Farewell to the Grinch

Of course there is no time for this on Christmas Eve, but I do want to wrap up the Grinch before Christmas gets me even further behind.

Day 19- Christmas Family Home Evening and Teacher Gifts

I actually had an FHE in mind that would go along with making teacher gifts, but Alyssa planned a Nativity themed FHE at Activity Days so we had her do that for us instead. She did not want to act or have us at out the parts though, but Chloe and Alex couldn't fight the urge to be Joseph and Jesus.

I had problems coming up with a good teacher gift, but finally decided on clay pots made into reindeer with a rice krispie treat bouquet. I was pretty excited but when we were shopping and planning, Alyssa saw plastic buckets and said wouldn't it be easier to just buy those and put treats in them? I often have to be reined in and reminded that I am going over the top. So we just cut rice krispie treats in shapes, dipped them in chocolate and bagged them up. After two pans of shapes I got bored and just cut rectangular bars and we dipped the bottoms in chocolate. The kids helped with the chocolate and sprinkles and made cards for their school teachers, piano teacher and taekwondo teacher.

Alex's cards are on the left and Alyssa's on the right.

After Alex saw Alyssa's snowman he threw away his fingerprint snowman card and made this one instead...

Day 20- Christmas Orchestra Concert and Taekwondo Christmas Party

For weeks Alyssa kept telling me about the school Christmas concert and the songs she would be playing on her viola, so I was confused when the school never sent home any information. I called that morning to see what time I should be there and they informed me that they were only performing for the students. Lame. Alex said Alyssa did great and she promises to perform her songs for me, but not until Christmas morning.

Tuesday night we had the taekwondo Christmas party. We were there for 3 hours, but unfortunately I never managed to get the camera out.

Day 21- Snow Day

This was our first day of Christmas Break! Since the snow is not coming this year, we made our own snow day. We started with Borax snowflakes, which I saw on my friend Sally's blog last year or two years ago? I was too lazy to look up the exact instructions so I just boiled water, then threw enough Borax in it to make it cloudy and then dipped our pipe cleaner snowflakes in it for a couple hours. Alyssa only made one snowflake and Alex didn't want to do any, but Chloe was enjoying it and even made (with my help) a snowman and a candy cane. When Alex saw that you could make other shapes he did make an A for Alex.

We also threw in some blue food coloring but by the next morning they were mostly white again.

This next close-up is mostly to show you all that I have stopped biting my fingernails again. Can you see? It's been 5 weeks.

And now our decorations are hanging over the kitchen sink.

Next up for our snow day, was ice skating. I admit that I was in a BAD mood that day. I had a two day headache that was making me dizzy and nauseous and my patience was very thin, and the kids were having some obedience issues that day as well. Not a good combo. So I finally snapped, which I don't do very often at all, so it scared the tar out of my children. I was just done with the Grinch. I felt like instead of helping them enjoy the season it was only making them say what's next, what more can I have. I told them I was done with it and then caught myself in the middle of my crazy and walked around outside for a few minutes until I could come in and be nice again. We all apologized and talked about how I needed them to listen to me if we were going anywhere because I didn't feel too well and once everyone was breathing normally again, we went off to ice skate. It turned out to be the best thing for all of us. We enjoyed each others company and it brought back the Christmas cheer. I really do love the advent but I guess I was bound to have one why am I doing this day. Thankfully as the day progressed I remembered exactly why I was doing this.

Chloe actually skated on her feet this time. Last time she made me push her while she sat on the bucket. Now that she actually likes skating we need to go more often since it is free (included) with our Recplex membership.

To end our snow day we made six sided snowflakes, by following the tutorial my niece Aspen posted on their blog. Super fun and very pretty. Alyssa made one and then ran away, because she was deeply entrenched in book 5 of Fablehaven. Chloe made one and had a hard time cutting through all the layers so she had me make the rest of hers by telling me what shapes to cut, and Alex made a bunch. Lots of fun Aspen, and we even learned that if you mess up on the last step and don't cut at an angle, you get a circle snowflake, and those were pretty too.

Alex likes to decorate the hall by his room for each holiday, but he only made a few pictures for Christmas this year, so we added our snowflakes to his work.

Day 22- Grinch Games

Remember when I said that Polar Express was one of two heavily requested events? Well this was the other one. I made this up on the spur of the moment last year but they still talk about it. I wanted to make it more polished and planned this year, but I never had the time. No worries, they love it just the way it is. They were sent off again to dress crazy like the Whos and make Who hair and then we played steal the presents from under the tree (and hide them) and Grinch sardines. Oh, and this year I found a bunch of Grinch quizzes online, which we took, and nailed. We know our Grinch trivia. Anyway, that's it. Simple as can be, but they really love it.

We put a cup in Alyssa's hair and made a ponytail over it, but she hated it and changed it immediately. I did beg her to let me get a couple pictures first and she obliged.

Chloe's hair was in 4 pipe cleaner loops but you can only see two.

Her idea of a Who face

Looking good Al

His who face

Alyssa sometimes thinks silly is a synonym for embarrassing so she was reluctant to dress up. She did decide to wear this ugly shirt that we got for Seth to wear to ugly shirt day, that he forgot to wear. And she mismatched her socks, one with pink toes and one with purple. Pretty conservative in her wildness.

After we took the cup out of her hair she made it into what she called a satellite with a paper plate ponytail.

Day 23- Gift Exchange

The Grinch assigned the kids one of their siblings to buy a present for so we shopped and wrapped the gifts.

The kids wanted to ice skate again but I had my hands full with a little bit of this.

Seth told me he wanted me to make cookies to share so I made a list of people I wanted to take them to. People I serve with at church, people Seth serves with, neighbors, friends, people who have taught my kids, people with kids we have taught. I kept trying to narrow it down but still had almost 40 families on my list. I wanted to bag the cookie idea but Seth said we should at least take something to the Bishopric and Stake President, and thankfully some of them are married to people I am friends with or have served with along the way. I also decided to include the people I visit teach since Seth took pies to the families he home teaches earlier this week. And to the rest of you, I SO badly wanted to do something for everyone so please accept my virtual cookie platter. I also had a really cute idea for how to deliver cookies, but couldn't find everything I needed to make it happen. My family had to once again remind me that I was going over the top, so it was into a gift bag with the cookies and out the window with my cute idea.

And with that, our Grinch advent came to an end. Last night I was writing my last rhyming Grinch card to the kids, explaining that for day 24 they would carry out all of the usual Christmas Eve traditions and bidding them farewell and Merry Christmas. Seth was sitting next to me and started laughing, so I looked up to see what had amused him. He said Awww, the end of an era. So maybe my goodbye was a little cheesy and maybe I forgot for a second that the Grinch wasn't real, but it actually was kind of hard to say goodbye. This whole experience was magical, both for me and the kids, even with my one psycho meltdown day.

Now on to Christmas Eve traditions...

And since I doubt you will see me lurking around in blogland tomorrow, Merry Christmas!