It’s finally December and Christmas is rapidly approaching! Our Tommy Mommies are going to be sharing some of their favorite memories, traditions and ways they celebrate the season with you throughout this month, but I also wanted to share another reality so many of us face during the holidays.

While this is a favorite time of year for many families, it can also be a time filled with stress and choices.

It should go without saying that we live in a fallen world, but for some reason, when it comes to Christmas, many families expect perfection.

Perfect family pictures. Perfect turkey dinners. Perfect behavior. Perfect decorations. And most of all, perfect time together.

Unfortunately, that is not reality.

Especially for those of us who come from broken, divorced or divided families, simply trying to figure out where to celebrate on Christmas Day can be a challenge.

For my husband and I (both of whose parents are divorced), this caused a great deal of anxiety the first few years of marriage, especially since we had a child right away who happened to be the first grandchild for both sides! All we wanted was to wake up Christmas morning in our own home with our own tree while opening presents and watching the Disney parade; instead we found ourselves pulled in a million directions, having to navigate where to go, when, and for how long. The last year we played this game we voyaged to six houses in one day with two toddlers who never got naps.

Less than ideal, to say the least.

Even worse was that I didn’t feel like our efforts were being appreciated! Many of the extended family we visited insinuated that we didn’t stay long enough, eat enough, interact enough, etc. Seriously? How many buffets can you tackle in one day without a nap and still be expected to act perky?

Once we realized that the stress we thought we were internalizing was actually being transferred to our small children, we said enough is enough. What kind of model were we being our kids? Even more, how was this modeling the love of Jesus and gratefulness of the season for them?

That was when we stood firm and made Christmas morning sacred in our family. We get up, (get daddy his coffee), look in stockings, turn on the parade and put our hashbrown casserole in the oven for breakfast. We take our time and soak in the day.

What we’ve now done is extended the invitation for others to join us in our home Christmas morning. It’s not that we don’t want to see family, but we do want to establish our own traditions as the Cone family.

Now that we live away from most of our family, we’ve also learned the importance of chosen family: those friends that become like family to you. We are SO grateful for friends (and their families) who have invited us into their homes on holidays… or better yet, alternate days we choose to celebrate the holidays together!

We also have to remember the ultimate choice of Christmas – the choice that God made to send His son Jesus to earth as a human baby to live and eventually die for our sins.

So whether you’re choosing where to spend your holiday, what family to spend it with, who to invite to be a part of your family or how to celebrate Jesus in this of Advent, remember, it is a conscious choice you have to make.

However that looks and whatever that means for you and your kids, I encourage you to choose family this Christmas.

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With a passion for teaching and mentoring others as her inspiration, Sami Cone began blogging in 2009 to encourage others to live their dream life and pursue their passions. A published author and seminar speaker, she draws on her experiences as a writer, editor, university professor, performer, professional athlete, and pageant winner to help women realize their full potential in life. Sami appears regularly on TV & Radio as a Frugal Expert and has been blogging for Tommy Nelson since 2010. Sami and her husband of seven years, Rick, thrive in Nashville with their two children.

As I write this, the air is crisp & the leaves around me are colorful. By far, this is my favorite time of year to share with my family!

This month, all our Tommy Nelson Mommies will be sharing what they love about this season and how they encourage their children to express gratitude to those around them on a regular basis.

Being from Chicago, I’ve always loved watching the seasons change. However, I did spend a large portion of my adult life living in the South: Mexico, the Bahamas, Georgia & Florida. The latter is where I got married & gave birth to both of my children, but I never considered Florida home. In fact, I was the only person I knew that got excited when it was gray & rainy because I could look out my window and at least pretend it was cold outside!

I’m afraid I may have passed my propensity for cool weather on to my children. In fact, when it came time for us to sell our house in Florida to move to Nashville, my (then) 3 year old daughter said, “Mom, no one will buy our house!”

I looked at her quizzically. We had just spent months fixing up our home to make it look even better than when we had lived there! When I asked her why, she simply responded with, “Don’t they know how hot it is here?!?!”

Three Falls later, our entire family is now comfortably settled in Nashville and enjoying every pumpkin patch, hooded sweater and leaf pile we come across.

For whatever reason, it also seems that as the temperatures drop, the idea of volunteering comes up. Perhaps it’s because the Fall signifies the start of the holidays and cold weather, two reasons that make it even more unbearable for many of us to imagine others alone and without basic needs being met.

I’m the first to recognize that although there are always things I want to improve on, I have great kids. But they simply didn’t grow up in the time of our parents. I mean really – my dad was born during the Great Depression & fought in World War II – I don’t stand a chance of teaching my kids the kind of gratitude and appreciation that came naturally from growing up in that era. So without guilting them daily with the fact that they better clean their dinner plate because there are starving kids in Africa, we thought we’d try something a little closer to home.

So we volunteered as a family at a local soup kitchen.

Even though our kids weren’t actually chopping or cooking the food, they still got to help and more importantly, they got to meet the people being directly affected by the organization. Our kids played in the next room while we prepped in the kitchen, then they came and ate with us as a group and joined in the clean up. (You can read more about our kids volunteer experience here).

If you’re looking for volunteer opportunities for your kids, try some of these ideas:
*Ask at your local church or community center for family friendly volunteer opportunities already in place
*Consider sponsoring a child as a family through organizations like Compassion International or World Vision
*Call your local children’s hospital and see if you and your child can come play/read/sit with some of the kids with long term illnesses.
*Visit a local nursing home with your kids to just talk, sing Christmas Carols, play cards, deliver pictures, etc

Regardless of what you decide to do, have a dialogue (notice I say ‘dialogue’ and not ‘speech’) with your kids about why it’s important to give of our time and gifts (both intrinsic gifts & financial gifts), discover what they’re passionate about and build a volunteer experience from there. If they love animals, look a visiting a local shelter and walking the animals. If they love art, call your local museum and find out if they can help with cleaning up the kids’ areas there. If they love kids, maybe they can volunteer at your church nursery.

Most importantly, start at home. Just like it’s hard to expect your kids to keep their rooms clean when your own is a mess, kids will not understand how to demonstrate gratitude if they don’t first experience it.

Do you regularly pray before your meal and show gratitude for what’s in front of you, even if it’s not your favorite? Do you thank your spouse for helping around the house, even if you expect him to do it? Do you express gratitude for the mundane, like a beautiful day or getting to school on time? If not, start with these small expressions of gratitude in your own home and you’ll soon see them foster into larger demonstrations in their greater circle of influence!

Now it’s your turn: What’s your favorite way to foster gratitude in your own children? Are there any unique opportunities to do so in the Fall?

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With a passion for teaching and mentoring others as her inspiration, Sami Cone began blogging in 2009 to encourage others to live their dream life and pursue their passions. A published author and seminar speaker, she draws on her experiences as a writer, editor, university professor, performer, professional athlete, and pageant winner to help women realize their full potential in life. Sami appears regularly on TV & Radio as a Frugal Expert and has been blogging for Tommy Nelson since 2010. Sami and her husband of seven years, Rick, thrive in Nashville with their two children.

This month, our Tommy Mommies are sharing about how we’ve learned that our different children each have different needs. While we may have once been under the illusion that we could parent all our children the same way, we quickly realized that just as each of our children are unique, they each need different things from us as their parents.

This became very evident to us very early on in our parenting. When my daughter was barely able to speak, I noticed a pattern of (what I thought was) defiant behavior emerging.

If I asked her to do something, she would, on a fairly consistent basis, repeat back or do the exact opposite of what I’d said. Being our first-born, she had always been a good baby and fairly compliant toddler. As we reached the two’s, I simply thought this was the milestone tons of parents before me had dreaded…but I never wanted to ‘dread’ anything when it came to my child.

In fact, I had mentors confirm that while every stage of parenting comes with its own unique set of challenges, it is possible to traverse those without losing your mind and while growing closer as a family.

So this situation left me dumbfounded.

It wasn’t until I was giving Kariss a bath one night and I asked her to do something, to which she again responded with the opposite.

My eyes alone must have conveyed my immense disdain (I don’t want to admit it was frustration), because her little face looked genuinely crestfallen and confused. This was not the face of a child willfully disobeying her mother.

It stopped me in my tracks.

“Kariss,” I gently asked her, “what did you just hear mommy say?”

Without skipping a beat, she repeated back the opposite version of what I’d just asked her to do.

Still looking scared and confused at why she was getting in trouble for following my directions, I proceeded to ask her about an incident from the night before. She again shared what she internalized…which was a completely different version of what had come out of my mouth.

I then recalled a similar instance a friend (& licensed counselor) told me about her own son. Over a period of time while she home-schooled him, he consistently ignored her. Long story short, it turned out he had a central auditory processing disorder, a condition where he only hears about 7 out of every 10 words in a sentence, and than number drops significantly if there are any distractions in the room.

That bathtub incident forever changed the way we communicated with our daughter. It taught us to re-evaluate what we previously thought we knew about our little girl. We learned that she ‘hears’ just as much (if not more) with her eyes as she does with her ears.

Now when we talk to her, especially when giving commands or administering discipline, we get down on her level, take everything out of her hands, remove all noise distractions (within reason) and look her directly in the eyes as we speak. We’ve also learned to respond instead of react (helpful advice for marriages too!). If our eyes are too angry or our voices too loud, she emotionally shuts down and wouldn’t hear a thing we’d say anyway! We’ve even been able to communicate this to her teachers, which has in turn helped them better understand how she learns.

Although her brother is only 19 months her junior, communication is not that complicated with him. However, while our daughter sees the world as black & white, our son enjoys every shade of gray in between! Making sure he hears us isn’t our issue, but making sure he doesn’t decide to leave our commands up to his own interpretation is an entirely different issue…can you say “Ma-nip-u-late”???

It’s taught us that there is not one cookie-cutter way to parent our children. God made them unique and therefore there are unique ways that we will talk, play, instruct, discipline and reward them.

I mentioned earlier that I shared our discoveries about our daughter’s teacher. I would encourage you to do the same. Every year, I write a note to our children’s teachers, both thanking them in advance for the investment they’re making into our kids and sharing a list about what makes them unique. If nothing else, it’s a fun memory for me to keep each year (I make a copy for myself). However, every teacher has made it a point to tell me first-hand how much they’ve appreciated the jump start I’ve given them in learning about our kids – everything from special nick names to how they like to spend their time away from school.

How are your kids unique? What special ways to you celebrate that?

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With a passion for teaching and mentoring others as her inspiration, Sami Cone began blogging in 2009 to encourage others to live their dream life and pursue their passions. A published author and seminar speaker, she draws on her experiences as a writer, editor, university professor, performer, professional athlete, and pageant winner to help women realize their full potential in life. Sami appears regularly on TV & Radio as a Frugal Expert and has been blogging for Tommy Nelson since 2010. Sami and her husband of seven years, Rick, thrive in Nashville with their two children.

I’m so glad you’re back for another month with our Tommy Mommies! Did you enjoy hearing about the “routine” in each of our homes last month? I know I personally loved learning how differently that could look for everyone, yet how effective they could be when everyone in the family is on board!

Well you’re in for another treat this month as we each will discuss…Back to School! Whether you’ve just sent your last child off to college, put a child in pre-school for the first time, or are still at this moment debating whether public, private or homeschool is the right choice for you, I think you’ll learn a lot from our Tommy Mommies this month!

Today marked the last FIRST day of Kindergarten for me.

Huh?

I know – I was a little confused when I heard it too. But as I was driving both my kids to their first day of school, I received a call from one of my closest friends here in Nashville. As I was debating whether or not to rush meet her at the gym after dropping my kids off at school, she chimed in and said, “Take the day off and take your time with them. After all, this is your last first day of Kindergarten.”

Whoa.

I hadn’t gotten teary until I heard that. Yes, it’s true; this is the first year where I will have both of my kids in school full time, leaving me five days a week with free time for myself. (Well, “free time” may be a bit misleading; I’m pretty sure I’ve already planned for every second!) But I didn’t consider that this was the last time that I’d be going through this end-of-summer ritual.

It also made me realize that I’d been so focused about helping my youngest count down to his first day of Kindergarten, that I’d failed to help prepare him for the year ahead of him. It’s kind of like focusing so much on your wedding day and forgetting to prepare for the years of marriage ahead of you…

Not that any of us are guilty of that either…

But you know what I mean, right? We get so focused on a singular event that we fail to plan for the journey beyond that moment.

All of a sudden, the next 13 years of school flashed before my eyes: Will he make the right friends? Is he ready for after-school activities? Will he stay here for high school? When do we have to start applying for college?

I snapped out of my whirlwind just in time to answer my son, “Mom, what am I having for snack today?”

Oh right. Snack. Rest hour. Center time. Phew! We were still in Kindergarten. I still had plenty of time to plan for the years ahead, but for now I needed to help him with really important things like how to build a rock garden, going down the slide feet first and peeling a banana without squishing it. It was in between those times that I would also slip in life skills like focusing, patience, kindness, gratitude, selflessness and most importantly, love.

I was back on track! We were enjoying the moment for what it was…until he got home from school that first day and said, “Mom, I want to stay in Kindergarten forever! <contemplative pause> Oh wait, I forgot, I have to go to college!”

Here we go again….

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With a passion for teaching and mentoring others as her inspiration, Sami Cone began blogging in 2009 to encourage others to live their dream life and pursue their passions. A published author and seminar speaker, she draws on her experiences as a writer, editor, university professor, performer, professional athlete, and pageant winner to help women realize their full potential in life. Sami appears regularly on TV & Radio as a Frugal Expert and has been blogging for Tommy Nelson since 2010. Sami and her husband of seven years, Rick, thrive in Nashville with their two children.

Sami Cone and her family

I initially joined the Tommy Nelson family last year after tragedy struck us all here in Nashville: a flood of epic proportions whose equal had not been seen in over a hundred years.

As we all searched for ways to help our children through this tragedy, I was fortunate enough to be able to post on TommyNelson.com about the perspective I shared with my kids. What has always attracted me to Tommy Nelson is that in their commitment to raising faithful kids, they recognize they must first equip parents. Even the best Christian children’s resources won’t do anyone any good if they don’t get into the hands of parents willing to share them with their kids with the intent of bringing them closer to Christ.

Since then, I’ve continued to be a part of the Tommy Nelson family, both as a blogger and a cheerleader for other “Tommy Mommies”. After all, as the mother of a five year old son and seven year old daughter, no one knows more than I do the importance of both surrendering your kids to God daily while also seeking wise counsel and community in which to raise them.

Since not all of us are privy to such a community in our own backyards, we’ve attempted to create such a community online. Thus, starting this month and moving forward, we’re delighted to announce that every month you’ll get to meet some of our Top Tommy Mommies who will be sharing their real lives with you.

That’s right. You’ll see prayers, milestones and fears. You’ll witness triumphs, traditions and tears. You’ll meet some Tommy Mommies who are extremely crafty and others who are lucky to get their kids to school on time with a lunch in their hands. You’ll find practical advice alongside deep, spiritual truths.

Above all, you’ll find women who deeply care for their families while also being deeply committed to their faith.

Each month, our Tommy Mommies will write around a common theme. This month, we’ll be sharing about our routines (or lack thereof!).

It’s funny. I remember planning and dreaming about this perfect little environment I was going to create for my kids once school was out this summer.

I had it decided down to the half hour.

We were going to wake up, start our day with devotions, watch their favorite Disney show, then move on to breakfast, lessons, individual reading, crafts, outdoor activities and room clean up….

Can you guess how well that went over? About as long as it took me to realize that we’re hardly ever home! (Especially since I’m not one of those crafty moms I previously described!) What was I thinking?

There’s nothing wrong with routine. In fact, I’d go so far as to suggest that most children crave and find security in routine. But if you fail to recognize your own family’s personality and temperament when creating your routine, all you are doing is setting yourself up for failure.

Now, instead of having a regimented schedule ruled by the clock, we have a list of things we ‘aspire’ to accomplish each day listed in order of priority. Frequently, our morning ‘quiet’ time is reviewing our weekly scripture memorization that’s posted on the fridge while we eat breakfast and talk about something we’re amazed that God made in our world. Our home is rarely all clean at the same time, but there’s usually something we’re tidying each day. We may not have a formal school setting or room dedicated to learning in our home, but I’ve become a pro at turning spelling & math questions into fun car games!

Instead of feeling guilty that I’m not like all those other moms I see online who seem to be able to do it all, I’ve come to recognize and appreciate the way God has uniquely designed me and my family….and in turn work on instilling that same gratitude deep within the hearts of our children.

Can any of you relate? Regardless of where you find yourself on the routine spectrum, you won’t want to miss any of the perspectives that will be shared this month. That’s why I’m so excited for you to get to know the rest of the team: Lindsay, Amy, Erin, Brandi & Amanda. As we share our hearts and homes with you, it is our hope that you’ll do the same with us: through your comments, through Twitter and through Facebook. We want our experiences to open a dialogue, not to be the final say.

If you’re committed to raising faithful kids, but don’t always feel equipped to do it, then you’re in the right place. We want to inspire a generation of parents committed to raising the next generation of Christian leaders. We hope you’re all ready to join on this journey with us and we can’t wait to hear your story!

What are some parenting topics you’d love to see us discuss here in the coming months?

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With a passion for teaching and mentoring others as her inspiration, Sami Cone began blogging in 2009 to encourage others to live their dream life and pursue their passions. A published author and seminar speaker, she draws on her experiences as a writer, editor, university professor, performer, professional athlete, and pageant winner to help women realize their full potential in life. Sami appears regularly on TV & Radio as a Frugal Expert and has been blogging for Tommy Nelson since 2010. Sami and her husband of seven years, Rick, thrive in Nashville with their two children.