Smart Cookie

A little fuzzy but I love her face in this one.

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this before but Anna is a pretty smart little kid. I'm keeping her Christmas presents in the trunk of the car for now and she knows exactly where they are. One day we went to the beach and I was trying to keep her from looking in the trunk as I was trying to get out the beach toys and such. Apparently that made an impression because a few days later she informed me that she knew where her Christmas presents were. I tried to play it cool and may have even said something like, "I can neither confirm nor deny the presence of presets in the trunk." Unfortunately I had told her that day at the beach that she wasn't supposed to look in the trunk because that's where the presents were. Oops.

Once we established the location of the gifts, we talked about why we don't want to try to see what they are, even though we can. I told her the story of when the older kids in my family were little and they had a babysitter who showed them how to unwrap their presents very carefully to see what they were and re-wrap them again. It was one of the saddest Christmases for them because then there were no surprises on Christmas morning and they wanted to play with what was under the tree before Christmas but couldn't. After telling her this story, she seemed to fully understand that it's better to wait.

Then the other day, Anna asked if we could put her tutu under the tree. I wasn't sure what she was talking about (although I did get her a tutu for Christmas) and Anna told me that she saw it in the trunk the other day when Jason was getting something out of the trunk. Oops. At least I wasn't planning on having it for a Santa present. I told her no and she hasn't brought it up since. Of course with her, I know it's not forgotten. Good thing Christmas is coming so soon.

Ornaments

Since our Christmas decorations are all in storage, I decided to try making our ornaments this year. The thought being that it would be more economical. I'm not actually sure if it was or not but it turned out fun and Anna even got to help on some.

I divided them into two kinds, those I could do with Anna around and helping and those I needed to do on my own. The latter category included those that needed a glue gun. With Anna, we made clothes pin reindeer. Mine looked pretty standard. Anna, not to be tied down by convention had a whole slew of different looks.

Most of them looked like the one on the far right. We decided they were girl reindeer (so no antlers). The other kind we made together are pom pom snowmen who are not quite done. They are put together but need faces and such. I'll post those when they are done.

The ornaments I made on my own are mainly things glued to styrofoam balls and fun with buttons. So, here are the styrofoam ball ones, mostly involving ribbons. I made two of each one.

I especially like the way the red ribbon looks on this one. I wish I had thought of it before I did the white ones but oh well.

These are split peas. They took a bit a work but I really like the way they turned out. I divided the ball into four parts and alternated the round and the flat sides of the peas for variety.

Then onto the button ones. I first got the idea for these from Martha Stewart and went from there.

These are more red and burgundy. I'm not sure why they look so pink. Then I worked on putting buttons on the styrofoam balls.

This one is a tad harder to see because of the way Anna is holding it. It's a Christmas tree out of buttons with the buttons getting larger as you go down.

And a snowflake. Anna helped a little bit with these last two and discovered the hazards of the glue gun. Mainly that the glue can come through the button holes or ribbon and burn you.

We also noticed that we lost the baby Jesus for our nativity set so I glues ribbons on the rest of the characters and put them on the tree (Joseph is in the picture with the red and green wreath).

So this is what I have been doing with my evenings when I'm too tired to go shopping but have enough energy to sit up at the table. I'm quite pleased with how they have all turned out and hope to hold onto them for some time.

Christmas Decorations

I feel like I've been a bit behind with Christmas decorations this year. After all, we only just got our tree up this past weekend. Here are some of the things we have put up to make our place feel just a little more festive.

We got a wreath for our door and added the ribbon. It's a real wreath and it's kind of nice to have that whiff of pine scent when we open the door to go in or out. A trick I learned from my sister Kristen for hanging wreaths is to use a ribbon wrapped around the wreath and just stapled to the top of the door. I love this because then you don't have to deal with the hangers that inevitably make the door hard to close.

We got a light up garland to go around the door to the bedrooms. I don't know if you can tell because the picture is dark but I added little ribbon bows all around the door for extra fun. Side note on bows, these ones are made with wire ribbon which is great because even if your bow doesn't turn our perfect (and whose does?), you can just manipulate it until it looks how you want it to and it will stay.

A simple Merry Christmas sign like our Halloween one. I thought about using shapes and then adding the letters in black but I was afraid they wouldn't show up as well on the darker colors of red and green. That is also our count down to Christmas candy chain. I wanted to find a chocolate advent calendar like we had when I was growing up but couldn't find any and wasn't willing to drive to every Longs Drug in town so we just made one. I got a thing of European chocolates and Anna loves cutting it off every night. We don't mind the yummy chocolate either.

Our tree part one. Sadly, it covers up our sign but oh well, this was really the only place to put it. It took us a couple of days to get it decorated and Anna was getting a little impatient so she decided to take care of it herself. Here she is posing (in her jammies) with her decorations of white pom poms and the Christmas cards we had gotten up to that point. She was also putting all kinds of toys under it and calling them birthday presents.

And here is Anna with our tree once we got our real decorations on it. I'll do another post on what's on there because we made all the ornaments ourselves (not counting the candy canes of course). We do still have to stick a star on top and I have one more ornament to make but this is pretty much it.

How Do You Know?

Anna is still figuring out the difference between Christmas Day and the Christmas Season. As we talk about it being Christmas time, she will ask, "It's Christmas?!?" To which I calmly explain, again, that it's not Christmas day but the Christmas season and she will know when it's Christmas day. We've put up an advent chain to visually help with this concept, I think it might be sinking in.

Along those lines, the other night she came out of her room and asked, "Are you sure Santa is coming? How do we know he's real?" I was able to evade the questions by pointing out it wasn't time for Santa yet and to go back to bed but it got me thinking. As other parents have said before, it's a little strange to lie to her about something so significant in her life. Generally I try not to bring it up too much. She has been able to pick up the whole Santa thing from the world around her but we don't use him as a threat to be good or anything. Of course, if she's asking pointed questions like that at 3, I have a feeling I'm either going to have to spill the beans while she is quite young or start lying through my teeth.

The other part that got me thinking was how Anna knows that the things she can't see are real. My initial thought was to tell her that he is real because we, her parents, have told her he is. I found that I was wary to say that because the same can also be said of Jesus and I don't really want to create a crisis of faith when we tell her the truth about Santa. There are some similarities between the two men: you don't see them, only what they leave behind, there are books and songs about them and they are both very kind and do nice things for others. Yet, there is a big difference in that one is real and the other is not. Fortunately, there is the Holy Ghost who can testify of the reality and divinity of Jesus. I realized that as we teach Anna about Jesus, we have to be sure to point out when the Spirit is there so she can recognize that feeling too and be able to know the difference between what is really real and what is just her parents lying to her.

Happy Thanksgiving

We had a lovely Thanksgiving in Hilo with Jason's parents. Sadly, even thought we took the camera, we forgot to take it out and actually take any pictures. Alas. It was more of a low-key weekend anyway, not much to take pictures of. Mostly we ate and chatted and hung out.

Before Thanksgiving, Anna and I did a craft of a turkey crown. I remembered this idea from the Hilo library where they made them after story time last year. We started with a plain paper plate that I cut the bottom bit off. Then I cut out feathers from all the colors.

She loves doing crafts. Her bangs were cut not long after this.

Anna used her trusty glue stick to glue them onto the plate.

While she was working on this, I made the turkey head for the front. I cut out what kind of looks like a bowling pin and colored it brown. Then a little orange triangle for the beak, a bit of red for the wattle and some googley eyes.

Put them all together and you get a turkey body. I thought the eyes were a bit big and gave him a bit of a Nick Park character look but Anna said he was cute so we went with it.

I cut out a strip of paper for the band and put it all together. I used the glue stick for this too and I have to say, if you let it dry without touching it, it's surprisingly strong. She wore it to a ward Thanksgiving dinner and was running all around the church and while she occasionally lost a few feathers, the band held the whole time (which is especially impressive since it's a bit back heavy).

It was really cute and she loved wearing it until almost all the feathers were gone and it was driving us crazy. So that was our Thanksgiving craft this year; simple, cute and fun. We are working on Christmas crafts which I plan on posting throughout the season. Hope you had a good Thanksgiving!

Gratitude Tree

As I was lamenting having to take down our Halloween decorations, a friend gave me an idea to keep up our tree. We turned it into a gratitude tree. Now, every night before we read scriptures and say prayers, we each choose one thing that we are thankful for, write them on a leaf and tape them up on the wall. Anna loves this. She reminds us if we forget and likes the put the leaves up (although she may just like to stand on the back of the chair to reach).

We each have our own color leaves and can't repeat what is already up there. It's been really really cute to see what Anna says. She has put up the nature ones like the Earth, shade, trees and wind. She also frequently wants to say friends but we have to keep reminding her that we have that one already. I try to list something to be thankful for that came up that day. It's getting a bit harder as we have so much already up there but it's been a fun way to keep an attitude of gratitude through the Thanksgiving season.

Funky Tree Friday

A little while ago, we went on a hike and found this tree.

I don't remember what the rest of the tree looked like, I think it's a kind of palm. I can only assume these are roots but they kind of look like worms or fingers coming out of the tree. Creepy.