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Your family tree.

Your family tree could be in danger of falling over because the branches are laden with sporadic offshoots, new in-laws, old stepparents, and assorted children who share multiple homes. But because of extra care these roots are strong and our tree can hold the chaotic collection of yours, mine, ours, various ex-spouses, and a few confused grandparents.

This holiday season we welcome a delightful baby to the family, and for a splendid moment before someone falls into the Christmas tree or a kid rips off the head of a cousin’s new Barbie, there will be peace in the valley.

Blended families add chaos to the holidays, and planning a stress-free schedule requires maximum organizational skills, saintly tolerance, nimble flexibility, and extra mugs of fortified eggnog.

Plan now for the possible scenarios.

You could be standing in the buffet line next to your ex-spouse, your stepson may demand to bring his mother and her new boyfriend to your home for brunch, or your son’s stepdaughters might want to stay at their father’s place because you don’t have cable television. It’s all fun and games until Grandma throws down her cane and demands to know who all the people are coming and going.

To prepare for the festivities and retain a tiny bit of sanity, start planning the holiday schedule months in advance. The best situations involve divorced parents who can cooperate and negotiate holiday schedules as they decide custody issues involving their children. We all know mean-spirited, immature parents who refuse to budge, and that only hurts their children. These parents should receive nothing but coal in their stockings, and they better start saving money for their kids’ future counseling sessions.

Our blended family resembles a crock pot of beef soup mixed with sugar and spice with a side of jambalaya and a touch of hot sauce spread over four generations.

My husband and I each have two adult children. My daughter married a man who already had a daughter and then they had two more daughters. My son married a woman with two girls and they had another baby in October. My ex-husband lives in the area and is included on family birthdays and other events. Somehow it all works and no one has threatened anyone with a weapon, so far.

There are 14 Christmas stockings hanging over the mantel, and we’ll need to build another one if any more members join the family. I’m uncomfortable with the label “step-grandchild” so I’ll just call all of them my grandkids. They don’t mind and some of those lucky kids have four sets of doting grandparents. Score!

Here are three final suggestions for surviving the holidays with a blended family: First, have a sense of humor because it’s better to laugh at the commotion instead of breaking something. Second, take plenty of photographs to identify everyone because Grandma is still baffled. Third, make time to appreciate the creative collection of characters in your unique family, believing that each one adds a definite spice. In the spirit of the holidays, choose to make it work.

Elaine Ambrose is a contributing blogger for JenningsWire, a blogging community created by Annie Jennings.

This blog was fueled by a 2011 “The Prisoner” red wine from Napa Valley. It’s a bit pricey – $60 a bottle at Crush in Eagle – but it’s $20 a glass at Barbacoa in Boise. Worth the drive to Eagle!

My two-month-old granddaughter cries for three main reasons: she’s hungry, she’s tired, or her diapers are dirty. I don’t need to be changed, but I could really use a sandwich and a nap. Maybe if I cry out loud…

I was raised to be tough, and crying wasn’t allowed in my childhood home on the farm. That’s why as an adult I never shed a tear giving birth to an 11-pound baby or while speaking at my father’s funeral. But lately, I start weeping at the simple vision of a rainbow or the sound of a children’s choir. And, a sappy television commercial can send me over the edge into my own private pity pool.

Blame it on menopausal hormones combined with the emotions of the Christmas season, but I’m not sure how to handle this new fluctuation between Iron Woman and Middle-age Milquetoast. The recent death of a dear friend exacerbates the mental upheaval because I’m still mad that she’s gone while there are so many healthy jerks walking around annoying people. She was the Dragon Slayer but she lost the final battle to breast cancer.

I’ve been known to walk out of movies that portray women as weak tools or to throw down books, such as the bestseller Eat, Pray, Love, that insult my female warrior. The author describes lying on the floor sobbing in a fetal position. For crying out loud, she was in Italy! Get up, go outside, visit a museum, light a candle in a Cathedral, or find a quaint sidewalk café and have some crusty bread, soft cheese, green olives, and red wine. If you really need a reason to wallow in pity, try growing up on a pig farm in southern Idaho!

Here is an important caveat: I realize that depression, mental illness, and anxiety attacks are serious issues, and I don’t mock those who suffer from those afflictions. I advocate treatment, counseling, and a lifetime focus on healing for those who suffer from depression. For the rest of us, it’s okay to experience the occasional meltdown and unleash the tears. After all, research indicates that emotional tears contain more beta-endorphins that make us feel better and are a natural way to relieve mental and physical pain. So let those tears flow and wash out the toxins and stress. Then blow your nose, run outside, and play with gusto as you slay some dragons.

Margaret Crepeau, Ph.D., professor of nursing at Marquette University, believes that healthy people view tears positively, while people plagued with various illnesses see them as unnecessary and humiliating. She notes that well men and women cry more tears more often than women and men with ulcers and colitis. At Marquette’s School of Nursing, students and professionals are urged to avoid tranquilizers and to allow tears to do their own therapeutic work. My advice to young women is to listen to your body: It’s saying, “Stop biting my lip!” and just enjoy a good cry.

After several decades of eating nails for a snack, I’ve decided to change the menu. I’m tired of being brave all the time so I’m choosing to put down the sword and pick up a glass of wine. I’ll be tough again tomorrow. Maybe, as a true test, I’ll even watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” again tonight. Where are those tissues?

Today’s blog is fueled by a 2008 Vale Cabernet Sauvignon from Snake River Valley. It’s another inexpensive local wine that is just fine to have on hand. Check out their web site at valewineco.com.

Unless your mother-in-law is a convicted felon or a pole dancer at the Kit Kat Klub, you should spend quality one-on-one time with her. After all, she raised the person you married. If she lives far away, keep in contact with letters, phone calls, and photos of the kids. Encourage her to use the Internet to share messages and videos. And, if she continually repeats the same stories over and over, just nod politely. Then you won’t feel so guilty at her funeral.

Most young, married women juggle a three-page to-do list, and visiting with the mother-in-law probably isn’t a top priority. As I recall, that goal wasn’t included in my Top 100 Action Items as I managed a hectic schedule that included active children, a full-time job, a cluttered house, and a husband who preferred to eat dinner before midnight. Now, after all these years, I regret not spending more time with my mothers-in-law. (Yes, I had more than one.)

We never lived in the same state, so I didn’t really know them before they passed away. The most time I spent with one was when I sang “Ave Maria” at her Funeral Mass. (I love singing in Latin because no one knows if I mess up the words. If I forget a phrase, I just substitute “Ave” several times and add a wordless aria.) I sang out of respect because she was a good person. I would rather have shared pie and wine with her while she was still alive.

This past week I had the pleasure of being with my son-in-law for a beer and a few days later with my daughter-in-law for leftover Thanksgiving pecan pie and wine. I highly recommend both activities. My son-in-law loves my daughter, is devoted to their daughters, and works hard at his job. Those facts are like music to the feeble ears of any mother-in-law. My daughter-in-law has the same positive qualities, and she is a lovely young woman. They provide a healthy, nurturing home for their children, and they include me in activities. I never want to deserve the comment, “Oh crap, do we have to invite your mother?”

Some of my friends have estranged relationships with their in-laws, and the annual Thanksgiving feast often turns awkward if the seating arrangements are not compatible with the guests. I’ve solved that problem because the food at my house is served buffet style, first-come-first-served, and then find your own chair if you can. One exception: Great-Grandma gets to go first because she’s in a wheelchair. That’s one advantage of being the oldest.

The decades quickly tumble past, and a young woman soon becomes an older woman who becomes a mother-in-law. Become the type of mother-in-law you admire most. Be someone who gives advice when asked and doesn’t gloat that your turkey stuffing is still your child’s favorite. We mothers just want our darling adult children to be happy, and that means we know they are in loving, supportive marriages. Now, go call your mother-in-law and invite her for beer and/or pie.

“I think we need to do a test for macular degeneration,” my eye doctor mumbled as he nonchalantly studied the results of my exam. “Holy Crap!” I responded, a bit more animated. “Am I going blind?”

Immediately, I feared the worst. How could I exist without seeing my grinning Studley bring me coffee every morning, or watch my extraordinary grandchildren blossom into exquisite youngsters, or visually feast upon the multiple splendors of outdoor Idaho? How would I know if my purse and shoes were coordinated? And, horrors, what if I accidentally opened a cheap Chardonnay instead of a rich Cabernet? The pending consequences were more than I could bear.

My thoughts were erupting like microwave popcorn as the perky assistant led me to a strange machine. She probably had 20-20 vision and secretly pitied my older, frightened eyes. I sat where instructed and placed my chin in the designated slot. “Just stare at the colored lines and don’t blink for six seconds,” she said. I have a three-second attention span so it took four tries to get it right. Then we zapped the other eye. She left me alone with this mind-numbing remark, “It’ll be just a minute, Dear.”

Dear? I was about to fall into a black abyss and somehow this young stranger managed to make it worse. A tear wiggled out of my favorite eye (it’s the left one.) I began the Holy Barter, which is my term for promising the Spiritual Universe to do ANYTHING for another chance. My list went like this: I won’t be on the computer for hours without a break. I’ll get more sleep. I won’t attempt to write 7,000 words in a weekend. I promise to wear my glasses, even in public! Just, please, don’t take my vision.

I was ten years old when I put on my friend’s glasses and realized that trees had leaves! Until then, trees were just big green things. Then I noticed that the teacher was writing actual words on the blackboard. No wonder I had been having trouble in school. After I finally got prescription glasses, we attended a movie and I cried like a baby because I could actually see that Bambi was all alone in the forest!

Since then my eye problems have included ulcers, floaters, and painful night vision. When I was 25 and pregnant with my first child, my vision became blurry. I thought I couldn’t see the scales because of my huge belly, but my ophthalmologist confirmed that I had holes in my retinas. Immediate surgery was required but I refused anesthesia because of the pregnancy. Nothing prompts projective vomiting more than seeing your own eyeball manipulated and welded. After the bandages were removed, I was relieved that my vision was good enough to find the sales rack at Nordstrom’s.

All these thoughts were whirling through my feeble mind as I waited for the eye doctor to say the words that would either send me into chaotic darkness of make me fall on my knees and celebrate the everlasting lightness of being and seeing. I held my breath as the doctor entered the room, read the charts, and uttered these profound words:

“Your eyes are weaker and there is some deterioration of the lining but you don’t have macular degeneration. You just have old eyeballs.”

I stifled the urge to both hit and kiss him. It’s just old eyeballs! Alleluia! I could see well enough to order new glasses, pay the migraine-inducing bill, and drive without assistance. On my way home, I noticed an abandoned car rusting in a field. Don’t become that car. Women over a certain age should keep a regular maintenance schedule that includes eye and dental exams, pap smears, and mammograms. Top off that polished chassis with a bold Cabernet and you can enjoy your golden years without too much tarnish. And, I can see clearly that getting dull is not an option.

Today’s blog is fueled by a mediocre bottle of 2008 Layer Cake Primitivo. This wine from Italy is about $16 at World Market. It’s probably adequate, but I still have a problem with screw tops. Hearing the pop of the cork really enhances the wine-tasting experience.