(soft music) - Welcome friends to this episode of the Everyday Educator podcast. I'm your host, Lisa Bailey, and I am excited to spend some time with you today as we encourage one another, learn together and ponder the delights and challenges that make homeschooling the adventure of a lifetime. Whether you're just considering this homeschooling possibility or deep into the daily delight of family learning, I believe you'll enjoy thinking along with us.

But don't forget, although this online community is awesome, you'll find even closer support in a local CC community. So go to classicalconversations.com and find a community near you today. Well, listeners, I have a suggestion for your family, actually for all our families this Christmas. What if we intentionally spent time together doing the simplest things?

What if we practice simple habits designed to draw us to one another and to start meaningful conversations and to provoke us to deeper thinking and even to encourage us to true worship? What if in this season of busy, we celebrated Christmas by praying together, playing together, reading together, exploring together and serving together?

This Advent season, the Everyday Educator wants to practice these habits along with you. And we're gonna talk to others who want to try this plan too. So you listen in every Tuesday to ponder the next habit. Today, we're gonna be thinking about playing together and I have one of my favorite playmates, Kelly Wilt here with me to talk about Christmas and simplifying Advent.

So Kelly, thanks for joining me. - Absolutely, Lisa. I am so excited to talk about this with you today. I am sitting here in front of our own Christmas tree, which we are hoping to decorate this week at the time of this podcast. And Christmas is my favorite holiday for many reasons.

So I'm excited to talk about that today. - I'm so excited. We are getting our tree tonight and then decorating it tomorrow. So you and I will be in joyful community when we get to do that. Let me ask you, I know you said that you were a big Christmas lover.

What is it that you love about Christmas? - Well, I think some of the things that I love about celebrating Christmas are, well, the very first one that I can think of is that Christmas was always a time set apart in our family. Our church would do specific fun activities, thoughtful activities around this time of year.

And so my little heart, even as a little person, was always tuned in to that Christmas season and to the special things that only happened during that time of year. And I loved all of the activities our church would plan. It just made Christmas something special in my eyes, even when I was young.

And so that combined with the fact that our family would get together and we would sing and we would feast. I sound like, you know, I sound like Dr. Seuss. We would feast on Christmas. - I'm not the feast, feast, feast, yeah. (laughs) - And we would fellowship together and celebrate, which, you know, to us as believers, is the special holiday for this time of year, celebrating the birth of Christ.

- Yeah, so it sounds like Christmas was kind of a big deal in your home and your family when you were growing up. - Yes, yes, I would say for certain, that is a true statement. (laughs) - Yeah, I think, and my parents both loved Christmas too, 'cause I can remember, kinda like you, that my family, there were certain things that we did.

I can actually remember going with my daddy and sometimes my little sister out to property that he owned out in the country and pulling running cedar and we made our own Christmas wreath for the front door. And so, I mean, just little things like that, he invested a lot, he and my mom invested a lot in creating Christmas rituals and traditions that we kept up with and that was really special to me too.

So tell me one of your most vivid Christmas memories with your family and it can be silly or serious or embarrassing, we're all friends here. (laughs) - Or a little bit of all of that, right? Oh my, I think one, when I think about Christmas, particularly when I was young, one of the things that immediately comes to mind is the fact that every Christmas Eve, my mother's side of our family would get together and we would have a Christmas Eve party for family who lived close by, but just life happened and we never really got together on a regular basis.

And everyone would bring food and we would sit around and we would talk and the grandchildren in the family would play games and it reminds me a lot of what I read in Charles Dickens where all the adults sit together and talk in fellowship and the kids play games.

It was just so memorable and I remember, even as I sit here thinking about that, distinct smells and tastes and sounds come to mind. I had one aunt that always brought the same pea salad. - Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. - I remember looking at that when I was five, six, seven years old and going, oh, what is that?

Well, by the time that I got to be 12, 13, 14, that pea salad tasted pretty good. - Isn't that hilarious, oh. - Remember, it was a special time for me to see people who now have gone on to be with the Lord, but at that time, when I reflect on that, it was such a special time for us as a family to be together and to celebrate the birth of Christ and to celebrate our relationships with each other.

And that just was so special. - Yeah, it's so funny, the things that kids remember always surprise their parents. 'Cause I know there are things that I remembered and they made such an impression on me and I would mention it to my mom and dad and they were like, yeah, that never happened.

(laughing) And I'm like, it did, or they have no memory of it. But what I've discovered is that some of the things that are most memorable to me and the ones that my parents remember too come from, it became kind of like a shared joke. I know that when my sister and I were little, we loved Christmas Eve.

We loved going to church on Christmas Eve, but we loved the special time that we had at home just with our family because we opened gifts from one another on Christmas Eve. And so we looked forward to that. And some of the best excitement came from seeing what somebody else thought about the gift you gave them.

So it wasn't all just that we couldn't wait to get new stuff. But I can remember every year we would get ready, we would parcel the presents out and my dad would say, well, before we open presents, I really think we need to go look at the Christmas lights.

And he would do it every year. And it became a moan and groan time. So we usually opened gifts, but then we would put on our pajamas and we would go look at the Christmas lights. And so that becomes one of my most treasured childhood memories, both because of the moan and groan that was the shared joke every year.

But also it was a time when we were just in the car, just the four of us, it was dark, it was quiet. We were looking at things that were beautiful in our community and it drew us together. So a lot of times I think what makes those memories so vivid to us is their shared nature.

And then what you talked about, you know, that there are smells and sounds. So it's very sensory. Those kinds of memories are vivid because they're so sensory. So think about your family today. I know that you and Kim have three lovely children. So what are the hallmarks of your Christmas celebrating in your family today?

And what are the things that your kids look forward to? - Oh, well, let me preface this by saying that we as a family are in a time of transition right now at the time of this podcast. So our eldest is graduating from college this year. And so Christmas is going to be looking a little different for us as a family, you know, moving forward into the future, our middle son is graduating from high school and heading off into the future.

And so as of next Christmas, we will only have one child who is still at home. And so that is a change for this mama because I can remember, you know, when they were little, I had certain things that I planned on certain days and we would do them together.

And so now Christmas takes a little more effort on my part because I need to reach out to my children who are no longer under our roof and still involve them in the celebration and in participating, even at a distance, what we're doing together as a family. So it will look a little different for us this year, but that's not a bad thing.

It's just going to take some growing and stretching as our children move from under our roof out into the world. - Yes, yes. So things can look different and I, you know, I'm here to say, it's true, it does change. No matter how much you love all the things that you've always done, no matter how much of a traditionalist you are like I am, and one, especially of my daughters as well, we did it this way one time.

So that has set a precedent and we must do it that way until Jesus comes back. As hard as we want to hold to all the things that we always loved, you do have to flex a little bit. But you know what, Kelly, I'll tell you, from the perspective of a mama with two grown married daughters who have their own families that they do celebrations with, there are things that your kids will continue to want to do with you.

They're family traditions that will endure. - Yes, yes. It's funny that you say that because our eldest, who is away and will be coming home for Christmas break soon, has already messaged me with the Christmas cookies that he specifically wants to go home and bake with me. And so I know that there are, in their minds, those traditions are a tapestry that we have woven over time as a family.

And each year they want to see that tapestry rolled out so they can find all of those threads that we had so carefully placed over the years before. And so his threads, I think, primarily involve things he can eat. - Yes, yes, yes. - Which is pretty typical, I think, for his age.

But it gives me joy to begin preparing for that because I know it is so meaningful, not only for me, but also for him. - Yeah, oh, it's so true. And there are traditions that you, I alluded to it a minute ago, there are traditions that you start intentionally with your family.

- Yes. - And then there are things that become tradition and you have no idea that this was gonna catch hold. And there are certain meals that I ask the girls, so you're coming home, so what is it that you, if you're coming for Christmas Eve, what do you want?

You're coming, okay, so I can ask that. But if I ask them, what do you want for breakfast on Christmas morning or supper on Christmas night, they look at me like I have two heads. And they're like, well, I mean what we always have, why would you change that?

And so one year, one year, I made chicken and dumplings for supper Christmas night. And I mostly think it's 'cause it was cold and we didn't need a super heavy meal. But that became the tradition. And now, I mean, if you come to my house on Christmas night, you're welcome, but we'll be having chicken and dumplings.

(laughing) And so that's just gonna, so I'd like to know what is one tradition that you started intentionally with your family and then what is one that began unintentionally but continues? - Oh, okay, so my intentional tradition that Ken and I both decided to do with our children involves decorating the tree.

So we always, our tree is very full, very, very full. And so we put on all of the, what my husband calls the fluffy ornaments, the things that really don't have significance but are beautiful to look at. And the very last thing that we do when we decorate the tree is each year as a family, we lay out our ornaments that are associated with each year that our family has celebrated together.

And so we put them, we lay them out on the floor almost like a timeline of our family. And as we are putting one ornament at a time up on the tree, we actually are telling the story of our family. And it brings me to tears almost every single year because we are decorating the tree and making it beautiful, but we are reflecting on the goodness of God in the life of our family.

And so that either began very intentionally and I will say, our children still say, not the year ornaments, not the year ornaments, I want to put up 2004 or let me put up 2007. And it just is a wonderful time of intentional reflection on the goodness of God in our family.

- I remember when my girls got married and their husbands helped us decorate the tree. One of the boys, I mean, we had been at this for a while and he looked up and he said to his wife, "Man, it takes your family a long time to decorate the tree." And she looked at him like, "I mean, you have married into the wrong clan if this bothers you." And I said, "Yes, honey, it takes a long time because we tell the stories every year.

It is the story of our family's life together in the Lord and in the midst of what he brought to our life through the years." And so, yeah, I completely understand that. Okay, so what is your unintentional attention? - So this is a funny story. So when our children were little, we were really concerned about our porcelain nativity because they just wanted to hold baby Jesus.

They wanted to hold Mary and Joseph and their little pudgy fists. And I just had visions of them being dashed on the floor. And then I wanted to preserve that beautiful set. So we went out to the store and we bought a Fisher Price little people nativity set so they could hold the baby.

They could put him in the manger. They could play the song and the star would light up. And the funny thing about that is we always put it on our kitchen table because that was where we did school. - Right, you did your devotions and there it is. - Yes, so they could pick the pieces up.

As we read through the Bible, through the Christmas story, during the month of December, they could hold those pieces and it made it very real and tangible for them as little people. Well, we got maybe three or four years after we started doing this together, just very casually. One day I got to the part of the story about the wise men.

And it was the first time I think any of my children had connected the fact that the wise men were not standing there when baby Jesus was born. - They do not belong in the stable, yes. - Exactly, exactly. It wasn't like baby Jesus was born and he was swaddled and there were the gold frankincense and myrrh.

And they were horrified that that little people, nativity set had the wise men. - Right, but that is not accurate. - So our eldest took them and our nativity was, our manger was sitting on the table and he took the wise men and he put them on the bookshelf in the hallway.

And he said, "They're not there yet, "but they're gonna get there." And I watched in amusement over the next few days as the wise men would show up a little closer and a little closer and a little closer to our nativity sitting on the table. So I know a lot of people have Elf on the Shelf and we had, and we still do have wise men in the kitchen.

- That is so perfect, I love that, I love that. I always struggle 'cause I don't really want to put the wise men with the manger and with the stable, but it's like, okay, but it belongs to the set, where am I gonna put it? So that is awesome, that is awesome.

So I can tell, I mean, you have lots of traditions already that you've told us about that really helped you and Ken keep the deeper meaning of Christmas at the forefront, you know, the nativity and talking over the providence of God through all of the years. Are there other things that you guys did intentionally, especially when your kids were young, to keep the deep meaning of Christmas at the forefront of your celebrations?

- Wow, well, you know, I think it goes without saying that we would always make an effort to read the Christmas story to our children and we would not only read it, but we would talk about it. We would talk about what do you think Mary felt? How would you feel?

You know, what do you think, why do you think the wise men brought these gifts? We would ask questions to our children. And so, you know, it made them really carefully ponder not only the words that you see in scripture, but the humanity surrounding that moment. We also, as a family, love to sing together.

And so we would sing, and we still do, sing Christmas carols together. We play Christmas music constantly in the house on the Alexa. You know, I think our poor Alexa is probably already tired of playing Christmas music at this point in the year. - She'll get over it, she'll get over it.

- Even now, you know, when the kids come downstairs, you know, from their rooms in the morning, you know, they will begin playing music and they're in a constant state of Christmas. And you know, when they were young, we really tried to set the season apart, not as a season of commercialism, but as a season of reflection on the goodness of God.

And so, you know, we would collect items for Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes, and we would take those to church. And, you know, we've tried to look for, as a family, opportunities to serve others in this season. So it became a season of just quiet reflection for them in a world that can be very preoccupied with busy, you know, during this time.

And that's not to say that we didn't do lots of fun things too, you know, but we, you know, in the midst of all of, you know, the hustle and bustle and shopping and wrapping gifts and going here and there, we wanted them to be able to reflect on what is truly the heart of Christmas, and that is Christ coming to this world as a baby.

And so that was always something that we really tried hard to prioritize with them, particularly when they were young and shaping their ideas of what Christmas is and what it should be. - Right, and what is important to your family? What will you spend the most time talking about?

And it does, you're exactly right, Kelly. It really shapes the way they see the holiday and the way they experience the holiday as they grow up. And I can see now, you know, my girls shaping their own families around that reflection on the goodness of God and the gift of baby Jesus.

And you're right, there are lots of ways to still make it a delightful, fun celebration that your kids can understand and they can take delight and joy in. 'Cause I know you and I are on the same page when it comes to playing. We are in favor of it.

I mean, I think that probably when our team gets together, we are among the most playful people. I really, I honestly think that play is the work of childhood. I actually think Einstein might have said that, but I actually think we teach our children so much through engaging their playful natures.

And so as we talk about ways that families can simplify advent by playing together, I want us to focus a little bit specifically on play. So let me ask you, I wanna pick your brain. How do you think play helps children learn? - Oh, I remember reading a quote that play is the work of childhood.

And I think that is so true because when you're young, and you're imagining and you're laughing and you're just entertaining the idea of what imagination allows you to believe and to experience. There is a deeper work that has begun at that point in the mind and the heart of a child.

Because I look at all three of my children now and they are rife with imagination. And I think it's because when they were younger, I would pretend with them. And as an adult, I made it acceptable for us to play. And Lisa, in the years before we began our family, I was a classroom teacher.

And so I worked with little people even then. And so in my mind, I thought, how can we use play to help us to learn? So, even thinking about that in the Christmas season, one of the things that I did for my children when they were little was I would make play dough, homemade play dough for them.

And at Christmas time, I had to give them warnings because I didn't want it to end up in their mouth. That would be a not tasty surprise. - Not a good surprise. - But I would put cinnamon and ginger and all of these spices that would make that play dough seem like gingerbread dough.

And they would roll it out and they would smell their hands and they would make gingerbread men using my cookie cutters, even when they were little and put beads on them for eyes. And we would read the story of the gingerbread man. And there were so many wonderful things that we did when they were little that I still have conversations with them about now.

And our youngest has said, "Oh, when I have a family, "I'm going to fill in the blank here." And so, playing with our children not only increases their scope for imagination, but it also gives them the foundation for what they may want to do in the future with their own families.

And I think that's a pretty great thing. - Oh, I do too. I think a lot of times play will really help kids engage their emotions. I think imagination is so great and stories for the same reason, because they help our children experience things that they're not experiencing in real life.

And so I know one of my daughters says, "Oh, I've lived a thousand lives through the books "I've read and through the history sentences "I have played in the backyard woods. "I have lived a thousand different lives." She'll say, "I've been an orphan, I've been a pirate queen, "I've been a pilgrim, I've been an Indian princess." She's been all of these things.

She's lived all of these lives and it helps them to feel. We used to act out the Christmas story. But one of the years, one year, this was just so traumatic for me as a young mom, but my kids thought it was wonderful. We lived in this drafty old parsonage and one Christmas Eve, it was the coldest I ever remember it being and the power went out.

And so we had nothing but one fireplace in the living room. And when the power went out, I had my sweet little girls, two and four years old in the bathtub with wet hair and I'm freaking out. And so we bundled them up and brought them to the fire and we made it such a fun thing.

So we spread a big picnic cloth blanket out. And like you said, we made lots of things out of Play-Doh and then they really needed to get up and move around and they were like, "Well, we'll just act out "the Christmas story." So they went and they found props.

And you know, Daddy had to be the shepherd and Joseph and the white man and then we all took turns being animals. We acted it out 40 different ways. Everybody got to be a character. And we talked about what did those characters feel or think or what did they see?

And we would get down hands and knees and say, "What do you think the donkey can see? "And what do you think the donkey thought?" And so that imagination, that is great. It helped my kids when they were preschoolers think about the Christmas story as something real that real people experienced.

But we asked them to imagine what those feelings could have been. And that was really cool. That was a good thing. - Yes, I'm sitting here thinking about when all three of ours were young, one of the ways that we engaged their imagination was that we had supplies at the ready for them to wrap up things in their rooms or to put them in gift bags with tissue paper and then to present each other with presents from their rooms.

And I still remember our youngest, she was maybe, oh, maybe four or five years old, just old enough to really begin to understand the giving of gifts at Christmas time. And I remember she had this Christmas bag that was, oh, it was so raggedy-taggedy because she loved it so much.

And she would bring me, throughout the day, random items from her room in this Christmas bag. And so I would always make sure to open it as if I was surprised and then pull out the tissue paper and go, oh, it's just what I wanted. And she would cackle.

And then I would find some humorous way to use whatever she had brought me. If it was a baby doll bottle, I would pretend to drink out of it. Or if it was a blanket, I would wrap it around my shoulders like a shawl and we would dance around together.

And it made her, it delighted her to give. And I think, just like you were saying, I think that is a wonderful thing. She was playing a giving. Now, as a teenager, she comes to me and says, "Wow, Mom, you know what? I think this person needs this. And I think I'm gonna see if I can give that to them." And it created this spirit of generosity in her as a little person that, probably at that moment, we were just having fun and celebrating together.

But it brought about beautiful consequences for her as a teen that will hopefully carry on with her into the future. So I agree with you. Imagination is a powerful tool to help shape our children into the people that they are going to be. And we have to harness that as parents and use it wisely to shape them into people who are seeking what is good and true and beautiful.

- I love that. I love that, Kelly. And it happens in ways that you don't realize are becoming so ingrained. I know that one of the things that we did with our family, my husband likes to work with wood. And so he made a little manger and we would get some hay and we would put it in there.

And the manger was out on a low table where the girls could see it all through December, the empty manger. And we would, every day, every morning, when they were really little, they would get up. Even when Stephanie was young, I would get her out of the crib and we would go and look at the manger.

No, baby, Jesus is not there. It's not Christmas morning yet. And so it became a thing where they always, as they grew, they would pass by and see the manger well on Christmas morning when Stephanie woke up, when she was a little tiny child. The habit was go to check and lo and behold, baby Jesus was there.

We had talked so much about Christmas is about Jesus and we focus on Jesus and we're always thinking, so when we go to get the tree, what kind of trees might Jesus have sent? We were always talking about Jesus. And so she was like, "Oh, baby Jesus has come!" And so she grabbed him.

She said, "Come on, baby Jesus, let's go see the presents." And so she was little. So she grabbed baby Jesus. She was almost two the first year that we did that, but she was a precocious talkative, too. And so she grabbed baby Jesus and she would unwrap a present and she would hold baby Jesus up, "Look, baby Jesus, see it, see it?" And then she would tuck it back under her arm.

And so Kelly, I hope, I don't know, I guess they would be okay if I had told this out to the world at large. That manger, the very same manger is still part of our Christmas decorations. And my kids still, although they have their own homes, they spend Christmas Eve night with us.

And when they come up, the manger on Christmas Eve is moved to downstairs where their bedrooms are. And when they come upstairs to see the tree on Christmas morning, they have baby Jesus in their arms. Still. - I love it. - And so I'm like, okay, that was an unintentional random thing that this little young mama did, not thinking it was gonna be a tradition.

But it is such a tradition that Jesus has stayed the focus of Christmas for them. And I'm super glad about that. All right, let's brainstorm. 'Cause I know you have a very fertile imagination, friend. And some of our listeners might be thinking, y'all had a lot of fun in your family, but I'm not sure that I can play like that with my kids.

Let's brainstorm some ways to play as a family this season. Give me an idea. - I think the first thing I will say before I generate any ideas is please don't be afraid to get messy. Because play is not always organized and clean. Sometimes it is messy. So I would say if you have younger children, one of the things that my kids loved, we would squirt some shaving cream on the countertop and they would draw with their little fingers.

And I would say, draw a Christmas tree. Draw, and they would draw those out and then we would clean off the countertop. Or if you're a little less inclined to mess, you can always put hair gel or something like that into a Ziploc bag and tape it shut. And then they can draw on top of that.

I think also for little people, like what I was saying before, making Play-Doh is so simple. It only takes a few ingredients, but when you mix in spices that just remind you of the Christmas season, it makes it come alive for your children. Just make sure to warn them not to put it in their mouths because typically that kind of Play-Doh has a lot of salt.

And so it will not be as pleasant to taste as it is to smell. I would also say for students who are children who are a little older, just because you haven't done something in the past, don't be afraid to start a new tradition with them at any moment.

Like you were saying, chicken and dumplings was something that happened out of necessity because it was cold and probably because you had chicken in your fridge, but it became a tradition. Put your children in the car and take a thermos with some hot chocolate in it and just go look at Christmas lights together as a family.

Play Christmas music on the radio. If your church has services that you can attend together, do that. Even doing something as simple as standing outside with candles or even for the littlest people, battery operated tea lights so they don't catch anything on fire and singing "Joy to the World, Our Silent Night" is simple but meaningful to your family as long as you're doing it together.

I think that's the key, Lisa, really. The memories that my children have around this season regarding play were special, not just because of what we were doing, but because of who we were doing it with. - Oh, so much. - And I mean, that just to me, the togetherness and the communal delight of doing those things as a family makes them the memories that will last.

And so it does not take a lot of time or energy to get a shoebox and put a blanket in it and a baby doll and to do the exact same thing that you did with your girls when they were young. Just being intentional to think about the Christmas story through the eyes of a child, what would they imagine?

What would they want to pretend? I mean, I can remember both of my boys pretending to be wise men. They would wrap blankets around themselves. And I think I'm trying to remember now what it was. There was a shoebox that I think they wrapped in aluminum foil and that became the gold and a perfume bottle from my vanity tray became the frankincense and then also the myrrh and they would travel together to bring those things.

And just giving your children permission to wonder I think is also a Christmas gift that we can give to them that will continue to be given year after year after year as they take those traditions and they pass them on to their children. And I think as parents, one of the best gifts that we can give our children is to allow them to use their imagination to wonder.

Because even as an adult, I still read the Christmas story and I wonder about so many things. How could God send his only son to earth as a baby? How could Mary, now that I'm a mother, how could Mary endure that trek knowing that she was pregnant? - Oh my word, yes.

- There are so many things that in my mind I wonder and I imagine. And play as an adult to me now doesn't look quite the same as it did when I was little, but that spirit of wonder, of wondering about why and how still continues on. And hopefully that gift I've been able to pass on to my children and hopefully, like you, to my grandchildren in the future as well.

- Yeah, I love, you know what, the best thing to me about what you said was a great encouragement that playing together with our children, it doesn't depend on you thinking up some grand, new, flashy plan or something utterly outrageous. It can be something that your children play or that you've played with them a hundred times like dollhouse, but you are intentionally doing it together and that is what makes it special.

That is how you can simplify your Advent celebration this year, families, is by doing life together. Play together. Some of you probably recognize those verbs of pray together, play together, read together, explore together, and serve together as the backbone of what we encourage young families to do in Scribblers.

And so I just wanna say, I wanna be transparent, those ideas come from our new resource, Scribblers at Home, Recipes from Lifelong Learners. And right now, if you are looking for a Christmas gift for a family that you know and love, a copy of Scribblers at Home might be just the ticket.

It is full of lots of fun, intentional play that families can do together. It's easy to follow those step-by-step activities and you've got something for everybody. The art lover, the history lover, the math person, the science explorer, everything is in there that you would need to play with your family.

So make a family's Christmas unforgettable this year with Scribblers. And if you want to learn more about that resource, visit classicalconversations.com/scribblers. It is really true that the best gifts that we give our family involve time spent together. So this Advent season, you guys, be encouraged to simplify, cut out some of the busy and substitute some togetherness.

Kelly, thank you so much for helping me think about how we can play together with our families and why that is so desirable. - Absolutely. Well, and I would just say to parents, the key is not just to play, but to do it together. Because in years to come, your children may forget the activity, but they will certainly not forget who they did it with.

- Oh, that's so perfect. Thank you, that is the perfect spot to say Merry Christmas and goodbye. And listeners, I'll see you next Tuesday and we will talk about another one of our ways to simplify Advent. See you next time. (gentle music) you