What an exciting time of the year! The wish lists are getting longer. My evening walks have been so pleasant as neighbors are putting up twinkling lights that add such cheer to an otherwise gloomy night.

I've been thinking a lot about what I want my children's experience to be this season. What do I want them to remember? What do I hope they are looking forward to?

No matter our spiritual beliefs, I think it's safe to say we all want the hearts of our children to be filled with joy and thankfulness, excitement, and wonder.

Soft candlelight, delicious food, a crackling fire, laughter, togetherness, and happiness are what the holidays are about to me. This is the time we pull out board games and laugh with our cousins from afar until our sides hurt.

This warm feeling of connection has a word in Danish: "hygge," pronounced hi-ga with a short i as in the word “hill.” My New Year's resolution this past year was to bring more hygge into our lives. 

I enlisted the help of a friend, rearranged the living room, added warm lighting and more pillows, and created a cozy room that practically begged my family to relax into it at the end of the day. As if by magic, the whole family now naturally gravitates to the living room, which was previously used mainly for walking through. Sometimes we read, sometimes we snuggle, and many times we talk and recant our days.

This simple change to the end of our days has brought our family closer and changed our whole feeling about what it means to be home. The spirit of the holidays can indeed live throughout the year!

In consciously trying to draw my children's focus away from gifts, gifts, and more gifts during this time of the year, I encourage my children to talk excitedly about who we are going to see at our holiday gatherings, which family members will be present, the fun games we will play, and the predictable traditions we look forward to at our celebration. This is the time of year when I bring out our special German candle holders with miniature people who dance by the power of the heat of the flames.

My family draws a lottery of names for gift-giving. I love the opportunity to take each child shopping for a special gift for the family member whose name he or she received. It gives us a chance to think in depth about that person and what they might like.

In remembering holidays past, we often remember the overall feeling or a special event or tradition. The specific gifts are mostly lost in the mists of time.

I hope we can all give our children what they really want: our time and our love. They likely won't remember the details, but they will remember the feelings and the connection. What warmth will our children remember of our together time? What warm memories will our children remember about the holidays?

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Making time to share time and interests with your child refills your love-tank and lets you bounce back after struggles. 

Small moments in every day, every week, keep us connected. Small moments mean the connections do not have to complicated to be powerful; they can be something like:

• Stop and make eye contact over breakfast
• Find a funny meme to share a smile together
• Put your coat on backwards for a silly laugh together
• Tape a note of appreciation on the bathroom mirror
• Notice something your child does well that might not get noticed usually and ask your child about it
• Interrupt dinner prep and give a hug
• Make up a code word or phrase to mean "I love you" and share with your child
• Take a walk together and talk about what you notice
• Sit and make plans together for an adventure
• Join your child in something he or she enjoys and share the excitement
• Play simple games your child makes up and leads
• Find ways to help others together.

All of these moments in time are the heartbeats that keep us connected. This heartbeat tells our children that we're there for them, we're available, we see them, and we love them. 

What small, special traditions do you share with your (even grown) children?

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Early on Thanksgiving, my expectations for the day were dashed.

Our friends, who were supposed to come over for Thanksgiving dinner, had to cancel because of illness. I was glad they didn't want to share their germs. It didn't hurt my feelings so much as change what I thought the day would look like. The whole holiday weekend, and maybe my whole life, has gone that way. So, I'm thinking about expectations.

Expectations and worry are stories we tell ourselves, and these stories are unlikely to play out as we imagine. I've heard that a way to counter this is to stop making up stories of expectations and worry and to instead live in the present moment. I like this idea, but the reality is that I often need to plan ahead and this requires thinking about how things may go and what I need to do or get when and where.

What happens when we plan ahead, but events don't go as anticipated?

On Thanksgiving, my plans were changed by something that happened outside of my control. Instead of cooking our food earlier in the day to get ready for our guests, I found it easy to enjoy our extra time together. Our morning was so long and leisurely that it lasted until about four in the afternoon. My son and his father built train tracks from the table through the living room, around the couch, and back to the table. I would never have had the patience or attention span for this. My son was in utter heaven, and his dad got to spend hours of focused time with his son. It was definitely a day to be thankful for.

Part of why the day was good is that I've been trying hard to let go of what I think things should look like. Who am I really? Only one of three people in this family. Why should it be my plan, my expectations, fulfilled?

Even after I’d had this enlightening experience with how to deal with unmet expectations, I found how easy it is to silently slip back into my old expectations. Just a few days later, over the weekend, we were getting ready to decorate the Christmas tree. Rather than finding decorations in the garage, my son discovered a battery-operated train set we had just inherited from a friend. He was so taken with it that he cared about nothing else. 

I found myself feeling frustrated, even angry. I had a whole picture of how the afternoon was supposed to go. We were going to listen to Christmas music, hang lights, and tell stories about where each decoration came from. He didn't care at all.

Luckily, I was able to stop myself from the bad mood I felt coming. Lately, I have started noticing that I feel my body heat up when I'm feeling angry. I literally need to cool down. So, I walked outside to re-pot a plant and left my husband inside to help my son with the train. 

When I re-entered the house, my son walked into my arms. The tracks kept popping apart, and the train wouldn't ride the rails. He was disappointed. I gave him a hug and said we'd figure it out. We walked into the sunroom and tried one more track maneuver. Rather than throw it out the window, I playfully suggested that we just put the tracks back in the box and run the train on the floor. We could pretend the whole room was tracks. 

Later, when we were listening to Christmas music as we were putting up the tree, I didn't even try to make up a story about how decorating was going to go. I just experienced it as it happened and that was enjoyable. I hope to be able to do the same through the cooking-decorating parties we've been invited to, our town's tree lighting festival, caroling, and whatever other holiday events we've got on the calendar.

How was your Thanksgiving? Did it go as expected? What kinds of plans and hopes do you have for the rest of your holiday season? What are your strengths when it comes to handling unmet expectations?

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