I just found three candy canes, from the tree, under Eve’s pillow! Unopened, thankfully. Have I posted about the gingerbread house incident? December is shaping up to be a rough month for Miss Eve.
I have other thoughts on the month of December, but it’s late so I will save them for another day. It’s a strange month for kids.
I think this is the title I use for this post every year! :)
We got our Christmas tree today. It was a beautiful day and I was hoping for a lovely family outing to the Christmas tree farm. Romping through snow mud to find that perfect tree. Sadly things came to a head with Eve and her lying, so she and I ended up staying home while the boys got the tree. I sent the camera with Lex, but they forgot to take pictures until the very end so they came home with a few pics of the tree stuffed in the car but nothing quite like I was hoping for. Oh well. You’ll have to imagine a gently falling snow, happy children running from tree to tree looking for “the one” and loving parents following behind, bathed in the glory that is Christmas. A lovely thing to imagine.
What can’t you fit in the back of a Prius?!?
So they came home and we all had lunch. In the past Alan and I have used quiet time to get the living room ready and the tree set up, but today he took a nap and I read Harry Potter with Lex, so when the kids came down from quiet time we made them wait “FOREVER” before finally getting the tree up, the lights on, and letting them decorate. Finally!
Little Lex, eagerly waiting to decorate (and sneaking on a few early ones, you’ll notice)
It’s time for decorating! We skipped the whole “let it relax” part of the process and went right on to “loading it up!”
Done! That was quick! :)
Light’s out! Oooohhh… aaahhh….
Merry Christmas! The family picture came out a little weird due to a brightness in the corner (flash reflecting off the table the camera was on, perhaps) and Eve’s normal camera face these days. Oh well. That’s our family! :)
Lex decided to add tunnels to the train tracks so it looks like the train goes into a tunnel on one side of the tree and comes out on the other. It kind of looks like that anyway, if you use your imagination!
Eve and Alan added this one.
After dinner we decided to hang up the stockings. But before hangings, there comes the mandatory wearing of the stockings!
Lex ran into the living room first and we found him like this! :)
THERE is the smile I love!! The true “having fun” smile, not the “smiling for the camera” smile. :)
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care.
“Merry 15 days until Christmas,” announced Lex. And to all a good night!
Have you seen those fancy pillow kits they sell at JoAnn Fabric? Probably other places as well. It includes pre-cut fleecy fabric and that’s about it. I loved the idea, but not the price, so I bought some festive fabric a few weeks ago and this afternoon we tied up some pillows!
Eve learned how to tie knots and got lots of practice!
Lex was busy working on a book, but once he saw how cool this project was he joined in our knot tying activities.
I didn’t take step-by-step photos, but the project is super easy! Start by measuring whatever pillow you have laying around. Then lay out two pieces of fleece and cut them to a square a bit bigger than the pillow. I had about 4″ extra inches all around. Then measure 4″ all the way around (mark it with chalk or something) and then cut fringe from the edge to the 4″ line. THEN, tie the top fringe to the bottom fringe in double knots. This is the most forgiving project ever. You can use 4″ or 3″ or 5″ or whatever. You can have evenly spaced fringe or let your five year old do the cutting and get all sorts of different widths. You can have perfectly sized squares to begin with, or just roughly the same size. Whatever! That’s the kind of project we like best around here!
I love this boy!
When we were done I sent Eve off to take pictures while I started dinner.
Princess stickers on her pants.
This was one of a dozen or so she took. I’ll spare you all of them, especially the mouth open down the throat shot! Funny girl!
There are the pillows! We made three total total.
Happy cuddly kids!
The kids seem to think Santa reads the blog and therefore there is no reason for them to actually mail their lists to Santa. Lex also wrote a letter in school that will run in the newspaper next weekend so he thinks he has his bases covered.
Sooo… in case Santa is reading the blog (awesome!) here are their lists. :)
Lex’s list
Eve’s list
Eve’s list started awhile ago with a real chick-a-dee and a dog, illustrations included. Once I convinced her that any live animals that Santa brings will be sent right back on his sleigh, she decided to add more items to her list. It goes something like this…
Dear Santa, I want a Hello Kitty watch, and a fluffy white bunny, and a super great princess, and a fake kitten, and a toy kitchen, and a toy heart.
We had a lovely weekend to start off the new month. As I mentioned yesterday we started advent boxes and Christmas decorating. Lex is super excited to have his Christmas train set back out. He was also super excited this weekend to go to a hockey game that some of his classmates were playing in. There is a group of boys in his class that brought a hockey trophy in a few weeks ago and they were in the newspaper last week. He really wants to play hockey now. He came home this week with a copy of their home game schedule. The games are all at 8am, except today which was at 9:15. We got there by 9:30. He was thrilled and his buddies were happy to see him. I got to chat with some other mothers and we all had a good time. While we did that, Eve and Alan went on their monthly “Daddy/Eve date.” They went out to breakfast, ran some errands, then went out to lunch!
After quiet time we packed up again and headed over to a friends house to make gingerbread houses! We had a great time. We built two houses and all four of the kids worked really hard decorating them. Now they’ll have to work even harder to not pick at them all month! :)
Just getting started.
Eve’s side. They started off with sides, but towards the end they were working on both sides together and I was throwing in my additions as well.
Lex’s side. I like the Crunch bar roof!
Check out the fancy Crunch bar entry way on our friends’ house!
The hardest part was getting all four sugared up kids back to the table for a photo. Yes, there was some candy sampling along the way. :)
There’s the sugar crazies!
Aahhh… our house is under attack!!
At dinner Alan and Lex discussed their plan of attack (which pieces of candy to eat first) for once the ok was given to dig in! I suspect pieces will slowly start to disappear over the next few weeks. :)
PS. Many years ago I made a gingerbread house with this same friend. Back when Eve was a baby! The house I made looks a bit different than what the kids did today. :)
Advent boxes this morning. Lex has been talking about them for days and was very excited! Eve slept late and kept him waiting.
Decorating this evening. I SO wish this picture had come out better! It had great potential, except for the crazy subjects!
Eve.
I reminded her once this evening that the nativity scene is fragile. She ignored me (as usual) and half hour later told me that Joseph has a broken arm. It broke right off! So we cleaned up the broken porcelain, put a packing tape “bandage” on Joseph, and she promised not to touch it again. I’m going to look for a kid-friendly nativity scene though because she loves playing with it.
Lights! Snow! Happy December!