I can’t believe what a slacker I’ve been lately! But…we did have a busy week and auntie Denna brought baby Nathan to visit last weekend. I was just about to do a post on that when I realized that I still have pictures on my camera from the night we put up the tree. Unfortunately, they are all pretty blurry. The boys did some cute cuddling thing in front of the fireplace and Brian took about 20 pictures of that, but the rest is garbage.

The run down: went to our typical spot, the Boy Scout’s lot nearby. Purchased tree. Brought tree in house, unwrapped it to find some interesting breaking branches. Oh well. Put on Christmas music. Whipped up a mix of Wild Rice Soup and made grilled cheese sandwiches on sour dough bread (seriously…heaven!!), put the decorations on the tree while we ate, then we watched part of The Nutcracker. Clarification on that last part: we were supposed to put in Elf, which is hysterical and we all love it. BUT…a song came on while we were decorating and I told the boys that it was from the Nutcracker. They wanted to know what in the world the “Nutcracker” was…so I started telling them the story and…whatever…they fixated on the “nutcracker turns into a soldier and fights the rat king” part. They begged us to find it for them to watch. Brian obliged, searching Netflix while shaking his head and saying, “only you could make them think the Nutcracker is cool”.

Can you tell that the tree decorating happened on a Sunday (the 5th actually) …obviously there was a Bear’s game that day given my children’s attire.

While I’m here, I’ll just throw some more stuff up that I was supposed to post like last week!

1. “Help Me I’m Melting”.

Last year, the boys and I got all bundled up to go out and build a snowman. Well, the snow was NOT the right kind of snowball-making stuff, so we made a pile of it, added the details from our “snowman kit” and I said, “look…he’s saying ‘Help Me…I’m Melting!’”

Last week, we had some good snow that was perfect for snowmen. The boys really really wanted to play in it outside Friday morning. Unfortunately, I had to get lunch made and all these other things done before I ran off to the airport to pick up Auntie Denna and Nathan. So…they were left to their own devices in the back yard. Logan came and requested the snow man kit. I felt bad that I couldn’t be out there helping, but they figured it out…they just made another “Help Me I’m Melting” <—seriously…that’s what they named him!

“Help Me’s” hat blew away the other day and we had to dismantle him due to some more severe and FREEZING weather, but he’ll forever be remembered in our hearts and blogs

2. Brady thinks he’s funny wearing my boots:

 

3. Quick Craft Project – Snow Globes (we did this last year in Logan’s class, but I guess it was on Agent Oso the other day so the boys were all crazy about making them. Brady and I had some searching and shopping to do on Monday while the older boys were at school)

supplies: baby food jar, glitter, hot glue gun, something to put inside the globe (last year I found these great holiday erasers that were huge…Brady and I found some stuff at Michael’s), felt to cover the jar lid or pipe cleaners

1. Clean out baby food and remove the label

2. Fill the jar almost to the top with water and add a little glitter

3. Hot glue your object to the inside of the baby food jar. It has to be tall enough to be seen maybe 1/2 up the jar. I actually glued a penguin to a drum to make ours tall enough.

4. Screw lid back on. I tried to hot glue them shut, but it didn’t work so we just hot glued pipe cleaners around the opening.

5. Shake until the glitter gets good and “melded” into the water. voila! (p.s. I totally got this craft from a mom in Logan’s class last year, but she made them when she was a kid – totally cool!)

Where’s Aiden you ask? Playing video games (groan!) He made his later. 

Logan wanted a pipe cleaner at the top of his despite my protests. All the gold on the top of the other one is Brady’s HEAVY handed glitter pouring. Poor penguin was drowning in the stuff!