My friend Carmen was planning her wedding and looking forward to her first family holiday with her fiance when the phone call came. Her father had died of a stroke. It was Christmas Eve. Irene of Momster has spent he last several holidays with her kids in the ER, and this year her mom just moved to Korea, putting a 12 hour distance between them.

The World Wide Web has, it would appear, made its way all the way up to the North Pole.  You know, the real North Pole, the one with the red-and-white barber shop pole and flying reindeer and a jolly old castle that evidently has wi-fi.For families interested in using the Internet to find out what Santa has been up to, there are plenty of sites to visit:

With Christmas a week away I thought it was a good time to reflect on some of my favorite TV/movie Christmas moments, and being the generous blogger I am, I decided to share those moments with you.  The traditional elements required of any good Christmas story are love, family, friendship, a heartwarming lesson and a tree that looks like it was decorated by Martha Stewart.  Several of my picks epitomize those solid Christmas traditions, but some of my choices are more, shall we say...offbeat.  Here they are in alphabetical order.

I really love gift wrapping.  There is something seriously satisfying about making a neat crease at the end of a square package, and perfectly tying up the loose ends.  It's pretty and it's tidy, especially at a busy time of year when tidiness seems to elude me!

It’s a tricky proposition, one that many parents have battled through at one time or another: How do you handle it when your kids’ grandparents go too far in spoiling your kids at Christmas? It’s an issue worth addressing. The holidays, with the constant influx of people and presents (not to mention all the sugar!), can be wildly over-stimulating for children. And for families interested in focusing on the more meaningful aspects of the holiday, excessive gift-giving can be a confusing distraction.

I have always been a great believer in pretend and imagination. As my husband and I have raised our kids I've relished my role as Head Elf, Resident Leprechaun, Tooth Fairy, Easter Rabbit, Great Pumpkin, and any other imaginary, gift-bearing being.

We bought our first video game system when my oldest son was six. He has intuitively been a fan of gadgets and technology from his earliest days; I knew, just knowing my kid, he was going to be a gamer. I greeted this fact with some trepidation, at first; I wondered if the purchase of our first system (a Nintendo GameCube, as it turned out) was the harbinger of great doom.

When I was asked to write a post about cool holiday crafts, I thought, "Oh, this could be fun!" I've been getting a little more crafty myself lately and have been really digging the craft blogs.

After an extended trip visiting my in-laws overseas for the last couple of weeks, my family and I gratefully stumbled into our home this past weekend, ready to get back to our normal routine. Traveling is fun, but there's just something about slipping between the sheets of your own bed once you return, you know?Of course, we've returned to our home by running headlong into the start of the holiday season, and I have to admit, I've been sort of caught unawares. And now that my daughter Alex is 4-1/2, and has a strong understanding of the Christmas season, I find myself really focused on creating tradition this year. We've already put up our tree and taken our annual Family Portrait in a Christmas Ball (shown above), but this year, more than ever, I dream of filling the house with the smells of Christmas baking, making handmade ornaments and creating memories which will last Alex's lifetime ...

TW and I have been looking at the kids' Kaboodle wishlists and looking at our holiday budget and trying to come up with the best gifts to purchase (or ask Santa to bring. It's been a little frustrating. But, as we looked over the gifts we have already purchased, and looked over the gifts still on the list, and as I wandered around cleaning the house I realized I have the answer to our kid gift problems. I know the secret to making kids happy at the holidays and I'm going to share the answer with you. (You can thank me in person at BlogHer '09.)

The holidays are here, which many divorced and seperated parents dread, because it can mean changes in routine, heightened emotions, and chaos for our kids. How do you survive the holidays and ideally provide a good experience for your children, and equally important, for yourself?

The remarkable people who teach my children deserve giantic, generous gifts for Christmas--maybe a new laptop tied with a big, red bow, with a gift card to a spa tucked in for good measure?