Tales From My House: Twas the Week Before Christmas

I have been a true blogging slacker this year. I haven't written very often and I feel as though what I have written has not been very good. I'm not sure who to blame, certainly not myself, so I will just say it was the fault of those pesky kids. Of course, the year is not over, so if I were to do two blogs a day for the last week, I would be almost on goal. This seems more appropriate for my New Year's blog, than my Christmas blog. So, I will leave it at that for now.

Ahh, Christmas. How I love you. To wrap up the Holiday adventures we went to Mount Vernon's Family Christmas on the 20th. We had a great time. One of my favorite parts of the night was when one of the workers asked Jack if he knew anything about George Washington. Jack responded, "of course," and proceeded to rattle off more facts than I am guessing many of the grown-ups knew (i.e. he was born at Pope's Creek, he also lived at Ferry Farm, he was a great General, the first president, John Adams was his vice President, etc). When he was done, the man praised him and asked, "have you heard the story of the cherry tree." Jack responded, "yes, but it didn't really happen, some author just made it up." Thomas was very proud of his history protege.

The kids were taught part of a 18th Century dance, we ate barbecue on the front lawn, listened to carolers (Anna is convinced her two student teachers were part of the group, but she wouldn't go up to them to confirm), toured the house, saw Aladdin, the Christmas Camel, and enjoyed the fireworks. They had troops showing what a winter encampment might have been like and troops riding around on horseback. George, who should be addressed as Mr. President or General, and Martha were out and about. On the way home, we stopped at Krispy Kreme, thus making it a perfect evening, The only drawback was that poor Luke was very cold. When I went inside to feed him, his legs were like ice cubes. We had him in jeans and a blanket on top of him, but in retrospect, I should have put layers on his legs like I did for the rest of him. Because it was dark, we didn't take any pictures. So, here is a random one of Twinkles, our Elf on the Shelf.

We relaxed the rest of the weekend. On Sunday, Thomas was outside playing with the older kids when Jack ran in to get me. He told me that Thomas needed me right away and that he was hurt. I assumed it was some sort of a trick, but Jack was insistent. I later learned that Jack also assumed it was some kind of trick and made Thomas confirm his seriousness before he came to get me, which I think must say something about the kind of tricks Thomas is known to play. Although, in his defense, I don't think they usually involve injuries, he is not that kind of jokester. I followed Jack outside and saw Thomas writhing on the ground in obvious pain. He had been running when his ankle simply collapsed with a "crunch" underneath him. He refused to go to the hospital. We did the ice and elevation and hoped for the best. Monday, he could bear a little weight, so he decided it was probably just a bad sprain. Fast-forward to today, Saturday, and he is still in pain. It is still swollen and bruised and he is still refusing to go the doctor. However, he has said he will go on Monday if it does not improve significantly. So, stay tuned to see whether or not his procrastination was reasonable. I just took these pictures for the blog, so the bruising is how it looks on Day 6. I wish I had a picture of the swelling and bruising on Day 3. That was an (awful) site to behold.

Monday was the kids first day off from school. We did some holiday baking and wrapping and Anna resumed her dance classes. She had been missing dance, so I e-mailed the studio owner and learned a new class had just started. Anna was a bit nervous to go without Kara and was very excited when one of our neighbors turned out to be a classmate. Tuesday, was more more of the same. Each night we watched a Christmas movie. I tried to convince the kids to go look at lights, but they just weren't interested. It was pretty funny to watch them watching, "Home Alone." Jack just cackled the whole way through, at one point, exclaiming, "it's like a real life Tom and Jerry!!!" We also watched Elf and The Santa Clause.

On Christmas Eve, we did our traditional Christmas cookie baking. Like many families, my mother always did rolled sugar cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve and I am happy to pass on the tradition. Thomas joined in and even Luke enjoyed sitting at the table with us, especially when he got his hands on the floury spatula.

I wasn't pay attention to what I was doing while making the frosting and instead of locking my mixer into place, I turned it on and the sugar went everywhere! Despite my ~~best~~ somewhat lazy efforts at cleaning, the floor is still sticky.

Because the kids were so good all day, we let them open one present each. They all chose a present from their Grandma Kathie and Grandpa Dave. We had received a huge box from them a couple of days earlier, that was filled to the brim with gifts and they were anxious to get to them. After all that excitement, we read The Night Before Christmas and called it a day.