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"Thanksgiving has come and gone. We had a fantastic time visiting with family, friends and a few new dogs that traipsed past our home on their brisk Winter walk. We gave thanks for our blessings, our health, our food and even Toon Town. (That last one was courtesy of my kids.) But grateful, schmatefuls, we morphed from turkey to warp speed Christmas quicker than you can say &amp;quot;triptophan coma.&amp;quot;  Perhaps you&amp;#039;re like me and things never go as planned. You&amp;#039;ve got a list that includes &amp;quot;X&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Y&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Z&amp;quot;, but you can barely make it past &amp;quot;A&amp;quot; &amp;quot;B&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;C&amp;quot; when &amp;quot;D&amp;quot; explodes like egg nog in your face. Before long you&amp;#039;re screaming a hearty &amp;quot;F&amp;quot; followed by a resounding &amp;quot;U.&amp;quot; The same can be true of marriage. What begins as pretty as a holiday postcard... Can quickly become a laundry list of faults. If you&amp;#039;re not careful, you can spend so much time being frustrated over the cracks in your life that you forget to acknowledge the hot cook in the kitchen. I don&amp;#039;t write this post to air my dirty laundry to the world (which of course I am) or brag about my husband (and yes, I&amp;#039;m grateful for Rex) but to show instead that what you see in Christmas cards, life and yes, marriage, is never what it appears. Behind every beautiful facade... Is a complicated power structure. Behind every hand stitched memory... Is a closet full of experiences that added to its color. Behind every well placed piece of furniture or decor... Is a dust ball, a broken ornament or that missing extension cord needed to light that star on your tree. No worries. These days I&amp;#039;m focused on Grandma&amp;#039;s rollercoaster story from Parenthood, the movie. In it, Steve Martin is reminded that some people don&amp;#039;t like the ups and downs of rollercoasters. They prefer the carousel. It&amp;#039;s more civilized. It&amp;#039;s safer. It looks so much calmer and peaceful. (Like our staged Thanksgiving portrait.) Me? I&amp;#039;m with grandma. I like the thrills and dips of the rollercoaster. It might give me bad hair. There might be drool stains on my husband&amp;#039;s tee shirt and my son&amp;#039;s perfect holiday outfit might have to be exchanged for a pair of pee-free sweat pants, but that&amp;#039;s the good stuff. The candid shots. Those are the memories I want to have my life, the holidays, and yes, my marriage. For the month of December, I&amp;#039;ve decided to start a theme on my Facebook status. I&amp;#039;m going to show the real side of Christmas. I&amp;#039;m not editing out the spills and the messes. For my husband, I&amp;#039;m going to do the same. After all, he fell in love with the passionate goofball I am, not the Martha Stewart that sometimes tries to eeek out (albeit, very very badly.) For all of you, I wish you nothing but joy and magic in your relationships and this holiday season. Try and enjoy the stuff that makes it worth it. Try and enjoy the roller coaster! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/relationships/a22912/the-rollercoasters-of-marriage/?src=rss>