Christmas Day

We had a nice, relaxing, lazy Christmas with just our little family of four this year. Campbell woke up at 5:30, which means I got up then, as well, to keep him away from what Santa had left until the rest of the family was up. He helped me make pigs-in-a-blanket while we awaited the others. Helene came downstairs at about 5:45, so I sent her up to wake up Daddy. John is usually the first one up, but he was on call and worked late on Christmas Eve. So, we finally got everyone downstairs before 6:00am, but John decided to torture the children a little more by telling them they had to do a happy Christmas dance first:

We tried to do everything kind of simple and small-scale this year. The kids seemed to enjoy their gifts. And, as always, the boxes and bows are almost as much fun to play with as the gifts inside:

I snapped this picture mid-morning because we were looking at the hundreds of birds that landed in the cottonwood. I posted it here because it shows what kind of weather we had for Christmas Day. It hasn't snowed in several days, but there's still some snow left on the ground. This was the warmest day we had had for a few weeks; it got up to about 45 in the afternoon. The sky was blue and the sun was warm enough that we enjoyed sitting out on our deck mid-morning, drinking coffee and reading new books, while the kids ran around in the green space and got some fresh air.

This is me peeling apples and Helene eating the peelings:

I had so much fun making this pie. It's from a Southern Living recipe that I saw before Thanksgiving and had been wanting to try. It calls for 4 1/2 pounds of apples! It's a balancing act trying to pile all of those apples on.

Here's our Christmas spread, which the children found to be suspiciously like a Thanksgiving spread. Helene is in the background with a plastic rose in her teeth. She thought I was taking a picture of her. We had turkey, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, stuffing/dressing, rolls, and gravy. It was all wonderful, and we should be eating the leftovers for days. We used the Christmas china. I think it was the fanciest meal we've ever had with just the four of us.

John prepared a delicious herbed roasted turkey.

The pie baked down some, but was still huge. And yummy. The crust was wonderful and not too hard to make. I highly recommend this recipe. (I did not do the sauce that the recipe mentions, just the cornmeal crust and double apple pie.)

Take-Apart Station

In Campbell's first grade classroom, as well as at a summer camp he attended last summer, there was a take-apart station. People would donate old equipment (typewriters, phones, etc.), and the kids could take them apart with tools and just explore. Ever since, the kids have been asking to take stuff apart at home. We don't usually have stuff sitting around that I would like to have destroyed, though.

For his birthday, Campbell got a used laptop computer. I finally got around to taking the old desktop computer out of his bedroom this last weekend. So, the kids are having a great time taking it apart. They woke up early on Tuesday and spent an hour working on it before school, then another two hours on it when they got home in the afternoon. I don't know how much they're actually learning, but I think it's a good experience, good practice using tools, and a good way to take out their destructive tendencies. And it's better than watching TV!

Harry Potter Scars Are Cool

When Campbell was about 18 months old, he tripped at the museum and fell into the corner of a display cabinet. I rushed him to the ER, and they glued him up. He now has a nice vertical scar on the right side of his forehead.

Now Helene will have one, too. We took the kids to the Rec Center today to swim. Helene was in John's lap on the twisty tube slide. They had been sliding over and over again and having a blast, but this last time, Helene sat up instead of leaning back and bonked her head on the tube. She has a pretty deep horizontal cut. The lifeguards did a quick patch-up job, then we took her home, so John could do a better job.

He used the kitchen table as a surgical table and glued her up. Helene was very brave.

John told Helene that stitches create less of a scar, but Helene insisted that she wants a scar! I'm writing this down, so we can remind her of it when she's a teenager. She asked why anyone would not want a cool scar on their forehead. I told her 16-year-old girls are silly and get upset about any little blemish on their face. She laughed and said she'll never be that way. That's my girl!