Stick figures

Phoebe is starting to draw such lovely people! 

Rocket man!

A family in our homeschool co-op is actively involved in a rocket club and on Friday they invited us all to come and put rockets together with them. Their friend had a surplus of rockets and was itching to get a group of kids together so he could lure them into the rocket club (I suppose). Whatever the case, I signed us up for three rockets. There were probably 20 or so kids there.

The rocket family (and their rocket-expert friend) talked about rockets briefly before helping everyone put their rockets together. I was surprised by Benjamin's knowledge about rockets. I did not know he knew the answers to all the questions he was answering about rockets...but apparently this was a good activity for him. 

I don't have pictures of him putting his rocket together because he was at the "advanced" table with the older kids in the homeschool group. I hung around with Zoë and Alexander, who needed a little more help putting together their rockets.

Christmas activity of the day #1

This morning we went to the stake primary party (to practice our songs for the stake sing-along tomorrow evening), only we drove to the stake center instead of the Lawrenceville building...so we ended up being 15 minutes late to the party. 

First of all, I have to commend whichever ward's Christmas party we stumbled into—because the stake center was a hip-hop-happening place! They were having a pancake breakfast (which smelled delicious, but was a sign we were in the wrong place) and they had a cookie decorating station set up (a sign that we were perhaps in the right place) and all sorts of fun things going on. Noticing our confusion (and general not-quite-fitting-in demeanor), someone came up to us and asked us if we meant to be at the ward party or the stake primary party.

The latter! 

They invited us to join them, said they'd love to have us, and had plenty of everything to go around...but also pulled up the email about the primary party so they could verify the details for us. 

So nice of them...and entirely our bad. We should have read more carefully.

We arrived at the right building fashionably late, but it didn't even matter because—let me tell you—my hat is off to this primary presidency. They plan the sweetest little activities. It honestly doesn't matter if you're 15 minutes late because you've missed nothing. They typically have little rooms set up for the kids to filter through at will. However long the kids are engaged in the activity is how long they're welcome to stay in the room. So if you're late, you just hop in somewhere and start having fun. It works very well! Especially, I think, for a situation like ours where people are sometimes travelling quite a distance to be there...and/or then drive to the wrong building first.

Today they had a little crafting room where the kids put together an ornament of Baby Jesus:

Puppy kisses

Last night all the kids from Zoë on up went to a game night together, leaving Alexander and Phoebe languishing at home. They fared alright—Alexander wanted to play Switch Sports, so we did that for a while, and then we got into jammies for story time. 

Andrew picked up some fuzzy pyjamas for Alexander while he was shopping a few weeks ago, so we gave them to him tonight. Phoebe was distraught because all of her Christmas-themed pyjamas were in the laundry. We finally convinced her to put on her snowmen and hot chocolate pyjamas (made of the same soft velor-type stuff that Alexander's jammies are made out of, but she wasn't quite happy about it and many tears were shed while she was getting dressed, but she agreed to pose for a picture under the tree with Alexander anyway (excuse her red, tear-stained cheeks).

He asked her to give him a kiss, a request that...carries great risk. Here you can see her leaning in with some little kiss-face lips and you think, Maybe this is going to be a normal kiss:

I know her!

Phoebe was in a bit of a wild mood before bed this evening. She was drawing with Rachel when I stumbled upon her/them and she said, "I'm making all the grown ups draw with me! Here's your paper, Mom!"

So I sat down to colour with her and Rachel. 

"What am I to you—a kid or a grown up?" Rachel asked.

"Ummmm...you are...Zoë!" Phoebe said. 

"What?! I'm not Zoë."

"You could be."

"How?"

"You could be Zoë for Halloween!!"

This kid is a trickster, a jokester, an imp.

A few minutes later she leaned toward Rachel and said, "I'm going to kiss you!"

"This feels like a trick" Rachel said.

"No, it doesn't," Phoebe assured her.

"It might not be a trick," Rachel said. "But it feels like one."

"Shhh...it's not," Phoebe said and then she leaned in and licked Rachel instead of kissing her.

I'm a great aunt

This week my niece Rosie shared a little letter that Ireland had written to Santa (with the help of her preschool teachers). The letter reads:

Dear Santa,

I have been good this year and for Christmas I want an iPad. 

Love, Ireland (age 3.5)

In reality, though, Ireland had recently bonked heads with another child in her class and they were both given an ice pack. This was a novelty. What could be cooler than an ice pack? 

In Ireland's eyes—and perhaps quite literally in her experience—nothing.

And that is what she asked Santa for—an ice pack! 

Not an iPad. An ice pack. 

"Ireland is kind of hard to understand sometimes," Rosie explained.

Benjamin's Spritz Cookies

Benjamin needed to make cookies for his youth activity tomorrow. The boys are planning on taking some cookies around to various people, which meant they needed cookies. They asked Rachel if she would make some cookies for them and she said, "No way!" She felt like the boys were perfectly capable of making their own cookies. And she's not wrong!

When we first learned the boys would need cookies (yesterday) we talked about having Benjamin make cake mix cookies since those are so easy. But then I suggested he make spritz cookies because they really aren't much more difficult than cake mix cookies and I...just always want them during Christmas. 

Not that I'll get any of this batch..but if you teach a boy to make Christmas cookies...chances are he'll make them again...right?

So Benjamin made spritz cookies this evening, mostly by himself. We mixed by hand because Rachel was cleaning in the kitchen and we didn't want to disturb her...and because I grew up mixing practically everything by hand so I rarely think to use the stand mixer for cookie dough.

Here he is stirring;

The devil's interval (and other tales)

This week has been a little...bit much. 

I didn't actually have to go into campus, but I did go to a conference in Atlanta (LRA), where I ended up leading a mentoring session (by myself) for an hour, which was super intimidating and stressful. But I did it. 

My dad's Christmas memories

I found a long-forgotten project on my computer the other day, a collection of "family lore" surrounding the Christmas holidays that I pulled from my own blog and from the blog Reid used to keep and from my mom's blog. I had some good stories. Some touching stories. Some funny stories. Some this-is-how-things-were stories. But I'm missing several perspectives. 

Tonight when I was talking to my parents, I asked my dad to share some Christmas memories from his childhood. Some of them I actually remember hearing, now that he reminded me of them. I'm going to write down what I remember of our conversation here.

First, you should know that my dad has five brothers (and a sister). You should know that the first handful of boys came one after the other—boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Like firecrackers.

Here's a little scrapbook page of the oldest four (for some reason I have it in my mind that this was my Grandpa's scrapbook):

Thanksgiving 2024

We went to Thanksgiving dinner at Grandpa and Darla's house this year, and what a treat that was! We've been in charge of Thanksgiving dinner for many, many years in a row so not being in charge was quite a relief. Of course, Andrew kept busy in the kitchen experimenting with bread and pie (our two major assignments) and Miriam made a big ol' vat of cranberry sauce. But that's all we had to do. 

Dishes were a lot more manageable. And our leftover status is on point.

GG came for dinner as well. We ended up with ham, zucchini stuffing boats, frog eye salad, potatoes...and some other things I'm probably forgetting. It was a delicious feast and the company was wonderful. 

We ate dinner soon after arriving, though first Phoebe had to chase big Titus around to show him little Titus. He kept running from her and then every time he'd decided to give in and greet her she'd scream and run away. But eventually they managed to stand side-by-side.