Merry Christmas!

On the Road Again

We were very lucky this year to have neighbors who were also driving east for the holidays, so we got a lift all the way to Amherst. Where, in addition to being greeted by ADORABLE YOUNG CHILDREN, we were picking up the bestest Christmas present - a new-to-us car.

The timing couldn't be better. (Okay, it could have by about 6 weeks - the latest round of repairs - but realistically speaking, the timing couldn't be better.) The much-loved Civic is showing its age. But we can't afford to buy a car. However, my mom can't really drive anymore, so they no longer need two cars and offered hers to us. The only challenge was getting to Amherst to pick up the car, so again - having a lift all the way to Massachusetts was such a boon.

The one downside to this travel arrangement is that since our generous drivers wanted to do the drive all in one day (we generally stop in Rochester and spend the night at my brother's), by the time we hit the Mass. border, it was dark. Couldn't see my hills!

OTOH, they like showtunes and scifi so we managed to remain entertained for the 13 hours in the car (stopping only for gas and bathrooms and customs).

But! We still managed to arrive before the children were in bed, so I got my squeezy hugs :) Lots and lots of squeezy hugs. (Until Kyp arrived, that is. At which point I was promptly discarded in favor of doggie chasing.)

'Tis the Season to Bake Cookies

After Christmas Observed₁ with my family in Amherst (plus a brief stop for the irresistible popovers), we drove to the north shore to spend a couple of days with the niecephews. On Monday, Arthur's parents came over and rolled out/cut/decorated sugar cookies with the kids. Neecy looooooved dumping colored sugar on everything :) Neffie is already better than I am at using cookie cutters.



We also took Neffie for a quick shopping trip to buy a gift from him and his sister to their parents. According to him, these are the items Mommy and Daddy wanted for Christmas:

• Cheezits
• Oreos
• Spiderman toy
• Stuffed Disney monster

He is the very model of a modern four-year-old, that's for sure.

And then on Christmas Eve day, we made some chocolate chip cookies for Santa. Neffie is now at the age where when he wants to help, he's actually being helpful - no eggshells in the dough ;^) I also pinched off a sample of each of the individual ingredients (except for the raw eggs) so that he could taste them. Flour on its own doesn't taste like much. Baking soda is just salty. But put it all together? And you get magic!

Stalking Santa

This year, Neffie was really into Elf on a Shelf. He loved looking for Freddie every morning. And he's hyper-aware of Santa and loot and Getting All The Toys Ever.

We'd gotten them an inflatable globe. A) Because it's useful to have one, and B) because this year when we were stalking Santa via NORAD, we had a 3D representation to learn about the world as we checked in with Santa's latest known coordinates. There is a looooot of ocean. And he doesn't want to go to Arizona. (I was confused at first; I mean sure, he has the Latin surname, but he's too pale to get pulled over and asked for citizenship papers, so what is he worrying about? But it turns out he remembers a conversation we had over a year ago when I reassured him that the scorpion and tarantula in his icky bug alphabet book weren't in Massachusetts, so he was safe. They were very far away in Arizona. So he wanted to find Arizona on the globe to make sure he didn't go there, because it's scary. Kid has quite a memory, I tells ya'.)

Anyway, we spent some time looking up different places on the globe as Santa made his stops. Watched the NORAD videos. He did wander off to watch television after a while, so while it was a good distraction for quite a while, it wasn't the same obsession as last year.



After helping to quality assure the cookies (wouldn't want to give Santa bad product, because it might result in bad presents!), Arthur and I had enough sugar to dance along to Mary Poppins. Sadly, the cutenesses wouldn't dance with us :( Maybe next year! (However, both children spent the week wandering around singing showtunes - Neecy was singing Tomorrow and Neffie was alternating between Jolly Holiday and  A Spoonful of Sugar. In fact, he was often filking as he went. "It's a jolly holiday with you, Dad." I am so proud!)

I once again abused my special Auntie powers and motivated the kids to help clean up some. We have to pick stuff up off the floor; we don't want Santa to fall down! If Santa trips over toys, he might drop the presents he's carrying and they could break.

Always appeal to a small child's base greed. It works every time.

My, what mighty big teeth you have!

I swear that Neffie had me read Little Red Riding Hood at least once a day. I was the wolf and he was LRRH. (Ob: knitting photo - LRRH cloak I knit for Neecy) We had conversations about what favorite treats should go into the basket for granny.

We also got some puzzles for the kids. Neffie is really good at them, but he gets frustrated easily if it takes longer than he's used to. So a lot of the adult supervision consists of reminding him that this is actually a very hard puzzle and he's gotten a lot of it done already all by himself because he's done such a great job. Just coaching him along to continue, while acknowledging this is a very hard puzzle. It worked - he eventually finished the 100-piece puzzle of Fenway Park. (Although he didn't want advice on organizing the pieces by border vs. interior, etc. He fits pieces together by instinct, but doesn't have a formal process - which is why the larger puzzles are so challenging for him. He needs to learn to translate his instinct into a concerted plan of attack. Which he doesn't want to do, because he hasn't done it before and doesn't see the value in it. *sigh*)

Anyway, thank you to my brother for another fabulous Christmas Eve dinner (mmmm, roast beast...). I hope Santa enjoyed his cookies :) And oh! It was fun going along with Santa to pick up stocking stuffers. I got to play the role of enabler, which is the best.


<----------------  This is what happens when Auntie helps Santa pick up stocking stuffers :)

Merry Christmas!

Now we're in the city proper with Arthur's folks. We're introducing them to our new copy of Power Grid before we disappear to the annual Staxmas and see a bunch of you all at once.

The new car had its own stocking hanging above the woodstove this morning! (The outlaws recently retired their Taurus, so were passing on a bunch of Taurus supplies to us since that's the car we had just picked up. A stocking full of surprises!)

We went for a walk in the Arboretum. It felt VERY good to be back in JP, to be out on a sunny day, and to see hills around.