Christmas Prep

From December 2008

We're getting ready to welcome our families for Christmas and involved in prepping for that as well as helping the boys celebrate the season.

Henry has been really into the advent calendar that i made last year. He gets to put up a new felt ornament on the santa calendar every morning. He's been doing a great job remembering and we use it to count down the number of days to Christmas-- which showed me he can reliably count to 15 for example.

Tonight we made snowflakes and this weekend at our friends' annual Christmas party we're going to do a gift exchange and the kids get to make gingerbread houses which we've done most every year since Henry was born. It's fun to have these traditions with friends and family because it's a great way to mark time. When we first started the gingerbread houses i think there was Carys, Henry and Helen. Last year Silas was too little to participate and this year baby Walker will be sleeping nearby if i had to predict.

We've decided the keys to success doing "gingerbread" houses with very little folk is to a) use graham crackers (who has time to bake gingerbread), b) give each kid a baking sheet covered in tin foil, contains mess, is a nice base for the house and enables you to transport them back home when you're done. While Tab and i construct the houses and glue them together with icing we give each child a few graham crackers on their tray to ice and decorate. They can eat what they decorate and when they're done the house is usually dry enough to decorate.

From December 2008

By the way, we made some progress with soccer. Henry is still usually at the back of the class but he's loving it and i saw him make a goal right at the end when they each get to practice kicking the ball into the goal. We staved Silas off from his baby until after class and even though he whined through most of the games he asked for more after each one. I predict he'll tolerate more and more each week until he decides it's actually fun.