There's one more little piece of our 2010 Christmas that I haven't shared yet. I saved the best for last, just like Eric and I did on Christmas morning. We let them open up their stockings, then the under-the-tree presents. And then Eric pulled out a big envelope and told them to open it up.









Yep, that's right. Our big family Christmas present this year is a trip to Disneyland. So...if you've been there with small kids, if you have tips for surviving, if you can tell us what to pack, what to ride, and all in all how to have the happiest of times at the Happiest Place on Earth, then please leave your tips, encouragement and wisdom in the comments. We'd love to hear 'em!

I don't like to admit that I have a problem--(I can quit anytime!)--but I'm afraid it's true.

I am addicted to the Internet.

Facebook, blogs, e-mail, the ability to look up any random bit of information I want at any time I want to (movie times! Weather! Addresses! phone numbers! It's all online.) The Internet is my friend, people. I need it. 

Or I like to think I do, anyway.

And yet, somehow I survived going dark for three whole days last week and lived to tell the tale. Going dark--that's what my friend Jessica calls surviving-without-the-net. Because when you turn off that connection, it's like you're dropping off the grid...existing in some no-man's-land where the only way anyone can get in touch with you is via the telephone. Or (gasp!) an actual face to face conversation.

As I mentioned before, the girls and I went to stay with Eric in a hotel for a few days while he worked on a job in Beaverton. We finished our Christmas shopping, we went to see Christmas lights, we went out to dinner, we played in the hotel pool. It was a lovely time, really. Except for this one little factor--the hotel charged ten dollars a day for Internet access. Is that outrageous or what? I couldn't believe it! And then, even if I had wanted to pay that exorbitant rate for the entire time we were there, I couldn't, because our laptop died. (Died...or was murdered. Eric found what appeared to be candy shoved into the insides of the machine. No one has admitted to the crime, but either way, it's gone now).

So there I was, stuck in a hotel with three kids and no Internet! What would I ever do?

I'll tell you what I did. I actually played with my kids. I also used maps--physical maps--to find my way to things. And the telephone to call places for information, or to get in touch with people. Or I just drove around, relying on my sense of direction and general knowledge of the city, to assume I'd find what I was looking for. And you know what? I did. With no problems whatsoever.


One afternoon while Evie was napping and the two older girls had already watched as much Nickelodeon on the hotel TV as I could handle, we found ourselves with nothing much to do. And so I pulled out the pack of tiny toys I'd brought with us, and we played with them. We used random things from the hotel room to create a world for some princesses, a unicorn, and a lego man to inhabit--a box of crackers for a house, the hotel ice bucket for a swimming pool, the coffee table as a mountain. It was a lot like what I remembered as a kid, when I used my shoes as cars for my Barbies and pretended that the tall lamp next to my Dad's old recliner was a skyscraper that they lived in. It also gave me a little peek into the funny, creative things going on inside my kids' heads. They say the darnedest things when they're playing imaginary games with each other. (Lucy, upon seeing Beth: "So, we meet again, Evil Enchantress.")


I admit, the adventures of Sunflower Princess and her gang got boring to me after awhile--my tolerance for playtime is not quite as great as my kids' is, which probably why I hardly ever sit down and play with them like that--and probably why they love it sooooo much when I do. After awhile, I left them to play alone while I read my book. And then Evie woke up from her nap and we all went to Red Robin.

But that afternoon of hotel playtime was a fun memory to make--and one I never would have made if I had the Internet to entertain me. I'm sure of it. I would have been Facebooking, or blogging, or looking up turn-by-turn directions from the hotel to the Christmas light display, or finding out the exact hours of the stores I wanted to shop at, or other supposedly critical information that I *had* to spend my afternoon looking up.

So...the lesson here is less Internet = more face time with my kiddos. Maybe, just maybe, that's something I need to keep in mind when I think about how I want my new year to be.

I feel as though the past week or so, ever since my kids have been on Christmas break, has passed in a blissful sort of blur, full of all sorts of holiday activities and punctuated mainly by the consumption of delicious baked goods. And now we've had a few days of doing absolutely nothing, sitting around at home playing with new Christmas toys, and that's been nice too. I feel as though I'm yawning, sitting up, waking from the Christmas dream...and then getting dressed and wondering why on earth my pants are so hard to button.

But, in the interest of prolonging the holiday dream just a little bit longer, let's re-live the last few days, shall we?

First we had a performance by the most adorable little ballerinas in the world.
 Yes, I know that Beth (right in the center there) and her ballet comrades appear to be just dancing as  disembodied heads, arms and legs. It was dark in the theater, and they were wearing black outfits, and there was no flash photography allowed. In real life, it looked adorable, not creepy.


Lucy (on the end, at left) was a snowflake. And I made that tutu she is wearing all by myself, thank you very much.

We also had a whirlwind trip to Portland for a couple of days, where we visited Eric while he was working at a job up there. We took a trip to Peacock Lane, which is this beloved Portland Christmas tradition I had never heard of. It's beautiful neighborhood in SE Portland where each house on the street goes all-out in Christmas decorations. Really beautiful, and we enjoyed it a lot--although we started out walking down the street, and then the two little ones were completely freezing and whiny, and so then we went back to the parking lot and started out again from the comfort of our warm car.


This is just one of about two dozen pictures Beth took. I let her hold the camera as we drove sloooowly down the street and she took a picture of pretty much every house on the street through the open window. Not bad for a 6-year-old taking pictures of Christmas lights from a moving car at night, though.

We also had our annual Christmas-cookie extravaganza. About halfway through, when I look at the sheer chaos that is created, at the children who have to be plunked into the bathtub afterward, I question my sanity for doing this.



But then my daughter says, "This is so much fun! I'm so glad we do this every year." And I tell her how my mom and sister and I did sugar cookies every year when I was growing up, and she tells me, "I want to do it with my kids when I grow up too," and then I bask in the glow of having passed on a tradition, and all is well with the world. Even a kitchen that could be declared an official disaster zone.

We also attended "The Nutcracker" by the Eugene Ballet Company, and it was fabulous. Beth and Lucy were entranced throughout the entire two-hour production. The show had wonderful costumes and sets, beautiful dancing, and lots of exciting little touches, like flames that flashed and glitter that sparkled when Drosselmeyer worked his magic, and a cannon that really went boom during the fight with the mouse king (the girls just about jumped out of their seats when that happened). A really great way to introduce the kids to professional theater.

Here we are at the beautiful Elsinore Theater, with almost all the girls in the family, as my sister put it. I didn't think my 2-year-old was probably quite ready to sit quietly for that long, so Evie did not accompany us, but I bet next year she will be.

Then of course we had Christmas itself--unwrapping presents at various grandparents' houses.


It's fun now that she can read and see what's actually in that big brown box (It's a play kitchen, in case you don't want to tilt your head and try to read it. That was the big joint present from the grandparents this year. Took Eric an hour or more to put it together, but so worth it. They have been playing with it every day).

At my grandma's house, the girls, my mom and sister and I all got new aprons! So cute. (This was one of several pictures we had posed for, and Lucy refused to put her apron on again. And also refused to smile. She does have one, though. And Evie has hers on, but it is blue, like her dress, so you can't tell so much).

Also, just a side note here, to people who know me in real life and don't understand why I never think of myself as being short--in my family, I'm *not* short! See? Tallest woman in the family!

And at the other grandma's house, we have an attraction that's even more fun than matching aprons--a little cousin with matching dresses! My 1-year-old niece Aubrey is a total cutie, and it's so much fun to see clothes that I remember my own babies wearing, now on another beautiful little girl. It makes me smile every time.

And now, to return to reality...except that in spite of the fact that Christmas was four days ago, and I've taken down the Christmas tree and all the decorations...it is now snowing big, fat flakes outside my window, and the girls are watching "A Charlie Brown Christmas" in the living room...so maybe we'll just continue to live in our holiday dream for a little while longer.

God bless family traditions.

They're the reason I was able to completely avoid the issue of the truth--or untruth--about Santa with Beth this year. You see, we always, since before I can even remember, have celebrated Christmas Eve with all the extended family at my grandparents' house. But it's always an evening celebration, not a daytime thing. We didn't get to Grandma's house until a little after 7 p.m., and by the time all the family members were there, everyone had a chance to grab a plate (or two or three) of food, and we started opening presents, it was probably 8 p.m. Presents, playing, laughing, hugs and kisses, changing into jammies for the car ride home, and finally the drive from Grandma's back to our house...and it was 10 p.m. before we pulled into our driveway.

My sleepy girls nestled right into their beds and completely forgot to leave a plate of cookies out for Santa. And I did not remind them.



In the morning, Beth asked if Santa had eaten his cookies, and I fake-regretfully told her that no one had remembered to leave them out. We went on to have a fabulous Christmas morning, and that was the last anyone said about Santa or his cookies.

Next year, I imagine, I'll have to do something about it for real. Either let her do the experiment and face possible disappointment on Christmas morning, with the knowledge that it will likely be tempered by the stockings and array of colorful gifts (which we have never pretended are from the big guy in red anyway). Or, warn her in advance about the outcome of her experiment--and perhaps I'll even manage to pull it off in a fun, wise, and gentle way, like the mom in this blog did.

Thanks, all, for the responses to my Santa post and for all your heartfelt advice...which I gleefully avoided actually using.

I've never said a lot about the big guy in the red suit with my girls. I don't have a problem with Santa--I don't think that belief in Santa conflicts with celebrating the birth of Christ. I've always pretty much viewed Santa--the big, jolly, gift-giving naughty-or-nice-list-making Santa that American kids grow up hearing about--as nothing more nor less than a fun cultural aspect of the holiday, and treated it as such. The kids have read stories and seen cartoons that feature Santa Claus, and he's certainly inescapable in any store from October-January. I've never tried to discourage them from believing in Santa.

That said, we've never made a big deal about him, either. We don't write and mail letters to Santa, we've never told the girls to strain their ears for reindeer hooves on the roof, and we've never left cookies and milk out on Dec. 24.

Beth, at a young age, simply told us that she didn't believe he was real. I tried to be kind of vague about my answers to her questions. You know, the whole, "Well, what do YOU think about whether he's real or not?" kind of thing. And when she flat out said she didn't think he was, I told her she could believe what she wanted, but she was not to go around telling all her little friends at school that he was a big fake. Just because she was a youthful realist, I didn't want her to be the kid that spoils it for everybody else.

This year, for whatever reason, she seems to be re-examining her position. The enthusiasm of her younger sisters? Peer pressure from other first-graders who do still believe? All I know is, this year she is putting her pragmatism and curiousity to work and conducting a scientific experiment.

"Mom, I want to leave cookies and milk out for Santa this year," she told me.

"Sure, sweetie, we can do that," I said, mentally congratulating myself on this development. Extra cookies for mom and dad while we fill stockings!

But then, she turned to me and said, "And you have to promise you will not eat them, Mom. You have to promise you won't. And Dad can't either, not even one. I want to know if Santa is real or not, and if I wake up in the morning and the cookies are gone, then I'll know. And if they're still there, I know he's not. Please promise you won't eat them, Mom, please."

And so I promised.

And now I am faced with a dilemma.

Break the promise that I looked her in the eye and made?

Or leave the cookies untouched, and let her know, without a doubt, that the magic of Santa is not real?

1. Christmas is almost here, Christmas is almost here, we love Christmas, blah blah blah. Lately I'm feeling a bit bi-polar on the Christmas cheer front. One minute I'm loving everything, the next minute I'm just cranky. Because although the shingles is doing MUCH better, another of my kids is sick again, and I feel like I live in a land composed of snot and skin rashes and vomit and I'm never going to get out. For instance, this morning my kid sneezed and a huge booger flew out and landed on the presents I stayed up until midnight beautifully wrapping. That's sort of a picture of how life is right now. I'm trying to be the mom who is the Maker of Memories, spreader of Christmas cheer...but sometimes it just doesn't come that easily, you know?

2. We did finally get our Christmas tree, but it was kind of a fiasco too. The place we had planned to go was closed, the other place was almost closed by the time we got there, Lucy was cranky, Evie was asleep...our 2010 tree-hunting expedition may actually need to have its own post. It was that fabulous of an experience.

3. Thanks for all your advice on teacher-gift-giving! I went with the majority opinion, and got Starbucks gift cards for my kids' teachers. Coupled with cards in which I had my children either dictate to me or hand-write themselves what they liked about their teachers. Certain children who are actually capable of writing sentences on their own acted like it was a death sentence to be asked to write a simple thank-you card, and had to be threatened in order to achieve compliance, and then got totally into the project and wrote a whole paragraph on each card. So that's good, right? Does forced thankfulness still count?





4. When you have three little identical stair-step daughters, it means you end up with a lot of little identical outfits in stair-step sizes. Lucy wore one such dress for her preschool program this week; this adorable red corduroy number comes in a variety of sizes and we at one point owned the same dress in size 4T, 2T and 6-12 months. The baby size has now been passed on to my little niece, but the 4T and 2T sizes were still around to be worn again this Christmas. After the program, I thought I told Lucy to hang the dress back up, since it wasn't really dirty and she could wear it again today for her class Christmas party. Today when she was getting dressed, I saw the red dress hanging in Evie's section of the closet, and assumed it had been put on the wrong rack. I pulled it off and handed it to Lucy, who put it on. When I buttoned her up, she said, "Oh, stop buttoning,  it chokes me!" I told her I was sure she was fine and to stop complaining, but I relented and left the very top button undone.

Just now, I pulled a load of laundry out of the washer, and what did I find...but the red dress. In size 4T. Which means I just sent my preschooler to school wearing her little sister's size 2 dress. I guess I'm glad now that I didn't insist on buttoning that top button.

5. I tried to make my sick daughter a cup of hot tea, heavily laced with honey (so she'd drink it), because that's what the American Academy of Pediatricians recommends instead of cold medicine for 2-year-olds these days (and we all know following the AAP's recommendations has worked so well for me lately) and I didn't have any cold meds for someone Evie's age anyway. And I tripped while I was carrying it to her and spilled the majority of it all over the floor, and the table, and the walls. And the little bit left at the bottom (that probably had the most honey in it and should have been the tastiest) she refused to drink anyway. Snotty kid, wet and sticky house. Home remedy = fail.

6. It's just been one of those kind of days today. Can you tell?

7. But it could be worse. It really could be. I just saw a post on Facebook today about a family with three young kids who lost everything in a house fire. Perspective is a good thing, and I truly, truly am grateful for my warm home and loving (albeit snotty) family, and am hereby resolving that there shall be no more whining about spilled tea. (And, if you're local and you'd like to give something to help these folks out, let me know, and I can put you in contact with someone who's is coordinating some relief efforts for them).

For more Quick Takes, check out Conversion Diary.

These are some things I love at this time of the year.

1. Cold mornings and crunchy leaves with frost around the edges.

2. Hot, hot coffee and crispy buttered toast.

3. Preschool Christmas programs--fine family fun. Hilarious and heart-warming.


4. Staying in bed an extra 10 minutes...or more...all snuggled up under the warm covers.

5. "Oh, Holy Night." Most beautiful Christmas song ever.

6. A cat snoozing on the windowsill, soaking up the pale winter sunshine.


7. Sparkling Christmas lights on dark, quiet streets.

8. A 2-year-old shouting "Gorgeous!" when she sees said sparkling Christmas lights.

9. Chai tea spiked with eggnog. A new, unexpected holiday favorite. (thanks, Meg).

10. Opening up the mailbox every day to find actual Christmas cards and letters from friends and family scattered far and wide.

What are your December favorite things?

I've always believed in vaccines. Among parents these days, vaccines can be a hot topic, one some people have strong pro- or anti- sentiments about. Though I don't go around handing out pro-vaccine flyers on the street or anything, I've always been firmly in the yes-to-vaccines side of the fence.

My feelings could pretty much be summed up as follows:

• Vaccines are a huge advancement in modern medicine. 
• Vaccines carry very small risks compared to the diseases they prevent. 
• The American Academy of Pediatrics is a reputable organization whose members know way more about medicine than I do, and I'm going to follow their recommendations instead of something I read on the Internet. 
• And also, though I wouldn't have ever said this to anyone's face, I privately thought that anyone who doesn't believe in vaccines is probably nutso.

Therefore, I've always followed the recommended vaccination schedule and given my kids all the shots that were recommended, whenever the pediatrician said we needed them. The doctor hands me those "Vaccine Information Sheets" before every round of shots, and I glance at them and then toss them away. I just assume it's going to be fine.

And then two days ago my daughter woke up with a huge, angry, itchy red rash that was so sensitive to the touch that she sobbed and screamed for 15 minutes after I rubbed anti-itch cream on it. And we went to the doctor, and the doctor said it was shingles.

"Shingles? In a 6-year-old? But I thought you could only get that if you've had chicken pox," I said.

"Well, she's had the chicken pox vaccine. That can cause it too," the doctor told me.

And there it is. My daughter now has a painful, possibly recurring condition, which she would not have had if I hadn't gotten her immunized. And I can't help but feel some guilt. I have friends--informed, intelligent friends who are not nut jobs--who don't ban all vaccines for their kids, but who request some vaccines and not others, or who immunize on a delayed schedule. What if I had been that kind of mom? What if I had not just accepted whatever my doctor told me was best?

Now, when you step back and look at it logically, the facts are these: anyone who has ever had chicken pox (or the chicken pox vaccine) now has the varicella virus in their system, which means that practically every person in the United States could theoretically develop shingles at some point in their lifetime. If my daughter grew up 30 years ago, like I did, she would most likely have gotten chicken pox, endured a week or more of intense itching and possible complications from the disease, and then still been at risk for shingles later in life. So either way, she still could have gotten shingles. And the rates of shingles-from-vaccine are lower than shingles-from-disease.

But, the truth is, chicken pox is rarer these days. Maybe she would not ever have been exposed to it. And gone through life varicella-free. Maybe she didn't really have to have it.

(That's one of the reasons, frankly, that I've always been so turned off by people who choose not to vaccinate--they are benefiting from the "herd immunity" that we enjoy in this country because of all those parents who do immunize, who do choose to put their children at some slight risk, because they believe the benefits outweigh the risks. The small number of non-vaccinated kids don't get horrible diseases like polio, because the larger number do choose to immunize, and the disease has been almost eradicated.)

The experts say that shingles after the vaccine occurs in  2.6 per 100,000 doses. That's a tiny number. That's .000026 percent. It's a very, very low risk. If I had to go back and do it over, even if I *had* actually read the vaccine information sheet and seen that statistic, chances are I still would have made the same choice as I did before. For all those good, logical reasons.

But. Logical reasons don't make me feel better when I watch my daughter hobble around the house because her leg hurts so bad she doesn't want to put any weight on it. She's hurting, and it's because of something I allowed her to be injected with. And as a parent, watching that, it makes me hurt.

It's harder to stand by your convictions when your child is part of the .000026 percent.

I'm going to go ahead and admit it. I go out of my way to be the Good Parent. I sign up to help with class parties and chaperone field trips. I make sure my kids always have their homework done. If the classroom has a need, I try to fill it.

Partly, I feel like it's my job--I mean, I'm a stay-at-home mom. Isn't being the Good Parent what I do all day? Partly it's wanting to be involved in my kids' schools And partly it's some kind of goody-two-shoes part of me feeling as though I get a theoretical gold star if I'm the best mommy ever.

But there's one thing I have been struggling with for the past few years: teacher gifts!

Somehow it always sneaks up on me, and then just when I'm congratulating myself on having my Christmas shopping almost entirely complete, I realize that I still need to buy gifts for these fabulous ladies who spend good portions of their day wrangling small children. I do *want* to get them something--but I just never know what.



My mom is a teacher, and I remember year after year she used to come home with little Christmas ornaments and coffee mugs that said things like "A+ teacher." And while I'm sure she appreciated the spirit behind the gift, she has been a teacher for decades. The last thing she needs at all is another coffee mug or teacher-themed ornament. I'd rather the gifts I get for teachers be something they'll actually enjoy.

Also, I attempt to be frugal with my Christmas buying. My husband would call me cheap, but let's go with a nicer word, like thrifty. I just don't want to spend a lot of money on a teacher gift, that's all I'm saying. That doesn't mean it has to be crap. I'm dreaming of the perfect present: something small, truly thoughtful, that can be given to a woman I really don't know very well, and that she will be thrilled to receive. And the present is......?

The last couple years I've gone with a small bar of fancy soap in a scent that I let Beth pick out. And I think it's an OK teacher gift. But not a great one.


All you teachers out there--what's the best Christmas gift you've ever received from a student? (Or, in reality, from the student's mother, because we all know that's who's doing the gift-buying here). OR, have you ever gotten something that was really FROM the student, maybe something that they made/selected themselves, that was truly great? Parents, have you ever found that perfect teacher gift? I really need some gift-giving help.

The perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe.

I can rest now. My life is complete. The end.

OK, I can't even really say that I "found" this recipe. It's not as though I had been scouring cookbooks and websites for chocolate chip cookie recipes, testing batch after batch, always throwing up my hands in defeat, until I found this one.

I just knew that whenever I did make chocolate chip cookies, no matter what recipe I tried, something was not quite right. Too much butter=thin and goopy that cools off into hard and crunchy. Too much flour=dry and cakey that cools off into non-flavorful lumps. I had one pretty good recipe that was my stand-by recipe. I got it from an old church cookbook, and it contained the random ingredient of a package full of powdered vanilla pudding. These cookies tasted good, but I always had to make sure I had a package of vanilla pudding on hand to make them. And, if one is attempting to cook using only real ingredients, not powdered and chemical-ized ingredients, then dry vanilla pudding mix is not what you're looking for in a cookie.

And then, the other day, Heather of Muddy Creek Creations posted "Mom's Chocolate Chip Cookies" on her blog. And they looked delicious, and today I made them, and now I can die a happy woman. The perfect chocolate chip cookie! Just gooey and buttery enough to be soft and tasty and melt in your mouth perfection.



I put mini M&Ms in mine, instead of chocolate chips. Because that's what I had in my cupboard, instead of chocolate chips. And if you're questioning the strength of my opinions, considering I was all self-righteous about no "fake" ingredients two paragraphs ago, and now I am showing you a picture of cookies speckled with neon-bright candies...well, go ahead and question them. My food convictions are fairly wobbly. I can easily toss out powdered vanilla pudding and feel that I'm being "healthy," but still make an exception for M&Ms. It's M&Ms! Yummy, yummy M&Ms.

Here's another nice thing about this recipe: it doesn't make a huge batch. This made just under two dozen. It probably would have been an even two dozen if Evie and I had not enjoyed the dough so much. This was the perfect amount for today--enough for me to stuff a Ziplock full and take them along with a meal I was sending to a friend with a new baby, and then have just a few left over for the girls and I to enjoy. Because I looooove baking, but I don't really love having baked goods hanging around the house, because I have no willpower and I just eat them. Make them, enjoy a few, get rid of them! That's what I have to do. And this recipe could easily be doubled if you wanted to make a bigger batch for a group.

So thanks, Heather, for the delicious recipe. This one's a keeper. Click over to her blog for the recipe and details. (warning: she's been celebrating cookie week over on her blog with bunches of scrumptious-looking recipes. Read at your own risk!)

And yes, that's worthy of the exclamation points in the title because I am not a very crafty person. I always have visions in my head of things to make that will be fun to do and look lovely, and then I attempt them, and they look horrid. This fall, I took the girls on a walk and we gathered pretty leaves and nuts and then we attempted to make an autumn wreath for the door. Let me just tell you, "lovely" was not a word that you could put to our finished product (though I hung it on the door anyway, because the girls actually did like it). Oh, what a sad little wreath it was.

But this time, for once, the girls and I made a craft and it actually turned out pretty! And so I have to share.



Now, I realize that these are just paper snowflakes. If you've ever been in elementary school, you've made paper snowflakes. These are not a big deal. But what makes these so fun is the subtle blue and gray patterns on the paper, that make them look extra-pretty, in my opinion.

And where, you might wonder, can one find extra-pretty paper with subtle blue and gray geometric patterns on it? In the recycle bin, that's where! Yes, those pretty designs come from the trash. They are the insides of security envelopes. You know, those envelopes that come with your bills, or that you buy so people can't see through the envelope? Turns out that those patterns printed on the inside are actually very neat looking when you stop to admire them.




Now, before you go admiring me for my cleverness and success at green living--making Christmas decorations out of trash; it doesn't get much more eco-friendly than that!--I must admit that this idea was not mine at all, not even a little bit. I was thinking, as we were decorating the house the other day, that some type of snowflake garland might be a nice touch, and I googled "snowflake garland template," and ran across this wonderful crafty blog called "The Craft Revival" which had a whole tutorial on how to make lovely snowflakes out of old envelopes. Her snowflakes are much more intricate and gorgeous than mine, and she gives precise instructions in case you went to the one elementary school in the world that did not make paper snowflakes and you need some instructions. So go check it out.

The final instructions called for sewing the snowflakes together on a sewing machine with plain white thread. At first I was going to ignore that because hauling the sewing machine out of the closet seemed like too much work, and just glue them to some other string or some ribbon. But gluing each individual snowflake to ribbon and waiting for the whole conglomeration to dry sounded like too much work too, so I went with the sewing machine. And I ended up really liking the look of the slender, delicate thread to hang the whole thing together. And, once I had that sewing machine out, I went ahead and made some curtains for the living room! I've had the fabric for about six months now but just have not gotten around to it, but now I'm very glad I did.

Beth and Lucy and I did this together in the afternoon while Evie was napping. It was great because this was easy enough for us to all do together.  Beth was quite skilfull at it, once she got the hang of it--I can't tell which ones were hers and which ones were mine, to be honest.





Lucy enjoyed using the hole puncher more than she did the scissors, and some of hers may not be perfectly symmetrical, but when they're all strung together the effect is still nice.


 It was everything a craft project should be--fun, simple enough for various ages to do but hard enough to keep their interest, requires no special materials, or in this case actually re-uses materials that would have been thrown out--and the result actually looks like something that I want people to see in my house.

If you're a non-crafty mama looking for a little winter project to do with your kiddos, I highly recommend it.

Actually, ALL my daughters are awesome, but it's my oldest I have to brag about today. I know listening to people brag about their kids is boring, but it's my blog, so I can do that if I want to!

My youngest has had a stomach virus this week. I keep thinking she's getting better, and then she pukes again. (I know! Another post about puke! Bragging and vomit--could you ask for a better post than this?)

The other night, she threw up in the middle of the night. And, since my girls share a bedroom, Beth was awakened by her crying and puking. And do you know what my 6-year-old did, when confronted with crying, puke-covered 2-year-old sister at 2 a.m.?

She cleaned it up herself! I am not kidding.

I only became aware of the situation when Beth came into my bedroom and calmly said, "Mom, Evie puked. I already put the pillow and the pillowcase in the laundry, because they had puke on them."

I went into the bedroom to find my 2-year-old with a quivering lip, but not in screaming hysterics--Beth had already comforted her. There was a tiny spot of yuckiness on her blanket, but the majority of the mess had been on the pillow, which Beth had already put in the hamper. All I had to do was give Evie a hug, get a spare pillow out of the closet, and tuck them both back in. It was unbelievable.




I have watched my friends with older children who are able to be truly helpful around the house, and looked forward longingly to the days when my kids will start being partners and companions, but I wasn't really expecting such above-and-beyond helpfulness at 2 o'clock in the morning, from a 6-year-old.

But that's one of the things I love about Beth. She has a certain cool confidence about her--she sees something that needs to be done, and she just goes out and does it. There are times when this causes friction between us--when the thing she decides to go out and do is not something Mom WANTS her to be doing. But as she matures I am beginning to see how this capability will be such a fabulous characteristic of hers as she grows into a strong, confident woman.

I mean, a kid who takes care of a sick little sister all by herself in the middle of the night--how could you ask for a more awesome child than that?

It's Christmastime now, but we have no lights. We have no tree. I still have little pumpkins and fall leaves and other autumnal things decorating my house.

It's not that I don't love Christmas--I do. Usually I'm all for pulling out the decorations the very day after Thanksgiving--I never have been a Black Friday shopper, and I'd much rather have fun making my house look festive then go out and fight off crowds of people. But this year, between a husband who has been away and a kid who has been sick, I just haven't been motivated to go up to the attic and drag all the Christmas boxes down by myself. I've had great plans of getting it out, of doing some kind of advent observance with my girls, of doing all kinds of fabulous things. But I just haven't gotten to them.

But, there is one thing I've been doing--just one--to make my house seem merry and bright: Christmas music!



I have my Christmas playlist all ready to go on iTunes, and so all I have to do is point and click, and my house is filled with the sounds of the season. It's a mix of old and new, classical and pop, and it fills my heart with joy. I have the same two Amy Grant holiday albums that my mom used to play every year when I was growing up. Nothing makes me feel like it's really Christmas more than belting along with Amy, "And you don't have to be an an-gel, to sing harmony...you don't have to be a child, to love the mystery!" It takes me back to every childhood Christmas season I ever had, instantly.

The last few years I've also been taking advantage of free holiday downloads from Amazon and iTunes. My new favorites are "O Come all Ye Faithful" from Pomplamoose, and "Christmastime All Year" from Rosie Thomas. Anyone else have some spectacular Christmas tunes I should know about?

I know that soon--this weekend, I have promised the girls--we will decorate our house to the nines, and I'll get in my Christmas groove. But in the meantime, I can at least close my eyes, listen to the songs I love, sing my way into some Christmas spirit.

Today is cold, and grey, and dreary. Today is soggy. Today is a day when I would rather spend the whole day on the couch sipping tea than do anything else at all.

I'm not sick. I'm not overly tired, nor depressed. There isn't anything *wrong* with today. There just didn't seem to be anything particularly *right* about it either.

So I did the only thing I could think of to do, at that point. I pulled on my apron and started cooking.

I simmered ingredients for soup. I mixed up dough for bread and set it on the counter to rise. And then I combined butter and sugar with flour and eggs and other yummy things and popped them in the oven and ten minutes later Evie and I each had a cookie, hot from the oven.



And the house was warm, and full of good smells, and I felt better.

It's not the healthiest coping mechanism--turning to food for comfort. I know that. Everybody knows that. But it doesn't matter. There's something about the act of cooking that does something for me. You take these disparate ingredients, and you use your skill and knowledge and experience, and you get as a result something that is hot and delicious and nourishing. For me, it goes beyond just the biology of a pleasant experience on the tastebuds. Cooking is a little tiny act of creation, a mundane miracle that I get to have a hand in performing.

How did that commercial used to go? "Nothing says lovin' like something in the oven!" And for me, it's true. Cooking doesn't just feed my body; it feeds my soul. And for a day like today, it's just what I needed.