Crossing Party Lines

I've gotten a lot of weird looks over the past couple days (mostly about some of our not so traditional Christmas ideas). Oh well, here are some things we are doing that are out of the norm. that I am more than happy to brag about.

Sam, who is 2, has no concept of "Merry Christmas" or "Did Santa come to your house?" He does however, know that Christmas is Baby Jesus' birthday and it involves four things: cake, presents, candles, and party hats! Who knew you could explain Christmas so simply to a two year old. We tell him, "It is Jesus' birthday. Jesus was our gift from God and the Kings brought presents to Jesus too. Just like when it's your birthday you get presents. We all give each other presents for Jesus' Birthday." I think he gets it more than most of us do. I feel pretty proud about this. Christmas morning, Sam woke up yelling "Jesus' Birthday!" Sam put sprinkles on Baby Jesus' cake and we sang Happy Birthday to his plastic Little People nativity set. (I have pictures but forgot to bring the cord to connect to my computer to Bowling Green.) He took Happy Birthday party hats over to the Mara's house for all of them to wear. Christmas night Sam gave the entire Holy Family a bath. We aren't avoiding the whole Santa thing with our kids it's just not going to be our main focus. Call us weird but I would rather celebrate Jesus' birth than Santa coming down the chimney. For more about the real Santa Claus and why we should talk about him on December 5th see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nicholas

I am trying to buy organic. I don't want all the extra hormones and why should my kids have them? Maybe they are part of the problem for childhood obesity, autism, and puberty starting earlier just to name a few. (on a side note: Organic milk is $5 a gallon - way too much for the amount of milk we go through. Does anyone know where it is cheaper?)

We are using cloth diapers because we want to; money saved isn't our main motivator. and, we don't need a handout of money because we switched to cloth. (see other blogs for more details.)

I don't and never plan to declare a party when it comes to politics. Being a Christian does not equal being a far right republican.

We have 2 kids but we don't have cable television. In fact, when we bought our digital cable boxes and gained a few extra channels (especially 2 other PBS ones) we felt like we had tons of options.

We don't have "real" cell phones. We have prepaid ones that we only use when we really have to.

I get excited about grocery shopping and coupons.

Sometimes our house looks a bit like a preschool (homemade playdough, art work all over, songs being sung, etc.).

So, Mike and I had this conversation about how a lot of the things we are doing really are pretty conservative at heart but now they are considered hippy and liberal (just something to think about how we have evolved as a society). I guess we are "crossing party lines"?

I'm pretty tired (I'm on day 3 out of 5 of Christmas festivities). Hope this made sense. It's really just a rant on how I am happy about the decisions Mike and I are making for our family. And they really are decisions not forced upon us.