Christmas

I remember that making these cookies felt like a victory.  In all of the craziness of December, we found time to make Christmas cookies!

Christmas Eve was held at the clubhouse by my Mother-in-law's new condo.  It was perfect, actually.  The space was big enough for all of us, with a nice tiny kitchen for all of the food and a downstairs room for the kids to go bonkers in.  Kaitlyn played Jingle Bells for the annual concert, and we played our Piano Guys song as a duet.

Jasmine played the part of Mary in the nativity play . . .

 . . . and Kaitlyn was an angel.

Christopher put the stack of music he bought to good use.  He even had a book that a violinist could follow along with, which was a nice addition.

This year, Grandma heard that Santa was a little too busy to come and visit everyone, so she dressed up and pretended for the kids.  The only problem was that she didn't fool a single child.  Tyler knew as soon as Santa walked in, and tried to talk to her and yanked off her hat.  Other kids loudly asked about it.  I pulled my kids aside and asked them to pretend for "the little kids" so they could be big and in on the secret, and that at least kept them from being too vocal.  It was really funny!

The next morning, I told the kids I needed a traditional "coming down the stairs" picture, so they had to walk slowly.

Kaitlyn likes to be the clown as often as she can, now.

But onward to important tasks.

Kaitlyn's wish list was short this year.  She wanted this exact American Girl doll, which was all of Santa's usual budget.  She was really, really excited.

Santa got Jasmine a real guitar, since she loves to play with her dollar store one that she named a "guntar".  She hasn't learned much yet, but she likes to walk around and play on it.

And as usual, Tyler was content with the first item or two he opened.  He found a cool LEGO set, and then sat down to work on it.  The box in front of him is a Santa box that he hadn't opened yet, even though his sisters had been done a while ago.

Christmas fell on a Sunday this year, which is my favorite.  I love interrupting present chaos to go and listen to Christmas songs! I think it makes the whole day perfect.

Heading into Christmas

I felt like there was a lot to get ready for Christmas this year.  On a whim, I posted on a yard sale group on facebook that I was selling embroidered toilet paper for gag gifts for $7.  In one day, I had people request over two dozen rolls.  Not all of them showed up, but other people ordered later, and I ended up selling 27 rolls before Christmas.  And 9 hooded towels. And I did a custom order, putting 12 names on separate tags for her to make Santa sacks for grandkids.  That kept me rather busy.

After Thanksgiving, we wanted to put up the Christmas tree, naturally.  We had sworn to ourselves (back in August, when we put off the task) that we were not going to put the tree up on carpet.  We needed to rip out the carpet and put down the new floor first.  So, Christopher got that finished as quickly as he could.

The two converged, of course.  I had people coming to pick up toilet paper rolls while he was working away.  Having the dining table in the front hall was almost convenient for that.

Thankfully, the floor really was a quick project in comparison to everything else we've done lately.  No baseboards, since we'll want to paint those outside in warm weather, but those baseboards are the very last step for everything.  We hope.

One thing that took up a lot of my time was being asked to play for the Ward Christmas Party at church.  Christopher and I enjoy playing duets together, and he's frustrated that he can't play in church on Sunday.  I'm glad they asked us to prepare something for Christmas, in that case.  Christopher was so excited that he went shopping and came home with an armload of books. We could have picked an easy one, and we did have those in mind as a backup, but instead, we worked and worked to learn a Piano Guys song.  "Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel".  It was just too pretty!  It was a huge task, but I am really glad we learned it.

Jasmine danced in her first ballet show.

She told me that day that she wasn't sure she wanted to dance on the stage.  Once she remembered that she would get to keep her mug, however, it was decided.  She wanted her own hot chocolate mug from her "Hot Chocolate" dance.

Her best friend Avery is in a different class than her, but the same level.  Love these girls!

A few days later, we had the biggest change for us in a long time.

I don't know exactly why, but I had been feeling for quite a while that it was time for our family to have a dog.  Personally, I'm not a pet person, exactly.  And yet, I found myself researching and looking at ads every day.  We made a lot of decisions.  No puppies.  Those are too much work, and I don't know how to train a dog well enough.  No big dogs.  I actually like bigger dogs, but no one else does.  Christopher wanted a pug, but I think they are odd looking, and the only one we went to look at was intent on biting us over and over. I didn't think I could handle a shelter dog, who was probably traumatized, so we hunted ads for "I love my dog, and just need to find the perfect home for him." Which is exactly what his ad said.

Chewy spends most of his time sleeping on our bed.  I was a little sad that he doesn't want to play with everyone, but I can't be upset because he is the easiest dog ever.  He is perfectly potty trained.  He had one accident the day after he got here, and one during a crazy birthday party when a dozen kids were running around crazy.  Both pretty stressful times.  He loves walks and table scraps, but otherwise is completely chill.

And loved.  At first, he followed me around, since his last owner was a single mom my age.  Christopher fed him enough table scraps of smoked meat to change his mind.  Now he follows my husband around any time he is home. I'm not sure yet why I felt so prompted that we needed this little doggie, but he's part of the family now, for sure.

Family pictures

I had told Christopher that we weren't going to do family pictures this year.  We had a lot of things going on, and I just didn't feel up to matching outfits and dragging my crew through that.  Unfortunately, when I started gathering pictures to make our Christmas card, I realized that I didn't have a single good picture with all of us together.  One at Arches National Park with us in mismatched camping clothes, and one in Legoland when I hadn't done my hair or makeup or anything that day.  So I told him that he was stuck doing at least the bare minimum in the cold and snow.

I posted on facebook that I wanted someone to trade with, and thankfully a neighbor also wanted family pictures without paying for them.  So we met at the same location, took pictures of our own kids, and then took turns taking pictures of the other's family.  Perfect.

Photographer's trick - they were blowing instant potato flakes.

It was really, really cold, though.  The kids were not all that happy, despite the smiles I managed to get on camera.  The girls were mostly upset about cold toes as they waded through a foot of snow in dress flats.

I think that picture sums it up.  Oh well!  I got what I needed- a few good shots for the card, and to hang on the wall for a year.  Sorry sweetie!

November

November was, thankfully, not too busy in our house. Kaitlyn learned all about the Roman empire, and needed to present a project on that subject.  The kids come home with a lot of things I don't know much about - I still don't know how to tune a violin, for example - but I was excited about this one.  I took four years of Latin in High School, and an intensive recap semester in college.  I learned a lot about the history along the way, but mostly, I learned about Latin.  So that's what her project became: learning some Latin.  I bought her a cute little book that taught her some basics, and then we came up with a short little conversation to tell her class. I decided we needed to put it big on a poster board so everyone could see it (and the translation), and the store only had blue poster board.  So then we ended up with this.

If anyone ever thinks that everything I do is Pinterest- worthy, I'll have to direct them to the serial killer poster, as we nicknamed it. Not my best work.  She loved the project, and I loved teaching her something that I love.  When we went to see her presentation, I was especially glad that we taught her Latin since about half of her class did a report on Pompeii and the eruption of Vesuvius.  At least it wasn't the 14th volcano!

On the Roman party day, they all got to wear a toga, play some Roman games, and eat Roman style food.  Plus Little Ceasar's Pizza, because the name qualified it.

We went to a few football and basketball games in November, too.

Of course, that was after watching the Cleveland Indians lose the World Series. Again.

I had forgotten how much we enjoyed following the Indians when I was growing up in Cleveland, and it was a lot of fun to root for them with my old friends from Ohio.  We're good at losing, though.

Jasmine's little preschool crew went to see a small dinosaur museum.  They are standing in front of an ancient sort of Alligator's head.  Dinosaurs are mind boggling.

This was the first year that Thanksgiving was held at my Mother-in-law's new condo.  She moved over the summer, and I felt bad that it happened right as we were in the midst of kitchen chaos and couldn't help much.  Thankfully, her new place held everyone without a hitch.  We had a funnier problem when we discovered a grease fire in the smoker with both Thanksgiving turkeys.  My husband managed to save them, but dinner was a bit delayed while he cleaned the smoker, rinsed off the burnt smoke layer, and got them cooking again.

Thanksgiving was saved.

(And, my husband had smoked a brisket, so we knew there was a backup.)

Halloween

Every year, I think that this will be the year I don't make costumes.  I just can't buy them, though.  They aren't as good, they cost a lot more, and they are made so cheaply that they will just fall apart.

Jasmine decided on her costume first.  She wanted to be Rapunzel.  I could have bought that anywhere, but she already owned this purple dress. Which she refused to wear.

It was homemade, but I didn't make it.  I got it at a garage sale for 50 cents.  I never knew what it was that she didn't like about this dress, but this little girl rejects clothing for bizarre reasons sometimes.  Since it was going to waste anyway, I decided that "Rapunzel-izing" the dress would be relatively fast.

It wasn't as easy as I hoped.  The overskirt needed to have a gap in the middle, so I just cut that section out.  Jasmine didn't like the awesome bead trim for some reason, so that came off.  I had to take the sleeves off to add the pink stripes, and that was the worst part.  The previous person wasn't very good at gathering, and she made up for it with tiny zigzags to make it really secure.  The vest was the fun, engineering part.  Jasmine's favorite part was the "criss-cross" part in front. You can't quite see my favorite part- Pascal, the chameleon, plays hide and seek with Rapunzel in the movie.  So I embroidered a little Pascal to hide under the overskirt.  You can almost see his green feet.

Total cost = 50 cents for dress.  I owned everything else and got the embroidery pattern for free.

While I was working on that, Kaitlyn decided that she wanted to be Pikachu.  That one is much harder to find.  There was one on Amazon that looked like a hoodie and skirt.  We both liked the look of that one, but the reviews said it was made out of that awful costume fabric that snags and rips instantly.  So we bought a yellow hoodie.  I couldn't find one in her size, so we started with one my size.

Kaitlyn's was the easiest and fastest. I think it was less than one day.  I put a Pikachu face on the hood  with my embroidery machine, along with the stripes on her back.  I shortened the sleeves, making them narrower in the process, and made a casing on the inside for elastic to gather a waist.  Oh, and we had to get rid of the kangaroo pocket, too, since it hung at her knees.  The only tricky part was making a tail.

She now wears this almost every day as her jacket for recess.

Total cost: $13 for hoodie, $5 for embroidery design.

Tyler, on the other hand, was tricky this year.  When I asked him what he wanted to be, he said "Alex from Minecraft.  I was Steve last time, so now I should be Alex."  The only catch is that Alex is the girl character.

"Tyler, did you know that Alex is a girl?"
"Yeah," he said very matter-of-factly.  "I don't care so much."

Of the girl characters he could ask to be, this was not some sparkling princess, to be sure.  She just had a ponytail and a Minecraft, blocky body.  And the more I thought about it, why not?  We tell our kids they can be anything they want to be for Halloween, so I should have lived up to it.

The bigger problem is that we just made a Minecraft, boxy costume last year, and I gotta say I really didn't want to make one again.  So I offered a few other ideas to him until one stuck.  Emmet from The Lego Movie.  He already owned the shirt, so he just needed some pants and a bit more to fill it out.

I looked all over Pinterest, and lots of people made various levels of costume.  Some just wore the clothes, and some spent countless hours on boxes and carving foam into the hair.  I decided to use the concrete form that everyone else was using for the head, and start from there.  After I got the piece cut, Kaitlyn looked at me strangely.  "Why don't you use the fabric Lego head?"

"What fabric Lego head?"

So she ran up to her costume box and produced a foam-like fabric head shaped like a Lego head.  It was white and only had eye holes, but it was a much better start than what I had.

I tried dyeing the head yellow, but it didn't take, so I just made a yellow fabric version that I sewed onto the head.  Simple enough.  I ran out of time to do anything else before the neighborhood block party, but we did get him a Piece of Resistance to wear on his back, at least.

Total cost: $3 for yellow fabric.  And $15 wasted on a concrete form and plastic tubes for hands that I didn't end up using. Grr.

All ready for the party!

The spent the most time at the cake walk.  Favorite for all of them!

My favorite is the table the high school science teacher sets up.  He had things like "zombie brains" and "ghost eyeballs", and a ghost balloon craft for them to make.

Two other friends dressed as Pokemon Trainers, who apparently run around trying to catch Pikachu.  Or something.  I'm not up on my Pokemon stuff, but I loved that we could get a group picture.

I thought that after this, I would add hair and hands to Tyler's costume.  But I just couldn't figure out how to make three dimensional hair on a weak, flimsy head.  And I realized that making him Lego hands just meant he wouldn't be able to use his hands to pick up candy.  So we skipped that.  Instead, I made Jasmine a satchel and Kaitlyn a Pokeball purse to hold their candy.

For the first time, I had a great day going to the costume parades.  My memories from previous years were of waiting in cramped hallways with tons of other parents, trying to keep the baby/toddler happy and still while we watched tons of strangers walk by in costume.  This year, Jasmine was over the moon.  She was excited about just the toddlers walking in with their moms before the parade started.  "Mom, LOOK! Elsa!" Every single costume was amazing, all day long.

After school, we carved some pumpkins as quick as we could.  Jasmine even did hers all by herself.

I loved Halloween this year!  I even dressed up, too.  I found this costume on a garage sale group on facebook a few days earlier, and bought it solely because I own the white boots in the picture from high school flag team.

Convincing my hair to make two buns was not easy, but I think I got the idea across. What a fun day!