Views From My Window - Christmas Eve Morning

Oh, it snowed! These photos are from this morning before the day completely ran away from me. It has been snowing off and on throughout the day which means it is even more impressively white and glorious outside right now. I wish you could all see this perfect white Christmas. It is gorgeous!


Perhaps I should have put that picnic table under the deck for the winter. Oops.


My sweet neighbor came over early this morning without being asked to clear my driveway and walks. An hour later another neighbor arrived to clear the new snow and the pile of heavy snow at the bottom of the driveway left by the snowplow. In the meantime, I had received two phone calls from friends asking if they could come and shovel for me. Do you see why I am so grateful to live here? We are surrounded by the best kind of people and I love them.


I am still trying to get my way too excited to fall asleep children to calm down and nod off. Only Calvin has succumbed to exhaustion at this point. I have quite a bit of cleaning to do before switching to Santa mode and I need them to go to sleep!!

Christmas Eve

It is Christmas Eve morning and the house is silent. The children are all still tucked in their beds, their dreams filled with reindeer and brightly wrapped gifts. I am looking out the window of my bedroom where the ground has been blanketed with several inches of fresh snow. The branches of the pine trees are heavy and sag under the weight of it all. More flakes are lazily drifting down from a gray sky. It looks like a postcard advertising a white Christmas. Absolutely beautiful.

Today will be filled with pastry creme and caramel, last minute wrapping, sledding, board games, excited children and maybe some cookie baking. This afternoon we will have a lovely dinner with good friends and then I am going to take the children for a drive to see the holiday lights. Tonight the children will go to bed in their new Christmas pajamas after opening just one gift. Calvin let me know this week that one of his gifts accidentally ripped a little bit (insert sheepish smile).

Tomorrow the children will come tearing the down the stairs to see what Santa brought these good little boys and girl. They have been so good. The separation has been very hard for each of them, but they strive to shoulder this new burden bravely. Each of them has grown and changed so much in the last six months. There have been many days of struggles and tears, but I believe they know that they are loved very, very much.

Tomorrow it will be familiar and comforting as they have come down these same stairs on Christmas morning for the last five years. This year, only their Mother will greet them, but I am hoping the thrill of the gifts will numb that reality for them. At noon, their Father will come to spend the afternoon with the kids, exchanging gifts and playing with the shiny new toys and I will go upstairs to my room to read or clean or maybe just take a nap. Christmas for children should be shiny and warm, loving and familiar, exciting and peaceful. I hope my children feel all of that tomorrow. I would like to take away their worries and fears for the future, bottle them up and set them aside, letting them concentrate only on the happiness of this season.

I hear little feet padding down the hall so I am off to start the day. If you don't mind, I am going to pop back on here throughout the day to share with blogland what is happening here in our little home. Christmas Eve is a time for family and for being together and since both of my families are far from from me this Christmas, I am going to share it with you. I hope you don't mind. Merry Christmas Eve.

Late Night Thoughts

Unsuccessful meeting with ex tonight. Feeling drained and so frustrated that everything I do is still not enough when only one of us is meeting our responsibilities. I wish that I could do more and be more and not need to count on anyone else at all.

edit: I got into bed and decided I sound whiny. I am fine. Fine. Fine. Fine. I can handle whatever decisions I am going to have to make in 2010. I have realized that I was being prepared for this time in my life for many years. It is here now and I am fine. Fine. Fine. Fine.

Candy Christmas Ornaments

Yesterday we invited some little friends over to make candy ornaments. So easy and fun! You need candy canes, starlight mints and some melting chocolate (I used the little white wafer kind from Michaels). We also used sprinkles and Christmas marshmallows, but anything you had on hand would work. You also need a non-stick surface. We used silpats, you could use wax paper too.

Just let the kids make circles with the white chocolate and then fill it in with candy. The candy canes are fun to make into hearts using the white chocolate for glue. The broken candy canes can make all sorts of shapes like snowflakes. When they are done creating, pop your trays outside in the snow for a few minutes and they're ready! Loop on some ribbon and they are ready to hang.


A Christmas octopus - my favorite ornament of the day.


We decided to take ours outside and hang them in the tree in front of the house. We also hung some dried orange ornaments we made this week. To make the oranges, slice them thinly and place on parchment or a silpat. Bake at 250 for one hour and them lower the temperature to 150 for two hours. Or, you can be like me and forget them in the oven for five hours and they'll still be fine! Take them off the tray to cool and finish drying and then thread them with twine.

Get Your Groove On

Bug Lover on My Neck

Look what I made for Sophie! I think she's going to love it though she is bound to get a few double-takes when she wears it to school.

Teacher Gifts

Teacher gifts went out today - a hand made posy pin. Three for Max and three for Sophie. One more thing done!


More gratitude this week and I know I am forgetting things.

1. I am grateful for Marsha who came over on Friday to help with crafting and then came back when I could not get my sewing machine to sew a straight line (I had it threaded wrong) and needed to finish the gifts for the baby boys. I forgot to take a photo of them, but they were super cute!

2. I am grateful for Ken and Brad who spent a long time with with Max on Sunday night helping him construct his fourth grade invention. It would have taken me all night and many tears to accomplish what took 2 engineers and a 9 year old about an hour. Bless you.

3. I am grateful to Gary who stopped by today after I told him about the growing mountain of pure ice forming below the faucet on the front of the house. Though several people had looked in the basement - including me, Gary spotted the problem right away. The water was not shut off to the front hose. I am grateful that the pipe did not burst. I am grateful that there are so may people I can ask for help when I know something is wrong but do not know how to fix it.

4. I am grateful though my waistline is not, for the four (yes four!) plates of cookies dropped off tonight by sweet families in our ward. I told the children we could have cookies and milk for breakfast and they went to be giddy with anticipation for morning. Conveniently, my digital scale stopped working a couple of months ago. I am not buying another one until after the holidays. Thank you kind baking friends.

5. I am grateful for the excitement of a five year old. He greets the postman and the UPS man with a huge smile every day and just loves the thrill of opening brown packages and finding the colorfully wrapped gifts inside. He is so excited for Christmas! It is the perfect age - he still believes in Santa, he knows what Christmas is really about, his prayers right now talk a lot about listening to the good guys and not the bad guys and being helpful and kind, he is young enough to be grateful for every gift yet would be satisfied with a DVD and a bag of candy. I love this age. I wish I could bottle it up.

Chub Buds

Here's what I know how to do with my new fancy-pants camera. I can turn it on, use the auto and manual focus, change the lens (though I have yet to take off the macro lens because it rocks!) snap photos, upload photos and view and delete photos from the camera. That's it - and that much makes me so happy. My goal is to learn something new this week - like what one those other buttons can do.

Making Me a Little Sad Today

Children are so perceptive and they worry about everything. This beautiful gift has caused Sophie some tears this weekend and that makes me sad. It is difficult to walk this new tightrope of separation without having tender young feelings become bruised. She is wrapped this morning in a blanket of excitement about Christmas and giving homemade gifts to her teachers. I think I put her fears to rest, but do we ever know what little uncertainties still linger in the far recesses of a child's mind?

Kid's Christmas Ornaments

On Friday we had a crafting extravaganza. I pulled out a bunch of crafty looking supplies, Marsha and Emily came over to help and we made ornaments like they were going out of style.


Here's the supply run down.

Portion of a wrapping paper roll, yarn, glue and ribbon. The one in the back is made from wooden red beads, pipe cleaner and yarn.


Piece of a wrapping paper roll (toilet paper rolls would work too), crumpled paper from a book, ribbon and glue.


Lid from a can of frozen juice, fuzzy fabric, beads, yarn and glue.


Folded paper from a Goosebumps book (I figured no one would mourn the loss of a Goosebumps book), beads, a scalloped circle punched out of green card stock, glue.


We made the little bags to hold their treasures with a paper lunch sack, yarn, an old Christmas card and glue.

This Little Boy

This little boy got a letter from Santa. He was over the moon excited! Remember that field trip we took last Saturday? One of the things the kids got to do was write a letter to Santa in the old post office. Yesterday, a reply came in the mail.

Calvin carefully folded it up and keeps it with him in his pocket wherever he goes. If you ask him about it, he will get this embarrassed, happy look on his face and show you his letter and tell you that it says he is on the nice list! So sweet.

This Little Girl

This little girl hauled all of the gifts out from under the tree yesterday. She sorted them into group by recipient and then started drawing venn diagrams of their attributes.

My kids are weird.

Little Santa

The sweetest things about these photos - besides the adorable chubby baby? That baby is laughing at Calvin in all of these shots. Calvin L.O.V.E.S. this baby. Adores him. Smothers him in attention. Calvin would have made a great big brother - but since we could not give him a baby of his own, getting to help me with the daycare is the next best thing right now.