Hey, moms, welcome to this episode of the Dorenda Wilson podcast. I'm Dorenda Wilson,

wife to one, mom to eight, Nana to seven and 26 year veteran homeschooling mom.

I just feel like we need to take a moment of silence and some time to breathe in and breathe

out as we are almost there. It is almost Christmas day just around the corner and hopefully

that didn't make you panic.

That was not what I would, that was not the intention.

Actually, what I would like to do is to give you permission to simplify.

I'm going to guess that quite possibly your list might be longer than you can actually do.

So I'm here as an older mom to give you permission to kick anything to the curb that is not really necessary. Simplify,

slow down, enjoy those beautiful children of yours. Remember, they don't want Wonder Woman. They just want

you. I encourage you to just simplify, slow down, and just marinate in the wonderful holiday

season with your children. Today, I'm hoping to give you just a few minutes to do that, gathering your

kids around and finding a cozy spot to relax while I read to all of you, our family's favorite

Christmas story. It makes me really happy to be able to share this with your family today because

most of my kids are

grown. And this was their favorite read aloud. Now, can we just have a little moment of

honesty here? It was the only read aloud we did every year. We read other books here and there

off and on, you know, but at the end of the day, this is the only one that became a tradition,

because here's the bottom line. You can only have so many traditions. And honestly, the traditions

you have should be the ones that happen organically, naturally, ones that your family just sort of

embraces without a lot of pressure, without a lot of pushing, without a lot of

cajoling. Instead, like for us, I happen to read this story when our oldest kids were quite young.

...