Getting Ready For the Man in Red

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas around here anyways.  We have had a lot of snow and over this weekend, a lot of ice.  I spent about 2 hours chipping ice off vehicles today, good exercise.  The trick, of course, is to let the car run for awhile, but even with that, I still had ice from 1/4" to 1" thick to chip away.  Then there was the little problem of the car not wanting to budge from it's spot.  I had Skyler help push, then chipped/shovelled away some more snow/ice from around the wheels, and rocked it back and forth till it came loose.  (I had long lost Skyler by this point.)

He had taken his shovelling talents over to the snowpile left by our plowing guy, where he and Sean were digging a fort.  (Although it looks more like Sean is taking a coffee break).

Evie found a snow saucer and a place in which to slide.  Sky kept digging the hole till it pretty much went to China (funny how one can't get him to spend the same amount of time on clearing a sidewalk!), and Sean ended up in the tree house, checking on his construction from last fall.  (He had started putting a proper roof on with odds and ends of construction material around the house....stray fans and vents usually end up being added to it as well).

Inside, Evie helped me make cookies for her school's Cookie Walk.  "Come and get all of your baking done in a few minutes" is what the posters for the event advertised.  We contributed some gluten-free fare, then went to the walk to buy our own cookies, technically so we would have a supply to last through the holidays, but in reality, they barely lasted the weekend!  Mommy is going to the gym a couple of extra times to make up for it....

I don't have pictures yet of the tree and our Griswold-like Xmas light display outside.  As of today, some of the lights have gone out due to the ice, and our candy canes are half buried.  Still they look pretty at night.  Sean has it all wired up to timers, and I have no idea what settings he has them on, as they come on at all kinds of odd hours.  But anyway....

With just a couple of days to go until Christmas I suppose the big question is "are you ready?"  I try not to stress overly about it all...the meaning of the season is lost then.  But I do have all the presents bought, most wrapped, (and under the tree, the heck with preserving the Santa myth, as I have run out of room to hide them...Evie just thinks they are for friends), and just a few odds and ends to get sorted out.  I also have to remember where I've hidden the rest of the gifts, as this is another little problem that Bob and I have EVERY year.  We seem to hide things so well that we forget where they are, the result being that the kids get some cool Easter presents that they had thought they were getting at Christmas!

Then there's the whole Elf on the Shelf thing.  I don't have a proper one, just a tree ornament of one (that Evie said we needed to buy because Sean is bad and needs to have an elf watching him), sitting on a shelf, and not getting moved very often.  Sean, when told that the elf reports back to Santa, immediately set up a video camera, wires, antennae, and other paraphernalia because in his view, Santa wouldn't be able to see him without a proper camera and means of transmitting the image.

One more picture, and that is of Evie at her school concert.  She did very well, even performing a little piano solo (Deck the Halls).  I was pretty impressed, as this was a surprise for Mommy.  She was also proud as punch to be wearing her first "high heels" (Suri Cruise Shoes) which we had bought an hour or two before the concert.  I just about flipped when I found out they would be dancing a jig, thinking that she was going to twist an ankle, but all went well, and she was dancing away with no problems.

This is the Polar Express segment, where each of the children had a little box decorated as a train car that they had to pick up and walk around in.  A big event for Evie this night too was her wearing her Chinese pearls for the first time.

All of the kids had a marvelous time and the concert was great fun.

Merry Merry Christmas everybody!