Christmas traditions- Santa

As i tis the season, (see what I did there?), I thought I would share some of our family Christmas traditions. So that when my kids visit this blog in 15 years, they can think, 'Man, I had SUCH an awesome mom.' Because if this blog is about nothing else, it's about making me look good.

Anyway, the traditions. You can't hear me, but I just busted out some Fiddler on the Roof and it was pretty amazing. As my kids are only 3.5 we don't have an absolute ton, but I don't think we will really ever have a ton. And there is also the fact that I'm writing this while watching Homeland, so I'm not really paying much attention. Because Brody (not this season Brody, he is a bald mess). And Carrie. But mostly Saul. I just want to rub my face in his beard.

With that being said, let's talk about my second favorite beard- SANTA! We see Santa approximately 65 times during the month of December. One of these times is at the Breakfast with Santa that my Twins Club puts on.It's awesome for many reasons, games, crafts, yummy breakfast, being able to take your own pictures with Santa, but the best thing of all is that you help set up, you and your family get to go for free! And I love free!

Year one. Blissfully oblivious of...

Year two. Even Santa was distraught. This photo was a finalist, but not the winner, for a local radio station 'Scary Santa' contest, we were thisclose to our 15 minutes of fame. So worth the permanent damage we did.

Year three. Penny is still not buying it.

Year four- Success! It's amazing what they'll do when they know presents are involved. Amazing and a little scary.

We also see Santa at my friend's mom's Christmas party. Not only does Santa come to the party, but he brings presents that the hostess buys throughout the year for each kid. SO, SO nice. And the kids get to sit on Santa's lap individually, which I appreciate for picture purposes. Plus there is free beer. 

Year one. They still have these Curious George's in their beds.

My baby boy. <3

Year two. Not so much. But the dress was darling.

I think he was eating something here? Probably not my best plan as a parent. Crying=potential choking hazard.

Year three. This is as good as it got. This was when she saw Santa walk through the door.

Harrison was a little bolder.

Year four- All grown up!

He got a kickass tool belt that he was VERY excited about.

Another tradition is that we host an Open House/Toy Drive every year. I stole the idea from a friend of a friend, and started it when the kids were 18-months old. We ask our guests to bring a toy for Toys for Tots, which we collect and bring to a drop-off site sometime following the party. So I plan the Open House for that reason, but I also really like hosting parties and seeing all of our friends around the holidays, which is not always easy to do. I'm usually not a group mixer, so the week leading up to the party I'm a ball of nerves, but when the day comes I always have a great time. And hopefully everyone else does too. Or they fake it really well. This year we had 'Santa' come for the kids (which was another thing that made me incredibly nervous), but it turned out to be really, really great. And so, we can add that to the list of times my kids have seen Santa this year.

Santa looks so young! Must be the botox.

I was going to write about the other things we do, but Homeland, and it's after 11 and Homeland. So I'll save those for next time. Homeland.

TV worth watching

I watch a lot of crappy TV. I have definitely scaled back in the last three and a half years, but some shows still remain. Probably the worst of the worst is Vanderpump Rules. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can call yourself smarter than me because this show sucks the brain cells right out of you. It is SO SO SO fake that it is almost painful to watch, yet extremely fascinating. If I had a time machine, I would use it to jump forward and see what these crazy idiots are doing twenty years from now, hell even TWO years from now, when they're not remotely 'famous' anymore. Because they are embarrassing themselves on the regular on this show. I also watch all the Real Housewives (except Miami, I'm not sure why, I have nothing against Miami, I just never got into it), but at least the women on this show are grown, so they are more fully aware of the fools they are making of themselves. Hopefully.

I have also been a devoted Young and the Restless fan for an undisclosed number of years (when I typed it out and looked at it, it made me feel too old to actually publish to the world). I used to write letters home to my mom from church camp asking her what was going on with the show, so that should give you an idea. Soap operas are basically the best TV ever because you can literally stop watching for months or even years, come back to it, and it should only take you a week to catch up. Not that stories don't progress, but the characters are always the same. Ageless, timeless. Except the children, they all have whatever disease/magic Benjamin Button had. But this year, the oldest character on the show died in real life and obviously they had to write her off on the show and I cried, cried, cried. Even writing about it brings tears to my eyes. So clearly this is the best show on television.

Some other great shows that I watch are 60 Minutes, Walking Dead, Parks and Rec, Downton Abbey, American Horror Story, Bob's Burgers, The Mindy Project (which is my favorite new show), The Daily Show and Colbert, and of course Mad Men. Which is on the other end of the spectrum from Vanderpump Rules. And Homeland and Game of Thrones and Veep when they are on. And Kroll Show, which is great and you should totally watch it. And Workaholics, which is also great and you should totally watch it. And I've started watching Senifeld again.

But mostly I watch Doc McStuffins. Because I have preschoolers.

This whole post took 20 minutes to right, and STILL, no one has came to my house and wrapped all the presents that are staring at me from the floor right now. I hate wrapping. What other boring thing can I write about in order to procrastinate more? 

All I want for Christmas...

DISCLAIMER- Don't let anyone who believes in Santa Claus read this. I don't know why you would, but I feel compelled to warn you just in case. 

Let me start by saying that at first, I hated this title thing on this blog. But now- I am totally embracing it. In case you haven't noticed all the cleverness that has been going on.

This is normally something I would post on Facebook, but I just posted something and I don't want to do a double post in a matter of minutes and seem like a bigger loser than I already am. Plus one of the purposes of this blog is to help me remember things about the kids when I'm old and senile, and this is a semi-cute story.  If you are the mother of the child. For everyone else it is probably boring and pointless.

H wants a spaceship for Christmas. From Santa. I have already bought him just about everything else in the world except a spaceship. I was kind of waiting him out to see if he conveniently mentioned something that is already in my basement like a lego table or toy tractors, but no- he still wants a spaceship. I have no idea where this is coming from, as we don't watch any space-related Disney Jr. shows and have yet to see Toy Story. Which are clearly the only two places that a three-year-old boy would be introduced to space by mediocre parents. Apparently he hasn't learned how boring space is yet. Or a love of space is in his genes as Jamie has a man crush on Neil Degrasse Tyson. That's gotta be it- genetics.

(I just remembered I have ANOTHER semi-cute story about his spaceship wish, so brace yourself for TWO- TWO!- spaceship stories. (story's? I'm going to need to take a Community College class on grammar before I go back to work because I have completely forgotten everything I once knew.))

Story number one-

I had a friend look for a spaceship for me at a local consignment sale, and she found one and sent me a picture of it through text-based-messaging. It is a colorful Mickey Mouse-type spaceship. Somehow, H saw this on my phone, I'm still not really sure because as far as I know he does not know how to access my text messages, but perhaps his skills are evolving rapidly. Anyway, he asked Jamie what it was and he told him it was a spaceship. That night, he brought up the spaceship again and asked why it was on my phone. I told him I took a picture of it so I could show Santa so he knows what to get him for Christmas. (Pretty smart, right???) He then told me that No- he did not want THAT kind of spaceship, he wants a black and white one.  And I said, Well, what if Santa got you that one anyway? and he said, No, Santa will bring him a black and white one because that's what a spaceship looks like.

So now I'm going to go from having zero spaceships in my house to two. Merry freaking Christmas.

Story number two-

We have a Christmas party every year and this year Santa came to our party as added fun for all/extreme stress for me. I bought puzzles for Santa to hand out, and when he was done I told the kids that Santa was going to leave soon and if you wanted to say anything to him, now was the time. So H comes up to him and says something we can't hear, and so I lean down to hear what he says and he's asking 'Where's my spaceship?' And then it dawned on me that I've been telling him for months that Santa will come to our house and leave him a spaceship for Christmas, and right now, Santa is literally in his house, with no spaceship on hand. What a crushing blow to a little boy's dream. What a horrible, horrible mother I am. I should be fired. Or maybe I should just resign...

PS- P wants a Princess Laptop and I found one at Once Upon a Child for $6.50 that literally says PRINCESS LAPTOP on the top of it. So at least her Christmas wish hasn't been a giant pain in the ass. Penny- one, Harry- zero.

Snow Day Baking Marathon

We had our first snow of the year, and boy was it a doozie! Schools canceled, roads closed, newscasters broadcasting from the top of a tractor trailer barreling down the highway- we got one whole inch of snow, people!!! An inch!!! I'm surprised the National Guard wasn't called in.

That being said, I reacted like any good St. Louisan and barricaded myself indoors. It was actually perfect timing because we are having a Christmas party on Sunday and I needed to bake approximately 34,587 cookies. I live under this delusion that I live in a house like this:

when I actually live in a house a little smaller than this one:

so therefore I like to invite everyone I know to my house once a year to take four years off of my life from stress and make all of my guests wildly uncomfortable by forcing them to act like they are having a good time. So I needed some cookies.

The day started off with excitement. Harrison looked out the window, said "Wow! It snowed!...... I don't want to go in it." That's my boy. But he LIED. LIED like a dog. Because we DID go out in it. So unfair. Here was our day:

Penny checking out the blizzard-like conditions.

First we painted. Harrison lasted 3 minutes 25 seconds before losing interest, which is a new record for him. This is not annoying at all, because preparing to paint takes about four minutes. Four minutes of my life I'll never get back again.

Then we danced. Because... I don't know why, my kids like to dance.

Finally, the cookie making commenced. We started in this dinky white bowl with a spoon like a commoner,                         but then I remembered...

my KitchenAid stand mixer!!! It hides in the basement 11 months of the year, only to emerge at Christmas. Some day I'll have a big enough kitchen to have it out all year, and then I will gold plate it an make it the focal point of my home.

Penny was less impressed. As usual, any unknown appliance is assumed extremely loud until proven otherwise.

Aww man, a machine took our job!

And then, randomly, mittens on our feet!

This might have been the funniest thing that ever happened to her.

I'm not sure if they liked the dough...

or the cookie most!

Then...unfortunately...

we had to do this.

Next time I'm standing at the storm door and am going to let Mary Ann go outside with them. 

Does it look like she's having fun? She has been calling the salt Jamie threw out 'snow crumbs', so she was very happy to see the real deal.

A quick cocoa break...

and then back to making cookies! Their job for these was adding the salt to the top of the caramel, so I hope our party guests like sodium!

Our final cookie. H's job on this one was rolling the dough in powdered sugar which he thoroughly enjoyed. He kept saying, 'Thanks for letting me help you mommy!' and he was being serious. Very, very cute.

So that was our snow day/baking extravaganza. Varying levels of fun was had by all!

Oh Christmas Tree...

I like real Christmas trees. And because I like real Christmas trees, Jamie likes real Christmas trees. When I was a kid I had a serious allergy to real Christmas trees, but like my allergy to cats, I magically grew out of it. Or taking Tavist-D every day for 25 years finally paid off.  So since Jamie and I have been together we have gotten a real tree, and at some point we started going to Tree Farms to cut our own. As the environmentalists do. Al Gore told me. Maybe it was Jamie. Same/same.

We typically go to Eckert's, but this year we tried somewhere new on the recommendation of a friend. We traveled over the river and through the woods (literally) to Daniken Tree Farm in majestic Pocahontas, Illinois, birthplace of Gretchen Wilson, the original Redneck Woman. It was a much smaller operation than Eckert's, but cheaper trees and more rednecks. So everybody wins. We had a great time, and by we I mean everyone but Penny. As the pictures will tell...

On the tractor ride thirty feet south (north? west? east?) of the barn. We could have walked easily, but you know three-year-olds and their damn tractor obsessions. Notice Penny's excitement.

Tree-hunting. There were a LOT of really great ones to choose from and we didn't have to search nearly as long as we have in the past for a tree. One point to the rednecks.

He is ready to saw!

Posing in front of our tree. This was news to P. She thought it was just A tree.

Beginning the sawing process. Did you know it takes a 3.5 year-old 4 hours and 26 minutes to cut down a tree?

P is not a fan of the sawing process.

Really.

She hates it.

So she decides to leave our family (tree) and search for a new one.

Still searching.

Trying to evade capture. I offered her up to two other families during this event, but I didn't have any takers. Strange.

Meanwhile, the tree had been felled.

Victory!

Victory? (We found out later that she was pissed because she wanted to take ALL the trees, not just one.  I hope I can remember this story when they interview me for her Hoarders episode.)    

This picture is my everything. My alpha and omega. I'm going to frame this and give it to her at the birth of her first daughter. Because when you are already telling your toddler  'I hope you have a daughter just like you,' you know your first granddaughter is going to be off-the-charts crazy. In a good way of course.

Me and my favorite child of the day.

What's the point in having kids if you don't make them do all the hard labor?

Waiting for the tractor. I think I told them that if they didn't smile, they would be on the naughty list. I love Santa.

The 45 second tractor-ride back to the main lot.

Ready for the drive home. At some point on 170 Harrison unrolled his window for some reason and I had a moment of panic that the tree had blown off. But no. We all made it home safely. 

 And then we watched some Charlie Brown Christmas, decorated the tree and the house, ate Indian food (and dinosaur chicken nuggets), played trains and colored and went to bed.The end. Merry first day of the Advent Calendar!