Pictures

After Christmas I enjoy saving and displaying all the photo cards on this board.  It's so much fun to do it each year and see how much everyone's kids have grown!

 

I also realized that my desk is becoming quite the collage of Disney photos.  The black and white poster was a 2014 calendar made from our November 2013 trip.  Since I never got around to making a 2015 calendar, I just hung pictures of our 2014 trips on top of it!  

Christmas

While I certainly don't want to overplay the Santa concept, I did continue the tradition that I had as a child where Santa brings an unwrapped gift and leaves it on Christmas morning.  When I was a kid, we opened all our presents before Christmas day - usually on December 23rd, since Christmas Eve was my mom's family's celebration and Christmas Day was my dad's family's celebration.  So it was very easy to know what was from Santa - it was the only present on Christmas Day.  This year William didn't open up any presents until Christmas morning.  The point being, he wasn't entirely sure that the three new sleds under the tree were or were not for him, and were or were not from Santa.   We said they were all for him but that Santa brought him three so he could share with us.   The idea of threes turned into a theme for this Christmas.  Daddy bought William three Nerf blasters (one a Star Wars Stormtrooper themed one), so we could all play.   And between the grandparents and us, he got three small Star Wars Lego sets.   He also ended up with three board games (Monopoly Jr, Connect 4, and Battleship) - all of which have been tremendously fun to play!   On Christmas Eve we didn't get around to unwrapping any gifts because we were busy with crafts.  First up was Star Wars snowflakes.  They ended up being harder than I imagined, so after a few, we just made our own creations and hung them on the front door.

Christmas morning started around 7:30, which is earlier than any other day this week, but still not too bad.  Of course the best part of our holiday was having family visit us.   Grandpa Roger and Grandma Joni flew in on Christmas Day, and Uncle Ryan and Tarek were kind enough to do the airport pick-up and deliver everyone to our house for the evening.  We had a beautiful dinner of prime rib, roasted vegetables, baked macaroni and cheese, taboulleh, cranberry sauce and Hawaiian rolls.  There was also an overabundance of sweets for the holiday, including the Garrett's Chicago Mix and Caramel Crisp that I picked up on my last afternoon in the city - and then had to run to catch my train since the line had been so long.  

We spent Friday playing multiple rounds of board games - mostly Monopoly Jr. because it was fun for the entire family - but also a little Scrabble.  I'm so rusty at that game!  William and I also "painted" cookies I got from a neighbor.  They were super cute but didn't taste that great.   

After two days mostly inside, Saturday was Chicago day.   I had to work at the office, but the rest of the family toured the Willis Tower Skydeck and had lunch at Billy Goat Tavern.  They swung by to see me before they headed home and William helped me do a little work.

 

 

 

More Christmas Preparations

This weekend really put us in the Christmas mood!  Friday afternoon I helped with the Kindergarten Winter Party.  The station I worked was the kids working in pairs to wrap a friend as a snowman.  You can see several examples of the snowman sweatshirts being worn!  I felt a little bad that I didn't send William in his sweatshirt, but he was wearing his Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party t-shirt.  The room mom was very smart to make nametags for the kids in order to group them for the activities.  There were two nametags that said "Will" and none that said "William" so he graciously accepted one with his "short name."  

 After school, we walked home to pick up Daddy and extra layers of winter clothes to drive to Chicago to meet Uncle Ryan and Tarek at Christkindlmarket.  We enjoyed our favorites:  gluwein, hot chocolate, bratwurst, frankfurters, candied pecans, and chocolate covered bananas.  We also did ornaments shopping.  I picked out a tennis ball since this was the year the rest of my family started playing and a cruise ship buoy and anchor for our trip this year.   William picked out a train and a motorcycle, because. . . well, who doesn't love (another) train and a motorcycle!  He was excited to see Santa through the window but didn't want to go inside and talk to him.   He has been talking about Santa a lot this year, and told me we need to leave out cookies.  This is really the first year where he has talked to us about it, but we've been keeping most of the answers along the lines of "I'm not sure how. . . .but it sounds like there's some Christmas magic involved."

On Saturday we put up the stockings which we - not Santa - fill with odds and ends.  Before they made it on to the hooks, William put two on as socks and went running through the house.  Oh my goodness, we all got a good laugh at him jingling all around!

The mantle looking very festive with all of our stocking hung, the nativity scene, and photo cards from all of our friends!  Filling up the ribbon with cards is one of my very favorite traditions! 

Christmas Cookies

My favorite baking buddy and I made some holiday treats for gift boxes.  They weren't very pretty (nor very tasty thanks to using a boxed mix), but we sure had fun!

We packaged up a few along with candy and a gift card for William's teacher.   This is what he wrote to her.  He asked me how to spell a few words, but the choice of words was all him.  I love how he drew her at the end! 

Christmas Preparations

We're getting in the Christmas spirit around here - even if there is no snow on the ground.  

Last year after the holidays, I found these Disney-themed fillable ornaments to help us count down the days to Christmas for this year. It's our very own version of an Advent calendar.  William rushes downstairs every morning to take the next one from the tray and see what is inside.  The first five days were pieces of a Lego City helicopter.   That really set the tone right!  The coins, candy and balloons that came after have been received well, but he really loved the Legos!  Thanks to his You Tube video habit fueling his knowledge of Kinder Surprise Eggs, he thinks these ornaments came pre-filled from the store.  We haven't corrected him so far, and Daddy pulled through and stocked another Lego surprise for this week.  I look forward to the surprise as well.  This is a busy time at work for me, so I just put coins and candy in the rest of the "eggs," but John has done some selective swapping out for better stuff!  William does not have as much interest in putting the ornaments on our little (second) Christmas tree as he does discovering what is inside, so I often find the daily ornament piled among the Legos on our end table and get to put it on the tree myself.

If you ever wondered where to find a "plain" sweatshirt (sans zipper, hood, and decoration) in the year 2014 for a school craft project, the answer is NOT Target (where I looked) or Meier or Joann's or Michael's or the Dollar Store (where my neighbor friend looked).  I believe Wal-Mart had them, but I wasn't willing to run around town looking for a $10 sweatshirt.  So after our neighborhood Target turned up empty, we ordered ours from our favorite "store," Amazon dot com.   My little man and his snowman are both adorable!  I doubt he'll ever wear a sweatshirt, but it's cute for the closet!  Although, maybe I'm wrong on that.  He did voluntarily choose to wear the sweatpants I bought for soccer cover ups the other day.  Maybe he isn't exclusively a jeans and t-shirt kid.  :-)

Next week as work slows down, we have Christmas baking and the Christmas market to keep us busy!