Blog Posts by ScrappinMichele

The one woman in my life that I really wish I could have spent more time talking to is my Grandmother. It's kind of sad, that by the time we realize how important the information is that our Grandparents have, they are often gone. My Grandmother used to tell me lots of stories about living in Germany and her life as a child. I listened to a little bit, but probably tuned out 75% of what she said. Now I wish I had listened

After my Grandmother died, I found out a lot "family secrets," that I'm sure she didn't want us to know for fear we may think differently of her. Well, it did change how I thought of her.

I realized how strong she was for going through what she did.

I realized how difficult her life was and in spite of that all, she still had a positive outlook on life.

I realized that my Grandmother was a generous woman who wanted to keep all the hardships of her life in the past so as to not burden her children and grandchildren with her problems.

I am

Soccer MomWhen I was a kid I loved watching the Olympmics. During the Winter Olympics, I so desperately wanted to be an ice skater. They looked so graceful on the ice and made it look easy. During the Summer Olympics, I wanted to be a gymnast. I was always told I had the body of a gymnast, but it just wasn't in the cards. I was never very athletic. I have absolutely no hand/eye coordination. But I always dreamt of doing anythig athletic.

So, when I had kids, I signed them all up for soccer, baseball, gynastics, dance, basketball, volleyball, football and any other sport. I was determined to be sure my kids had the opportunity to be athletic. It became apparent quite quickly that some of my kids have it and some don't. Oh well! Being athletic was my dream and while it would have been nice, I have no plans to turn all 4 of my kids into Olympic athletes to fulfill my childhood dream.

I think it is important to let kids try everything out. I give my children all the opportunities to try

I love traditions. When I think back to my childhood, it is the traditions that I remember. Some traditions are intentional and some are accidental. Either way, traditions are something that ties our ancestors to us and to the future.

My mother was born in Germany and came over here as a young child. My grandparents kept a lot of their traditional German traditions alive when I was a child. Now that both of my grandparents have passed away, it is more difficult to keep many of those traditions going.

There is one tradition that I insist we keep going. It's our Christmas meal tradition. We used to have our traditional German meal on Christmas Eve. As a child, Santa would come while my sisters and I napped in the afternoon on Christmas Eve. When we woke up, we dressed in our holiday dress and my grandparents would arrive shortly after.

Traditional German Christmas Meal

We would all sit down to dinner (how did they keep us focused on food with all those presents in the next room???) The dinner consisted of