We Got a Hippopotamus for Christmas!

Or at least Jane did. Because only a hippopotamus will do. Hahahaha. (It's an obnoxious kid's Christmas song. Google it.)

Well, folks -- Christmas came and went and officially was a hit. Let's take it from the top. For your viewing pleasure, the anatomy of a Christmas Eve and Day:

(But first, the cute little Sugar Pop, Sugar Pop pop -- this one's for you Emily. Apparently I haven't been posting enough pictures of Janie Boo, so hopefully I can appease the masses by sprinkling a few photos throughout. Hahaha.)

Christmas Eve day was a blur of activity and excitement. On the agenda was decorating the annual Gingerbread House, opening Secret Santa gifts, opening all other family gifts, acting out the Christmas story, presenting the Christmas jammies and new ornaments for 2009, making cookies for Santa and leaving out carrots for the reindeer, reading our new Christmas book saved especially for the night, a rousing game of "Mother, May I?" and FINALLY tucking the kids into bed (while visions of sugar plums danced in their heads). Whew! I think Scott is slightly exasperated by my yearly additions to all the "traditions" I like to have for the Christmas season. Hahahaha. Perhaps it IS time to cut back. Maybe next year. Hahahaha. This year we were oh so privileged to have Uncle Dodo (my brother Freddie) here to share in the festivities.

For the record -- the Sam's club Gingerbread House Kits are FAR inferior to the Costco ones. Far. Far. Far.


The fingers in the mouth and the constant fount of drool is a Jane staple these days.

In what has become another tradition I have instated here in our household, we like to open all non-Santa presents on Christmas Eve. The kids like this idea. Between Scott's parents and sister, and the Secret Santa gifts they picked out for each other, there was all kinds of goodness going on here.

Ethan picked Jane...


Jane picked Sophie (who LOVES the "make-up" (Lip Smackers) that "Jane" picked out for her)...


Sophie picked Grace (who apparently can never have too much junk)...


and Grace picked Ethan (although as Grace said in exasperation by the end of the day "Why do we have so many games??").


These adorable little shoes were in the package from Scott's parents for Jane...


and so was this gem of a birthday hat (here modeled by Ethan doing the pageant pose the girls commanded him to do).

My dad also sent a package which arrived late in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, and provided yet another opportunity for gift opening! The kids were super stoked and readily ripped into that one as well. At this point I was beginning to think that Santa didn't even need to come to our house with all the stuff the children had gotten!

Quick tangent: Here is a snapshot depicting what the boys have been doing almost the whole Christmas vacation -- I'm ready to call for a moratorium on the Wii, anybody else with me?

After dinner we turned to the serious portion of the evening with our rendition of a Christmas Pageant. Although when you have a 6 year old, a 5 year old, a 3 year old, and a 23 year old Uncle participating, you have to accept that it will include a few silly scenes as well. Luckily we caught it all on film.

Mary (who wrapped the baby Jesus in the "swaddling clothes" herself), Joseph, and the angel.


Riding into Bethlehem on a donkey.

After our Pageant was done we quickly switched gears back to gift-giving -- the Christmas Jammies and ornaments. I forgot to add the ornaments to the list of items that were being made in our Santa's workshop last post. Let's just say that these were a great idea in theory. In actuality, they were a bit of a pain to pull off. First of all, finding the right gingerbread recipe was a pain. The first batch I made was all crumbly and fell apart. Luckily the second one I tried worked like a charm. When it came time to actually decorate the Gingerbread girls and boy, the icing was a pain to work with. Not to mention the fact that I had never decorated before using piping and "flooding" as a technique. All my "knowledge" came from some late night Googling I had done a few weeks before. I definitely should have practiced doing these sooner than the night before I was going to be giving them to the kids! Oh well, they still came out cute enough -- and as we discovered the next day, they can be glue-gunned back together easily enough when dropped and broken into pieces (Sophie did it. To Ethan's.).

Left to Right -- Ethan, Grace, Sophie, and Jane

And now for the moment the kids had been waiting for -- Christmas morning! "Did he come?" was Ethan's first question as he climbed into our bed at 6:45 that morning. Indeed he did, although we made them all wait until it was at least 7 AM before we let them go down the stairs. And while we left Jane sleeping, we made sure to wake Uncle Dodo up to join in the fun and games.

The loot that Santa left.








Coming down the stairs -- and oh so excited.


Ethan with his 3 gifts...



Grace with hers...



and Sophie with hers.


Even Freddie made it on the Nice list this year (after telling the kids he had been on the Naughty one for years. And yes, that is a Whoopee cushion, in case you were wondering).



All the kids got a hat and mittens in their stockings -- unfortunately, Ethan's head is so big that his size 7/8 hat didn't even come close to fitting! It's a good thing Santa kept the receipt. Hahahaha.


I was happy to see that Ethan was totally excited about the desk, but of course I knew that the Mario Kart for Wii would trump everything.


Let's just say that Grace wanting Santa to "surprise" her this year paid off big time. She was beyond surprised when she opened up this baby! The first words out of her mouth after seeing it was "I won't write on her with a pen!" That's good to know. So far I've only had to take it away from her once to hide it.



I just have to put a plug in for this book -- it is so cute. I love it. It's a collection of a dozen classic stories (such as Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Little Red Riding Hood, Puss in Boots) all beautifully illustrated by Mary Engelbreit. Grace LOVES it (possibly more than Sophie) and has already had me read her all the stories several times.




The Sugar Pop finally woke up and so graciously posed with her gifts -- including the infamous hippopotamus that was in her stocking.

Santa was good to these kids, indeed. Everything was a big hit and they all loved all of their presents. That is always gratifying to see. The last Christmas picture I'll post is of Freddie passed out on Sophie's bedroom floor after his early morning Christmasing and then setting up Sophie's little people princess castle and being coerced into playing with her.

I wish I could have done the same!

The rest of the day was spent chilling and relaxing, playing with new toys, watching "A Christmas Story," and making a chicken and sausage Gumbo. Delish. A perfect end to a pretty much perfect day. Made even more perfect by the knowledge that my mom, my sisters Laura and Amy, and brother Jacob were all on their way up to visit for the rest of Christmas vacation. (More stories to come in a later post).

I'll close with a few extra pictures of our now FOUR month old baby. Can you believe that? I sure can't. The time has simply flown by. Before you know it she'll be rolling over, sitting up, and cutting teeth. And hopefully sleeping through the night. Perhaps there are others out there with children that spontaneously start to do this, but none of my babies have. As soon as the house is cleared of company, and we're back to our regular schedule and routine, little Janie Boo is in for some serious sleep training! It's a good thing she's such a cutie. :)

Finally finding that thumb. Kind of.

Santa's Workshop

Christmas is coming the goose is getting fat, please put a penny in Santa's helper's hat. Apparently our house is becoming an extension of the North Pole with all the project making that has been going on. Here are some samples of our handiwork.

Up first is Ethan. Each kid in his class was assigned a Secret Santa pal this Christmas. Tomorrow is the big reveal, but a couple of weeks ago the kids were supposed to create something homemade to give to their secret pal for the 1st gift. After tossing around some ideas that weren't exactly doable, I suggested we could buy some beads and he could make her a bracelet. The end result? Color me impressed -- he made a trio of bracelets and after I tied them together with a pretty ribbon I was this close to putting him into business selling them on the side.









Grace immersed herself in the creative process as well and made bracelets for Sophie, a friend from school, and herself before I made them go up to bed.

Here she is decorating the envelope for the bracelet she made for her friend. After she was done writing I had to get a close-up of how bizarrely she had written her name -- for some reason she wrote it as its exact mirror image in reverse.


"What." She said when I asked her about it. "That's how I write it sometimes."

Our dining room has officially been taken over as Santa's workshop for the myriad of other Christmas projects that have cropped up -- such as finishing a stocking for Jane. Luckily, when I made Ethan, Grace, and Sophie's a couple of years ago, I had started some for me and Scott as well. Those never got completely finished, so I decided to make mine for Jane instead. All I needed was the background fabric to sew together and voila!

And now for the project I am the MOST excited about.

For the past few months I've been searching high and low for a desk for Ethan from Santa. I figured it would be helpful if he had something in his room where he could store all his school stuff and where he could finish up homework, etc. Unfortunately, I was not having any luck on craig's list and even though I stopped by to check out the inventory at Goodwill and The Salvation Army whenever I was in the neighborhood, I still wasn't finding anything that would work. And since real, NEW furniture was way out of my price range, I had almost resigned myself to the fact that a desk wasn't going to happen this year when I stumbled across a little jewel called Julie's Junque. Part consignment store, part pawn shop, part yard sale -- I can't quite describe the vibe of its atmosphere. But oh, is this place fabulous. I mean, come on. Junk spelled with a Q-U-E?? It doesn't get much better than that. For the past year and a half I have passed by this store on a near weekly basis but never ventured in. Sure, I've been tempted, but it just didn't happen until one day after dropping Grace off at preschool I just had this hunch -- deep in my gut -- that if I went to Julie's I would find the desk I was looking for. And find it I did. The best part of all? It was a steal of a deal for only FIVE BUCKS! Another 5 bucks and I was all set with the chair. Sure it needed a little sprucing up, but that's what made it even more fun. Three cans of spray paint, some Mod Podge, a map of the world, and a can of Polyurethane later -- the final product is awesome. Or perhaps as Ethan would say -- it is "awesomeness."

The Befores

The Afters

Not too shabby, right? In our next example of creativity I'd like for you to pay particular attention to Grace's outfit. Last Thursday her preschool class had a Christmas party and she came home with a cute little ornament they had made in school using her handprint to make a family of snowmen. I had her pose with the ornament under the guise of getting a picture of the snowmen, but in reality what I really wanted was a good shot of the "Christmas outfit" she wore to her party. And in case you're wondering, this is her idea of what an elf looks like.





And now for the last workshop item I'll illustrate how cellophane and ribbon make any gift look better. For teacher (and visiting teaching) gifts this year I quickly realized I wouldn't have the time or patience to do anything super fancy or extravagant -- or homemade for that matter. When I saw these cute mugs at Wal-Mart I decided that I could fill them with some candy, wrap them in cellophane, and put a ribbon on it and I'd be good to go.

Pretty cute, don't you think?

With only 4 days left until Christmas, I think we are pretty much done with projects. I went ahead and bought the pre-made Gingerbread House Kit at Sam's over the weekend, so that will save me the hassle of having to make anything else for our annual Christmas Eve decorating. Now all that's left to do is enjoy the holidays! With Freddie now here for the duration, the festivities have started for sure.


Last night kicked off our tradition of moving the table right in front of the television to play "Ticket to Ride" while watching funny stuff on TV. Unfortunately, having a baby who is still not sleeping through the night -- and in fact, is actually doing WORSE at night than she was a month ago -- is definitely going to cramp my style this holiday season. :( So, as fun as it was to stay up until almost midnight playing games and watching shows last night, I don't think I can make that my M.O.

Okay, I'm almost done. I'll end with tonight's Family Home Evening fun. Given that a certain second child of mine is notoriously difficult to keep still during FHE, I decided that if I involved Grace in the lesson we'd have a better shot at getting her to actually cooperate and pay attention. In a genius move, I convinced her to dress up as "Sister Friendly" to be our guest visitor for the evening. When I was a kid, my favorite thing in Primary was when Sister Friendly would come to visit with her apron of pockets. Each pocket had something in it from that month's Friend magazine -- a story, a song, an activity, or whatever -- and she would call on different kids to come up and pick one out for Sharing Time (fellow New Orleans 1st Ward Primary children -- please tell me you remember this, too!). For our purposes, I had Grace help me pick out a couple different stories and activities from this month's Friend along with a few songs to write on slips of paper and put in the pockets of her apron. Completing her costume was on old ski cap, my sweater and scarf, and a ribbon tied around her waist. She looked like an eccentric and adorable little bag lady.

As I'm sure you can imagine, she LOVED dressing up and was really funny as well, ad-libbing as she went. Claiming she was from the North Pole and that she had parked her sleigh in the garage, she proceeded to hand out presents she had collected from around the house when her "lesson" was over to all the kids who had been good. All-in-all it made for a memorable Christmas FHE.








And not to be left out -- here's the muppet. She wanted to be Sister Friendly, too.


Alright, that's all folks. Merry Christmas to all and to all a goodnight!