Over the river and through the woods...

to Mimi and Grampy's house we go. We changed our original plans since it looked like we would be snowed in until Sunday if we waited to drive down here. Last night we were unsure if we would make it at all, but when we woke up this morning we checked the weather and figured we had a small window of opportunity to make it down here before the storm hit. I was frazzled trying to get everything thrown together quickly - I usually take my time making lists, organizing items, packing, gathering snacks for the ride, etc. There was no organization this morning. Mike didn't shower, I didn't shower (and I didn't shower yesterday either, so I was looking reeeeeally nice), I was sure I was forgetting half the stuff I needed to bring. (I did, however, throw the dozen or so leftover sugar cookies into a plastic container and we ate them for breakfast in the car. What can I say, I won't be winning mother of the year this year). We left the house a pigsty. I did remember to run the dishwasher before I left so we weren't welcomed back with smelly dishes. On the way down here we encountered some freezing rain and all I could think about was that if I died on this godforsaken stretch of I-35 they would pull my unshowered body from the car and then go through my house and think, what a pig. Seriously, that's what I was thinking about. New Year's resolution #1: re-think priorities.

Anyway, we made it down safely. We're ready to celebrate.

Last night we went to our annual "Dinner with Santa & Friends" dinner. For the first time, Henry sat on Santa's lap!! I was shocked. I will post the pictures later.

Cookie Monsters

My parents (a.k.a. Mimi & Grampy) were in town last weekend and we had fun baking up a storm in the kitchen. We made white-chocolate covered pretzels, spritz cookies, candied pecans, Italian cookies, cut-out sugar cookies, jam thumbprints, and peanut butter balls. Oh, and 3 batches of Chex Mix. Before they arrived I had baked a different type of sugar cookie but had to give them away when carolers showed up at my door last Wednesday night. (It was soooo cold outside, so those carolers deserved something!) Henry and Georgie were absolute troopers, especially Georgie. He seemed to attack the sugar cookie dough with extra enthusiasm. They helped with the sugar cookies, then we did the rest of the baking when they were in bed or napping. They were cute little helpers, but their "help" wasn't all that helpful.

And yes, of course Georgie made a huge mess. The frosting and sprinkling process got a little out of control. Large quantities of frosting were consumed.

And on a completely unrelated note, I just packaged up 4 Baby Einstein DVDs to return for a refund - $15.99 each! Also, this is my 300th post on the blog. And I think I still have people reading this thing! Who knew?

Playing the roles of Shepherd #2 and Shepherd #4...

On Friday Henry's kindergarten class presented a Christmas pageant. It was adorable. Absolutely adorable. Henry had been practicing his lines (he had 4) for the last two weeks and said them perfectly. All of the kids did a great job - I was amazed.

For those of you that are wondering, I fashioned Henry's costume out of a dish towel, an old elastic headband, a piece of yellow rope from the garage (hope Mike didn't need it for anything), and an old long-sleeved t-shirt of mine (a Kappa Delta Veishea t-shirt, circa 1999).

Gee, I wonder why the DVD/VCR player stopped working

As I mentioned awhile ago, Georgie sprayed cleaning spray into our combo DVD/VCR player and it completely stopped working. My parents just brought up a new DVD player for us and my dad performed an autopsy on the old one (he actually had to extract the "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" DVD from the machine). This is what he found inside. It's actually amazing that it all fit in there. Thanks, George.

The Polar Express!

Getting ready to go!

Holding the ticket

Henry and Sophie on the trolley

Georgie checking out the Christmas lights

Santa arrives!

Last night Henry, Georgie, and I boarded the Polar Express. A good friend of mine bid on a "Polar Express" package at a charity auction and won, so she invited us along for the ride! A local limo company owns a trolley that they deck out for the holidays as the "Polar Express." We got our golden ticket the day before, and the boys donned their jammies at 6pm and waited for the trolley to arrive. It pulled up at 6 on the dot and off we went! The conductor punched our ticket and we were on our way. The Polar Express movie was playing in the trolley, and my friend's husband danced and handed out hot chocolate and cookies just like the waiters do in the movie. (The adults were served adult beverages - coffee with Baileys. On a trolley with 15 kids, we needed it). We picked up two more familes and then the trolley took us up to Chippewa Falls, where there is an amazing light display at Irvine Park. At the end of the lights tour, a special guest boarded the trolley - SANTA CLAUS! The kids went nuts. Santa gave each child a bell (if you've seen the movie, you will recognize the significance of this) and they all got a turn to sit on Santa's lap. My boys, who routinely play games involving chopping off aliens' heads and sucking out their brains, were of course too chicken to go near Santa. But it was a fantastic time!

Cookie decorating.

Here is a short video of the boys decorating cookies. And yes, at the end they both say, "Goodbye poopy camera." I believe Henry says "poop" in there another time as well. This is just a fraction of the potty talk I deal with on a daily basis.

Got snow?

The view of our backyard.

The best part - licking the spoon (or in this case, the spatula).

"Helping." I had to redo many of these.

The results!

We do. Lots of it. We had a snow day today, so all 4 of us were home for the day. (However, I am ready for everyone to go back to our regular routines tomorrow.) Mike went out and snowblowered (sp?) the driveway, and the boys joined him for a few minutes at the end. It was just too cold to dig out the snowshoes or do any other outside activity, so we hunkered down and made some cookies - my favorite snowy day activity!

For the birds

Today Georgie and I went up to Henry's school and helped decorate the inside of the building for Christmas. It was fun and nice to visit the school - since Henry rides the bus to and from school every day, I rarely get in there except to volunteer in the class every other week. Georgie and I decorated the tree in the library, and while I was up there I saw a display table labeled "Stories from Mrs. D's class." There were three homemade books on the table. Sure enough, two of them were Henry's. He has been obsessed with making books at home and I knew he brought two of them for show-and-tell but I had no idea what became of them. He told me the other day that he needed to make more books for the library at his school. I shook my head and said, "No, Henry, the library gets its books from different places - the kids don't write the books that go in the library." Turns out, he was serious! He said he asked Mrs. D if he could put them in the library. I will be in there on Wednesday again so I'll have to ask her about how all of this came about - I hope Henry didn't con her into displaying his homemade books in the library!

After that we went to a craft activity with Moms' Club - we made bird feeders out of pinecones, peanut butter, and bird seeds. Georgie was very excited to bring it home and watch the birds munch away.

And can I just say that we live in an awesome neighborhood? As I was getting Henry off the bus, one of our neighbors called me over to his garage. Inside was this wooden puppet theater. "If you want it, it's all yours," he said. "Are you kidding?" I asked. "How much do you want for it?" Seriously, these things go for a lot of $$, and this one is a classroom-quality theatre. "Nothing," he said, "just pass it on to another family in the neighborhood when you are done." Needless to say the boys were ecstatic. I hauled it down to the newly cleaned Kid Pit and they immediately got out their puppets and began putting together a show.