Finding the Perfect Christmas by Tracey J Lyons

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been watching a lot of Christmas movies. It seems like they’ve been running since before Thanksgiving. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Christmas movies. The thing is they all have that happy Christmas ending. The cookies get baked, the tree gets decorated, the town gets saved, the couple has their happy ending…we all know that real life isn’t like this. And yet, if you’re like me at this time of the year you want your life to be exactly like that Christmas movie.

For the most part my “Christmas” life is pretty darned good. I have not one but five Christmas trees, decorated by theme, in my house. I have my lights strung up around my front porch and wreaths hanging from all the windows on the front of the house, spotlighted just so.  I’ve been keeping on schedule with most of my holiday things, like shopping and baking. That is, up until last week when I got hit with a bad cough and not one, but two days of migraine headaches. While I was standing at my kitchen counter whipping up a batch of cookies, and multi-tasking making appetizers for a cocktail party I was hosting that same evening, and making my dish to share for the family party, it occurred to me that as much as I wanted it to be, my life is not a Christmas movie.

I had to take a step back and give myself permission to not bake the second batch of cookies for the family party the very next day. I only put out one freshly made appetizer and not the two I’d been planning on baking for the cocktail party.  And I had to dump out half of the 7-layer chopped salad (my dish to share-yes I overfilled the bowl) to make room for the fifth, sixth and seventh layers! This is the time of year when we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to make everything perfect. When really perfection isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. By nature, we humans are flawed. And it takes a lot of work to be “Perfect.”

You know what? I realize I don’t want to be perfect, especially not at this time of the year. I want my kids to be happy, and they are. I want everyone near me to be healthy and I’m so very blessed that they are. I’m looking forward to having my kids and their kids here to celebrate our family Christmas together. And they don’t care if I don’t get all the sheets on the beds or if the silverware doesn’t match or even if the dinner I wanted to make suddenly gets changed because I forgot an ingredient at the grocery store.

Because finding the perfect Christmas isn’t about what we put on our tables or how we decorate our trees, it’s about what is in our hearts. Kindness. Caring. Love. Compassion.  Remembering why we celebrate the day to begin with.

I’m wishing you all the best, non-perfect, Christmas ever!!

Christmas Blessings,

Tracey

PS I'd love to hear some of  things that make your Christmas "not" perfect. Feel free to drop a note in the comments section. 

I Have A Confession---Lenora Worth

Hello. First, let me say to all Veterans--We love and appreciate your service and sacrifice for our country. We salute all living and deceased who have served our country. Today is a day to stop and remember how much you all mean to us. :)

Now, I have to make a confession regarding a big mistake in one of my books. I though long and hard about this but I often post writer's typos on Facebook  so I thought I'd share this, too. I made a big boo-boo in a book that came out last year. A reader who actually won the book here on our blog pointed it out to me. Writers do research and we proof and we edit and sometimes in spite of that and several editors and proofreaders helping us, we still make mistakes.

Let me explain. If you have a copy of my "In Pursuit of a Princess" you might know what I'm talking about. It involves getting two words mixed up. I did research on one of my favorite subjects-the Acadians who left Canada and came down to Louisiana. Today, we know them as Cajuns but they had to leave Canada in the 17th century and start a new life due to an expulsion by the British. I have researched and studied this topic for other books so I know the history. But somewhere in my research for this book I came on a form of painting and thought I'd also use that in the book. And this is where it gets confusing. The painting method is Arcadian. ARcadian. Which I only use in the book once to explain how a painter used a dream like theme in his paintings to showcase the Acadians in Louisiana. Only Arcadian got mixed up with Acadian and well, I didn't catch it and neither did anyone else. So I called the Acadian people the Arcadian people several times in the book. What???

Once my nice reader pointed this out, the book was already in print. And even though no one else has come forward stating the mistake, it has weighed on me for months now. So confession is good for the soul and saying I'm sorry will make me feel ever so much better. One little letter, that dreadful "R", messed me up and I just kept right on writing and never saw it.

Why am I telling everyone this. Well, I have a new book out this month. So the first person to find the mistake in "In Pursuit of a Princess" and tell me how many times I used the wrong word for the right people will win a copy of "Deadly Holiday Reunion." That won't make up for my big boo-boo but it will be fun to see if anyone has a copy of "In Pursuit of a Princess" and can tell me the answer. And the other reason I wanted to post this--Has anyone else ever done this? Do any of you have stories regarding mistakes in your books? I surely can't be the only one, right???