners. Listen in next week as Amy is going to kick off just some quiet Advent reflections. The next three that we're going to have in December are going to be some shorter episodes for you to be able to soak in the truths of Christmas and the Advent season. Then we'll be taking the last Tuesday of December off. We look forward to listening next week.