Betty Crocker Eat Your Heart Out.

Little elves at work making Christmas cookies.
One of our favorites...Rolo Cookies!

Miss Tessa. Teacher. Mother. And quite The Disciplinarian.

You know how kids can sometimes really play in to their gender role? Boys will be boys. And, girls will be girls. This can be so true. (Not always as evidenced by our dear Tessa having a spiderman birthday last year and being spiderman for Halloween.) Most recently it has been very true. Tessa has been living up to the sweet and sometimes whiny and demanding young lady that one might expect out of a toddler girl. She has been in to lugging my knock off (please don't tell her!) patent-leather Coach purse around because her bedazzled kiddy purse just will not do. She has already appreciated the difference between mommy's real plastic credit cards and her pretend plastic credit cards. Unfortunately this has also caused me be that woman at the grocery store with a belt full of groceries and no money to pay for them! She will play with her toy cash register, but of course it has to have real money in it. And, when she goes to sit down in front of a computer to do some online shopping well it certainly has to be in front of the real HP laptop and not her plastic kid computer. Geesh, Mom, this only has the ABCs and doesn't even have a link to GAP! Her plastic jewelry isn't good enough either. She must have real white or yellow gold and she prefers it to have a little sparkling gem along with it. One thing she will settle for though is an inanimate audience that she can order around or cuddle depending on her mood. Her babies and stuffed animals usually are sufficient. But it seems this holiday season the wooden snowmen are her pupils of choice. Poor wooden snowmen. If they only knew when they were bad or not listening that they gets socks put over their heads to cover their eyes! Yikes. She's tough.


This is a terrible picture but it captures Miss T holding a lecture with her snowmen. She was showing them a picture of her brother. Not sure if she was telling them to avoid him or what? Wearing my glasses makes her look especially academic. But lucky for the snowmen, no one was 'in trouble' as the purple cover-your-eyes-for-discipline-socks are no where to be found!

UM Hoops

Troy took the kids to the basketball game yesterday afternoon so I could hold a serious gift wrapping session. $5 got them in the door, in the bleeders but plenty of room to stretch out, take off their shoes, run around and cheer to their liking. Troy's contribution to the concession stand wasn't as cheap though! GO BLUE!

Gingerbread Houses

Mom totally redeemed her deadbeat mother status this week and had the pleasure of helping Nate's kindergarten class make Gingerbread Houses! What fun! Creativity was not the challenge with these munchkins. Reminding them NOT TO LICK THE FROSTING KNIFE and encouraging more candy on the house than in their little mouths was the bigger task at hand. I only had five kids at my table for about an hour. I can't believe this woman wrangles these 20 kids every and all day! Yikes. Three cheers for teachers.

Nate with his masterpiece...which was merely pieces of graham cracker sans candy within the next 24 hours!

Rewards v Bribery

So, we have been working on molding and fostering Nate's good behavior at school. He has had a record run of REDS (that means no warnings and a 'great day' in the kindergarten world). We've been providing some motivation for this good behavior. Nate decided this week he would like to sleep downstairs if he had an all red week. Some may call this a small form of bribery, but letting him set his goals seems to be working. Although sometimes he does need some redirecting and consideration of scale when trying to negotiate his reward. The Wii and trips to various places seem to keep coming up. We were happy to settle on the FREE plan to sleep downstairs and stay up late on the weekend!

Zoo Lights

We bundled up with Na, John, Lynn and kids and went to the Toledo Zoo Lights Before Christmas this weekend. It was cold. Poor Allie was determined not to wear her coat. But a little wrestling and straight talking from mom and dad and a big cookie as a reward seemed to finally win her over. Nate seemed to be more focused on going to every concession stand available rather than checking out the lights display as well. A seat in the stroller and a basket of nachos kept him quiet. Tessa and Kelsey were good. Those firstborn children can be difficult divas sometimes! As usual, our favorite part was the dancing trees where the lights are set to all of our most favorite Christmas songs including the Hippo song!

The plan was to get the coveted Christmas card picture. With Allie growling and Nate with nacho cheese all over his face, this didn't happen for either family. But, we did still get some good pictures...thanks to Lynn and her mad photo skills...oh, and patience too.

This was one of my attempts at a picture of Nate and Tessa together. They were sitting on panda bear...until they fell off!

Smooshy Carrots.

My son is a good friend. His loyalty and wisdom were glaring this week. Nate came home from school and the contents of his backpack were a little unusual. He unloaded 5 or 6 ziplock baggies of smooshed, rotten carrots. Hhhhmmm? "From where did these come?," we asked Nate. He just kind of shrugged his shoulders, didn't say anything and kept up with the conversation that was already taking place that did not involve smooshy, rotten carrots. So, I asked again, Nate, what are these and why are they in your backpack? Not giving him enough time to give a response I jested, did you think you were going to have to feed the deer? He jumped right at that opportunity and said, yeah, uh-huh, yep, I thought I would feed the deer. The deer love carrots. I chuckled at this but was still perplexed at the amount of smooshy, nasty carrots he was toting around. Was he stealing other kids' lunches or what? I knew they were not his as they were not the baggies that I have used to pack snacks and lunches. Me, the good mother, recognized this fact. My curiosity did not abate and I persisted with the questioning. Finally, Nate unbuttoned his lip and disclosed that one of his best buddies and locker partner, Owen, does not like carrots. Well, that was stating the obvious. So, Nate, being the good friend that he is, told Owen that he would take them home with him and dispose of the evidence that Owen was not eating his carrots! This I found hysterical and frightening. And, of course, I had to share it with Owen's mom. Not to rat out the poor kid but mostly to share my chuckle and recommend that she chooses another vegetable for Owen's snacks. I also told her that I would report back to her if I found any smooshed, rotten celery or cucumbers in the near future!