My Version of a "Minimalist" Christmas

It's time again for Christmas.  Thanksgiving is over and it was a bit strange this year. You might have heard about an pipeline break and oil spill in South Dakota.  Justin has training through his job that qualifies him to respond to environmental disasters such as oil spills so he has been at the site of the spill quite a bit these last few weeks.  He made it for Thanksgiving and long enough to hunt the next day and get his deer for the year but then he went back again.  After seeing their grandparents set up Christmas trees this weekend the kids did not want to wait any longer to set up our tree.

As of last spring, we had not planned on being in this house for Christmas so all the decorations were in a storage unit three hours away.  So, that meant that I got to venture into the unit, unearth the tree and several rather disorganized boxes of Christmas clutter, load them into my vehicle (they took up all the cargo space) haul them home and unload all of it myself while the kids were practically losing their minds with excitement while I tried to clean up the trashed house I left behind when we left for Thanksgiving.  Because who doesn't love the image of practically shoveling toys and books and paper projects and school papers and Thanksgiving decorations and dried out gourds and mini pumpkins out of the way to make room boxes of Christmas stuff.  It was straight out of a Hallmark movie. All that was missing was the cups of hot chocolate with fluffy white marshmallows and candy cane stir sticks.

There is something good about bringing the Christmas tree back into the de-cluttered (but gradually being re-cluttered) house.  We are minus a few pieces of furniture in the living room so the tree actually fits in there this year so it isn't in front of the window in the dining room with the table kind of blocking access like usual.  I like seeing it in the front window so I wasn't sure but it is pretty nice in the living room.

Allan, as you probably recall if you have been reading this for awhile, loves the Christmas tree.  In the past he has loved climbing it and he also enjoys chewing on the branches for some reason.  He was pacing around the box as soon as it was upstairs so I knew he could smell it and he would be chomping away as soon as he could get access.  

As usual...This year he hasn't been climbing it.  He must realize his weight now limits his mobility.  I know exactly how it feels, Al...

Carefully concealed in an solid colored shopping bag in one of the boxes was the recent Christmas tradition that so many people hate to love and love to hate:  Elf on the Shelf.  The kids were asking about it so I knew they remembered.  I see these things on display at many stores so I'm not sure how much lying is going to be required to keep the "magic" alive but we are just going to see what happens as the years go by.  Tessa already seems to know and she interrogated me a few days ago about where we keep it when it's not Christmas and she seemed to know it was me doing the moving.  Last year she pointedly asked me if I was Santa so...I hope she doesn't ruin the fun for the other kids as she gets older.  Ben is a full believer and Milo has no idea what is going on but he knows what Christmas trees are and he knows which stocking is his at least.  

I wasn't sure I wanted to start before the calendar turned to December but I also wasn't sure where to hide it so I set it up to look like the Elf (Ben named him Shelfie...genius) found and set up the stockings after they went to bed on Sunday night.  As of last night, I already almost forgot to move him and today he is dangling from the cord on a set of window blinds.  I have yet to set up any elaborate scenarios with him like you see on social media (snow angels in flour, fishing in the sink, etc.) but I am saving my big favorites (riding the parrot I got in Mexico, perching on top of the tree star) until it is actually December so I don't lose steam.

We got the tree set up and lighted on Sunday night and I said we would do the decorating after school on Monday.  Tessa was whining all day to just get out "a few decorations".  Her weird collector magpie personality really comes out at Christmas and she just can't get enough.

They each adopted a little tree to decorate for their rooms.  I seem to have misplaced a whole box that had the short strings of lights but fortunately I bought a few strings of those trendy "fairy lights" that run on batteries last year.

They were playing "Christmas" and filling those little boxes with junk from around the house.  They also had their stockings down and were filling them with junk from around the house.  Good thing there is a lot of junk around the house.

This is Tessa's first version of her tree.  I bought those little disco balls a long time ago at TJ Maxx and she remembered them from last year.  She kept asking for the "shiny dance balls" and I finally figured out what she wanted.  Since then these trees have been dragged around the house and last night they shut themselves in a bedroom for an hour and redecorated their trees again. That poor little tree with it's burlap base has been with me since my dorm room days.  What a life it's had.  

Here is the new tree location.  It fits nicely.  I want a bigger, fluffier tree at some point but we've just never had the room even as we have expanded from tiny student apartments to larger apartments to houses.  I figured out that this tree was purchased on clearance and first used for Christmas of 2006 so it is eleven years old and it is starting to show it's age.  It sheds a lot of needles and some of the branches are bend and loose (most likely due to cat abuse) and the branches don't look too full without decorations and lights.  I also kind of want a new tree skirt since, as you can see, the one we have is red and the tree has a blue dominant color.  It's hard to see but there are blue beads and plastic filler balls in various shades of blue too.  I checked TJ Maxx (where the red one came from) yesterday morning but they didn't have much.  Just lots of white and silver.  Anything white on the floor of this house is destined for dinge in no time.  

Like the past few years, I have kept breakable ornaments off the tree.  You won't see any "baby's first Christmas" mementos or anything glass on here unless it is some cheap thing I got on clearance at Hobby Lobby for 90% off in February.  The result is a tree mostly decorated with plastic balls from Ikea and lots of felt items and a lot of what are basically plush toys.  

Good thing my favorite childhood ornament is felt!  It's still up high away from reaching hands anyway.  

So far this year this little bird's nest has been the hot item.   The kids take it down, fight over it and then leave it on the floor where I find it left in various rooms of the house.  I don't get it either.  It has a little clip instead of a string so many that's why they like it.  

There are ornament hooks laying all over the floor and Ben collected a bunch and made his own ornaments last night.  It was really cute.  Justin's has a picture of the two of them, Ben's is a patterned ball, Milo's is a baby, Tessa's is a cat's head and mine is also a decorated ball.  

So there you have it. The halls are decked.  I tried to reduce the decorations this year because when it is time to take them down we will have a newborn in the house so I skipped my big Department 56 snow village, many glass figurines and the extra lights hanging in the windows of the kids' rooms and wound around the bannister.  I might have still hung those but the box they were in somehow didn't make it here so that made it easy.  Now..the fun part.  Hiding away all the empty boxes only to take them back out in January, load them back in the car and back across the state to the storage unit.  I'll probably just pile them in the basement with the Halloween and other fall decorations in their orange and black plastic containers and deal with it later.

Pinewood Fun

I grew up in a class full of Boy Scouts.  Whenever the days of the meetings rolled around most of my male classmates were in school wearing their uniform shirts and kerchiefs with their corresponding animal tie slide.  I tried to find a picture of one of these on Google images but I couldn't find anything like what I am trying to describe.  They were made of plaster or something like that and the boys painted them and the results were...mixed.  During the Pledge in the morning they did their salute and they sold wreaths at Christmas and of course they participated in the Pinewood Derby every year.  

My brother was not a boy scout so I never saw any of these activities as an insider.  Ben is now a Cub Scout.  I don't think I have posted about this yet but during the first few weeks of school he came home with an information sheet which he was pretty excited about because it featured pictures of boys fishing and shooting guns and bows and arrows.  Those activities are generally reserved for older scouts at summer camp but we still signed him up anyway.  In the past boys didn't start until first grade but they have a new program for Kindergarten age kids now and it is less commitment and also fundraising is optional (WHEW!) and they wear a t-shirt instead of the full uniform.  But they did receive a Pinewood Derby car kit upon registration and the big race was Friday night.  

Fortunately, Justin was a scout himself so he knew what to do.  I didn't know this but you put weights on it to make it as close to five pounds as possible.  Interesting.  So, Justin used the power tools (the saw) and Ben picked his design.  Here is the initial sketch.  

His name really is fully backwards there.  It's not just the camera.  He usually doesn't do it like that.  Watching kids learn to write is a fascinating thing.  

Here is the finished car!  

Here is the setup for the races.  

You can see there are six lanes.  According to Justin, back in "the day", in our case the 1990's, they only raced two cars at a time so you could easily see who won.  Now they have a computer system so that little black bar at the end pups up the order of the lanes immediately and the times and speeds pop up on that projection screen on the stage.  Pretty cool. 

They mixed all the age together and every car raced five times.  I'm not saying anything illegitimate was going on but you could definitely see that certain families of brothers and often families of the leaders have experience with this stuff and know what they are doing due to years of experience while some people...do not...like us.  The problem with Ben's car was wobbly wheels which you don't notice when rolling it along a flat surface at a regular speed.  After it dropped off at the beginning of the races though you could really see them shake and it instantly fell behind.  So...it was a bit painful but still fun.  He got a kick out of it and slept with his car tucked in by his bed in it's own blanket that night.  And there were only three (really big and aswesome) trophies but everyone got a badge at least.  And they even had this fun little backdrop set up for pictures.  

It was fun to see Ben having fun and frolicking around with kids from school.  He has made buddies of all ages on the bus and I like it because I have heard about older kids being kind of mean at other schools in town and I have seen parents visibly recoil when they hear my kid rides the bus.  There was one drawback to the evening and his name starts with an M and he just turned two and he doesn't like to sit through things and wants to do whatever he wants when he wants.  Another event survived but leaving me wondering what I was thinking adding another baby who will one day be a toddler to the family.  Haha...joking...kind of...

Tessa is 4

Another month, another kid's birthday...two days ago this little baby turned four.

Dang, was she ever cute.  She always had a pacifier in her mouth, she had no hair for a long time and was often mistaken for a boy and she always had (and still has) a very alert and perplexed look in her eyes which I find endearing.  She even looked like that in her hospital nursery photo taken by the nurses when she was one day old.  

This picture always makes me laugh.  

She happened to have preschool the morning of her birthday and she was very excited to celebrate there and she chose to be the teacher's special helper (they have a brochure with birthday options).  Well, the morning of she was not herself and she didn't seem very happy about school.  As we were about to leave I learned why-she started gagging and we ran to the bathroom where she vomited up all the milk she drank that morning.  It was actually pretty amazing because it all went in the toilet and none got on her clothes.  Oh, the light at the end of the toddler tunnel!  Of course, afterward she was fine and all ready to go to school.  I didn't dare risk it though, so she didn't go.  I had a doctor's appointment for myself and plans to buy a cake for her while she was at school and we had to drive Ben to school so I ended up bringing her everywhere while she constantly asked when she was going to school and said she was missing her birthday.  Ugh.   I hate to make those calls but this one seemed to be a clear case of "something she ate".  Perhaps she accidentally drank a cup of milk that had been left out all night instead of the one I gave her.  It happens sometimes...

She was very excited for her presents.  I was looking at old pictures and it seems I wrapped her gifts with that same pink themed owl Christmas paper last year.  Don't worry, she didn't remember. 

The bros didn't handle watching someone else get presents.  Milo tried to rip them open and Ben wanted to also open them and then unbox and put everything she received together for her.  

Oh, so hard...because they never will get their own birthday!  And of course, Ben would be just fine with someone else ripping open all his gifts and playing with them first!  

She received a set of Frozen Legos, some mini Hatchimals, Glitzi Globes, and a Belle costume.  If you don't know what any of that stuff is...lucky you.  The globes are pretty cute though.  She's been talking about wanting them for a long time.  

Her costume is a major glitter shedder.  There was a trail of it down the hallway.  

There is a lot of criticism out there about buying "plastic junk" for kids and if you read the comments section of any parenting article about gift giving on social media you would think the only acceptable gift anymore is an "experience" such as a zoo pass (thanks for the idea everyone, but we already have one as does pretty much every family in town!) movie tickets or a gift certificate for swimming lessons.  Everyone is very much on the no toys train.  I must have strange kids because they love toys and the seriously play with everything we have all the time.  Yes, it is strewn all over the house and it's annoying to me but when I think about what to so nobly donate to those poor kids at the homeless shelter and then make sure everyone knows about it so we can feel good about ourselves I truly can't find anything.  Space is of course an issue for almost everyone and huge plastic playsets can be troublesome but I can't oppose Legos or Shopkins.  Yesterday afternoon when Milo was sleeping and Ben was at school she was just in her own little world, making up some fantasy world combining her legos, hatchimals and glitzi globes and it was awesome for me.  

Yes, this table looks like a nightmare.  Let me explain...the sock pile was being used as sleeping bags for the Hatchimals, the purple pieces are from the Hatchimal eggs (now in the garbage except for the little base shells, the painters tape was from a derby car Ben and Justin made for cub scouts (more about that in a later post) and the robot...well that's just an odd piece of Happy Meal junk that is having a moment in the sun.  

Then, it got even better...she received a gift in the mail.  

Wow, is she obsessed with this thing.  It's a Barbie head that you can style the hair and use water to change the color of her makeup and nails and it also has fake nails and hair pieces you can add.  

She wanted to wear a piece of fake pink hair to school today, haphazardly clipped in with a barrette.  I said it probably wasn't a good idea but she is wearing a bracelet with a mini snow globe with a Shopkin inside. I tried to discourage that idea because I know the teacher will kindly place it in her cubby shelf right away but she REALLY wanted to show the other kids.  

School Pictures

September and October are standard school portrait months.  This year, Ben and Tessa had different photographers at their schools which is kind of annoying since then you don't have the cohesive look hanging on the wall or sitting in a frame (or languishing in the envelope in a box or pinned to a bulletin board and buried under months of other projects and pictures...not talking about us...just some people who might have that problem...)

So, first up was Ben's picture day.  We ended up having a funeral that day so retake day it would be.  Well, retake day landed during "Red Ribbon Week" which is a standard week of themed dress up days tied in with daily events about positive behavior.  The day of the week that was also retake day was pajama day.  Ugh, seriously.  No kid wants to miss pajama day at school.  It's a great day for all involved.  I was worried about the picture so I emailed the teacher, send a nice shirt for him to put on over his pajama shirt for the picture and chose a pose that was only a head shot (they have an option where you can see their pants).

When Ben came bounding off the bus that afternoon I causally asked if he took his picture.  "Yes!"  Then I asked if he put his blue striped shirt on.  "NO!"  What? Why not?  "We were going to the gym and it took too long!"  Facepalm.  Huge facepalm from me.

So here it is for posterity...in the class composite group photo and in the yearbook if they have one.

A very nice portrait with a kid wearing Lightening McQueen pajamas.  At least it's not his Christmas ones he loves to wear or a pair of zippered foot pajamas.  

So to go next to pajama boy we have Tessa, a girl who should by all indications be very photogenic.  I know she is capable of very cute photos like this:

Well, look what came home a few weeks after picture day:

Oh, Lord help me.  Where do I start.  First, I had chosen a grey background but she forgot to give the teacher the card with the selection on it so her teacher helped her pick what she wanted and of course she picked the girly pink background which would have been fine except I chose that shirt to match the grey background.  It doesn't have any pink in it. 

Slighly better...

Ben was at the same preschool last year and I felt the same way last year as I do this year about that black box...leave it in the 90's.  I think they crop most of it out in the final product but still...

So, I had her hair fixed with a barrette which I hoped could survive the short morning of school but nope.  It's haphazardly stuck on top of her head.  You can kind of see it.  

Now you all can look forward to receiving these to hang on your fridges!  Poor Tessa...she is in a kind of awkward hair phase right now.  I think she needs some shaping but she says she wants a ponytail and the only way to get there is to let it grow.  I think a trim is in her future though.  When the baby comes we will probably get their pictures taken somewhere that doesn't use a black velvet prop and pink tapestry backgrounds.  

Pumpkin Seeds

The temperature took a drop into real winter territory this last week so over the weekend we decided to harvest seeds from most of the pumpkins before they turned into frost bitten mush and it was too late.  This process is pretty labor intensive although using a full length machete (yes, Justin has one) speeds things up a bit.  The cutting and scooping is the quick part.  The cleaning...yikes.  Justin does it and he has a system but it still requires a lot of soaking and rinsing and picking out orange slime. But when it was all over we had this many seeds.  I feel like a toddler saying "this many" but it really was this many.  Too many to count.

I was up pretty early on Sunday morning.  It was "fall back" remember.  Parents hate time changes and love to complain endlessly about their kids' ruined schedules.  Mine handle it OK.  They didn't get up at 5:00 a.m. They were, however, pretty delirious by about 7 p.m. and we had to really try to keep them awake to avoid a Monday morning 5 a.m. wake-up.  The person in the house who has been getting up at ungodly hours is me.  According to my fitbit I have been getting less than six hours of sleep each night and I wake up earlier than I need to every morning.  Part of it is pregnancy disturbances and part of it is the time change.  But anyway, I had a long morning with an extra hour for roasting pan after pan of seeds on Sunday.  I sampled so many of them I couldn't even eat any for awhile.  I was over it by yesterday afternoon and ate a pretty large portion after school.  I have mentioned before that they are full of nutrition but also high in calories to the tune of 800 calories per 8 oz. cup so it's no surprise that gorging on them like I did on Sunday morning can be sickening.  A little condiment sized bowl is the perfect portion size for them.  

So, if I am coming to visit you in the next few weeks expect a container.  I knew we hoarded cool whip containers, aka redneck Tupperware, for a reason.  

The kids seem to like them.  They all ask for them.  Ben actually eats them.  Milo usually dumps his on the floor which has to stop because they are too much work to sweep into the garbage.  I'm not sure what Tessa does with hers.  I suspect she might not finish her portion and then Milo dumps it on the floor.  

First Snow

I believe in my Halloween post I said that it was a year where we avoided the "snowsuit under the costume" aspect of fall in a Northern climate.  Well, I spoke a few days too soon because later in the week it snowed.  Of course, this time of year the temperatures don't drop too low so it started with some lovely sleet and rain and left a nice ice crust over the streets.  The Friday morning school commute was interesting but I only saw one car that had careened up on the sidewalk.

Fortunately, we had retrieved our duffel bag of skiing clothes from the storage unit where the kids' snow pants had been stashed since March of last year.  I found boots for both boys but...only one of Tessa's.  I love hers too.  They have a Velcro cinch strap so they are really easy to get on and off.  The match is still nowhere to be found weeks later.  We have a pair of boys boots that fit her that are black with camouflage.  Not that it matters if snow boots are "girl" or "boy" but hers are so easy to wear that I hope we can find it.  I'm thinking of her teachers more than anyone!  I don't know how they do it!

Of course, the kids want to be outside all the time in full regalia.  Of course, I DON'T want to be outside all the time because it's cold and boring to watch kids shovel and fight and take off their mittens and get snow in the mittens and have trouble getting them back on because their hands are wet.  Ben and Tessa are finally at the age where I feel like they can be outside by themselves.  They were out with the neighbor for an hour yesterday afternoon.  BUT...Mr. Two Year Old Beast is NOT OK with seeing them walk out the door in their snowsuits while he gets left behind.  He stands there at the door and screams like everyone is a huge traitor then he desperately goes and tries to dress himself to go out too while tears pour out of his eyes.  So, this means that I do indeed have to go out and supervise anyway.  Yay.  I don't mind going outside but at my huge size I'm just not feeling like it right now.  The trudging around and ill fitting coats are bad enough but also my snow boots are in the storage unit and the first thing to freeze for me is always my feet.

They all love to shovel and Ben is actually pretty good at it.  Hopefully this love of manual labor lasts as he gets older.  

This was Milo's first snow adventure since last year and he probably doesn't remember it so he just stood there for a few minutes wondering what to do.  

The piles of hats and mittens that we have really bring out her inner eccentric and she always picks a different one every time. 

These were taken on Saturday evening which was our last evening playing outside in daylight before the time change.  It was six p.m.  See you in March, evening sun.  

She was whining for help getting dressed and I was too busy bundling Milo so she did everything herself and ended up with her snow pants over her jacket and also backwards and rubber rain boots which I know from experience (because they are currently all I have to wear in the snow) do not keep your feet very warm.  But it worked fine and she doesn't care so I don't either. 

Look at that shoveling form!  Tessa's not quite there yet.  Neither am I.  I never did much shoveling when I was young or now.  We had tractors for that when I was growing up and now Justin usually does it because I've either been too pregnant or...he just does it.  Sometimes our neighbor even does it just for fun.  I shoveled one day last winter after I got my Fitbit and it showed that I had like 20,000 steps and 100 minutes of exercise that day (I had already exercised earlier also).  I feel like it should be a workout class based on it.  It would be very effective but not at all fun. 

Here is Mr. Booger Face enjoying the sparse covering of snow.  He is like Ben.  He never wants to go in even when his face looks numb and snot is pouring from his nose.  On this day he kept taking his mitten off one hand to eat snow and his hand was frozen but he didn't want to quit.  

Yes, playing in the snow is fun but now it is necessary to send a huge assortment of crap to school every day.  Tessa's teacher said they will only go outside one day a week, play in the gym on another day and swimming lessons is the third day.  So that is only one day I have to gather her whole ensemble.  Ben needs it every day though.  I thought for the morning on the playground he could just wear boots with his jeans since there is really barely any snow and the grass isn't even covered but no...he had to wear everything.  It took about fifteen minutes for us to get out the door this morning.  

Milo was dragging his snow pants around saying "Outside! Outside!"  Sure...just what I feel like doing at 7:55 a.m. as dawn is breaking.  Ugh...you can see my almost twenty year old Adidas slide sandals that I wear to run out to the dumpster and when I need to go into the garage to dig around in the freezer.  They are my secret shame and I'm sure all my neighbors have seen me wear them.