Friday bullets, December 8, 2017

I don't know about what is happening in your house, but in mine, children feel the need to constantly give me the number of day (or house, depending on the child) until Christmas. I do not find this relaxing. Besides the constant reminders that Christmas is coming, here are some things that have happened here this week.

  • There is a midweek program at our new church that G., L., and Y. have been loving. This past week was shopping week, where they got to redeem the stickers they had been earning for doing things such as memorizing Scripture and such. In some ways, Christmas came early for these three. Two nights before the actual event, L. announced that she was not sleeping well, because she was excited about shopping night. That gives you sense of the level of excitement these girls had about it. I hoped it lived up to their expectations. I think it did, because today was kind of a bust with the left over excitement. It was sweet in that not only did they find things for themselves, but they each collected things for each other as well. All those annoying tchotchkes I worked to hard to divest ourselves of before the move? Well, it was for nought. But the masses are happy.
  • The girls loves the program so much that they also spend all of Wednesday making Christmas cards for their leaders. Y. let me take a picture of the card she made. For the record, I helped her spell 'merry', 'is', and 'you'. Not bad for not quite two years home, huh?

And a close-up of the words.
  • After 20 years of homeschooling, I think I'm just going to have to accept the fact that we become unschoolers for the month of December.
  • When A. was a life guard her first year, all of the old enough guards all went sky diving together. Yes, A. went to. She was looking at the disk on my computer and put a picture on my desktop so she could send it to herself. I feel as though that makes it fair game to share, don't you?
  • I have set up a wrapping station in my room so I can try to wrap gifts as I get them. So far, I have wrapped zero gifts, but the youngest girls have wrapped what looks to be 100. I have managed to stop some of it, but other times, they get past me. It seems they see this not only as a fun activity using paper and tape, but also a way to clean out their rooms of unwanted things and getting credit for giving those things to someone else. So for my older children reading this, I have no idea at all what is in the possible dozen extra gifts you will all get to unwrap on Christmas morning. Please act surprised. And happy. A lot of tape went into the wrapping of those gifts.
  • Olive is now well over 60 pounds and is quite tall. Tall enough that we realized that Kenzie looks rather short and stocky. He used to be a big dog, but not anymore.
  • G. was riding in the car with me somewhere this past week, when she asked me, "What is your favorite thing about Christmas? I think my favorite thing is having everyone all together and happy." She can be the sweetest thing.
  • Of course, the above is tempered by this. At the shopping night G. bought herself a large plastic play knife and the girls gave K. a set of hand-cuffs. When I go to pick them up from their art class, I realized that K. was hand-cuffing himself and G. was waving her plastic knife around in the art studio while they waited for me to get there. I have now made the rule that toys are not to be taken to art class.
  • We finished up Peru this past week, and flew home. Everyone decided that it would be nicer to be home for Christmas. We may make a very brief trip to Easter Island before the holiday if time allows... and I get myself organized.
  • L. has taken her hand sewing up a level, and is now starting to create clothes for her stuffed animals. I think I am going to have to lay in another supply of felt, as the first supply is quickly dwindling.
  • Tomorrow is bulk order pick-up day. What excited me most about this is getting to see friends I don't get to see often enough these days.
Have a terrific weekend.


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