How to Get your Boots Reheeled for the Holidays: 20 Easy Steps!

Step 1: Realize you are spending part of holidays in frozen tundra that is the Great Lakes region of United States. Step 2: Realize only suitable pair of footwear you own for holidays in North (that are not your puffy Keens which also double as spaceboots) are  pair of black heeled knee-highs, the heels of which are caked in mud and worn down to metal studs.

Step 3: Accept fact that must brave Sixth Ring of Dante's Inferno, aka The Mall A Week Before Christmas in order to drop off boots at cobbler.

Step 4: Tote Youngest Child to Mall Hell a Week Before Christmas where every temptation and glittering toy is on his eye-level display for greedily grubbily desiring.

Step 5: Concede as never have before in history to renting one of those Mall Carriages with the Car in Front for low low price of $5 for 25 minutes in order to pacify youngest child and not lose in crowd that is Mall Hall a Week before Christmas.

Step 5: Graciously deposit dilapidated boots with Korean cobbler. Speak in only known Korean pleasantries.

Step 6: Realize must return to Mall Hell the next day (T=6 days until Christmas) .

Step 7: Make beeline to Barnes and Noble while child still pacified by Most Expensive Plastic Car Rental in History.

Step 8: Read half a book in Barnes and Noble to younger child until realize only have 20 minutes to pick up older child from school.

Step 9: Drive like dickens back to return Plastic Car, trying not to contract hepatitis, scurvy, other communicable diseases from rental that smells and feels of partially hydrogenated oils fermenting on handlebars since 1994.

Step 10: Watch as child begs to be let out of Plastic Car like it is the Guantanamo Bay of child transportation vehicles.

Step 11: Return plastic rental.

Step 12: Return to Mall Hell next day to pick up boots, this time saddled with both children.

Step 13: Forewarn children this is a very brief one-errand trip that will not, by any means, include a stop at any play structure.

Step 14: Enter Sears; note reaction of children as though have just entered whimsically wonderland palace of wintry enchantment. oooohhhh ahhhhhh!

Step 15: Claim boots which are perfectly rehabilitated to former heeled age of innocence.

Step 16: Proceed to Mall Hall exit. Refuse to cave to indoor play structure's temptation. Note younger child pulling at seat of pants.

Step 17: Assume wrongly that a restroom can be found en route to exit.

Step 18: Find escalator to floor 1, find restroom. Cheat death by allowing youngest child to wear Crocs on escalator.

Step 19: Blink and suddenly younger child has managed not to pull down pants fully as seated on comode; gamely soaks underwear and pants with urine.

Step 20: Take escalator to second floor, pronounce fact that have both children, purse, and newly heeled boots a Christmas miracle.

A novel departure from the script

Here at Kendraspondence, we know you rely on us as your trusted source for the latest information on fracking, Fantasy Football picks of the week, and vaccinating your children. But just for this once, we are going to depart from script and go totally rogue. That's right! We're going to showcase a few of the things that Kendra has been bedazzling. We know what you're thinking! That can't be! Kendra has final exams to prepare and grade. She's got holiday open houses to host. Au contrair, dear readers, for herein we explore the fruits of her distraction and procrastination.... There have been mantles to festoon.

The gumdrops were all Loverpants and the kids.

There have been bald, brassy lamps to buy at Goodwill for $3...

...which are delightful to paint and offer a proper hat.

There were salt scrubs to make for my teaching assistants, who deserve so much more than an upcycled mason jar filled with natural goodness, but don't we all, really....

I've been persuading my young'ns that getting clean is not just as much fun as Saturday Night Fever, it practically IS a disco.

Even Loverpants has been getting crafty. The man was so fastidious in preparing the layers to our haystacks-in-a-cup that he has it DOWN, young. Down to an artform.

I also tried these cookies as I had all the ingredients on hand, but these little puppies were so amazing, because parchment paper because chocolate and peanut butter because try them.

This was also one cigarette lighter short of a a MacGuyver innovation. We didn't have any receptacle for displaying classy Coke bottles and also keeping them on ice at our holiday open house, so I busted open a hatbox and threw a plastic bag in it. Done and done.

The students we adopted from our church were wanting to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. With Coke.

Happy Holidays, you. Drink Coke and be merry. This post was not in any way sponsored by Coca-Cola, though it should have been.

2013 #recap

Oh, hey, December 2013. Have you met months January - November of this year? 1. What did you do in 2013 that you’d never done before? Went to Savannah, GA (three times--yowsa!). Attended the Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writers Conference. Led a group of students to ATL - CNN Headquarters and World of Coca-Cola. Started my third consecutive school year teaching. Signed with a literary agent. Began styling with Keaton Row.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
 Let us just take a moment to be thankful I am speeding ticket free for yet another year.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
 Yes, welcome North West! Ha. Also, Luke, Scarlett, Lois, Vivienne, James, just to name a few new blessings in our circle.

4. Did anyone close to you die? RIP Auntie Mare.

5. What would you like to have in 2014 that you lacked in 2013? A book deal.

6. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
 I really enjoyed my children this summer. I know that sounds like a non-accomplishment, but the transition from teaching to being a stay-at-home mama to two adorable punks in the death heat of Tennessee summer is something I find difficult. I planned a really great summer for us and we bonded in a significant way.

7. What was your biggest failure? I didn't stick to our financial budget as much as I wanted to and needed to, but I am back on track with that.

8. Did you suffer illness or injury? Praises be, no!

[showmyads]

9. What was the best thing you bought? I got Loverpants a Sunday delivery of the NYT for the year. Such a great citizenvestment.

10. What did you get really excited about? My sister TP got engaged! This video

11. What was the best book you read this year? Toss up between: Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis and

My Korean Deli: Risking It All for a Convenience Store

12. Compared to this time last year, are you:
 – happier or sadder? I change from happy to sad 2394028343 times/day. – thinner or fatter? About the same – richer or poorer? So much better (see also: condo albatross gone)

13. What was your favorite TV program? Parenthood. Orange is the New Black (when is Season #2 btw?). Downton.

14. What was your favorite music from this year?
 Loved seeing Sara Bareilles. Love this video by the Killers.

15. What were your favorite films of the year? Gatsby and, honestly, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 was not the worst sequel ever.

16. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? On my 33rd birthday, I think I got a massage?

17. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011.
 My children are actively learning how to do this thing called Being Human from watching me. And that is a humbling, sobering thing.