The Gregarious Growler: February 2013

Yeah, I'm out of order. I had a baby! Six months ago, yeah, but I'm still using her as an excuse, sue me. I really did start thinking about costumes earlier than usual this year. We were going to try out the cowgirl thing. Then I realized how going to the store is pretty much something I do on rare occasions anymore and I opted for "Halloween Fairies." The girls were not sold on the idea until I mentioned glitter for their hair. BAM! My idea was officially a hit!

We hosted a Halloween Party over lunch at our house with some other homeschool friends of ours. I made mummy pizzas and the little mandarin orange jack-o-lanterns. My friend made the cute monster pudding cups. These are the only pictures I snapped of the girls in their "costumes."

We had a nice relaxing Christmas at home. The girls helped Peter make cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve. Peter was sure Santa would want red and green M&M cookies (not the peanut kind;), so that's what we set out. I think it's interesting how excited the kids are about Santa coming considering I almost never bring Santa up in conversation. If they ask me a question, like, "We don't have a fireplace, how is Santa going to get in our house??!" I just try to give them a simple response that seems logical to them like, "Well, we HAVE a chimney, it just goes to the basement. So, I guess he will have to go down the chimney and come up the basement stairs!!"

As far as presents went, Graci received a Rosetta fairy doll for her birthday. I think Piper has been a little jealous ever since, so she wrote a letter to Santa asking for a Tinkerbell doll. Graci then decided she wanted, "The fairy that makes the bubbles." Um, right, the fairy that makes the bubbles? As if I have any clue what you are talking about!! They've seen a couple of Fairy movies, so I'm guessing this is where all this came from (movies at my friend's house!). I proceeded to educate myself on Wikipedia about all this fairy business. It's really quite complicated and I won't bore you with the details, but I finally figured out she was referring to "Silvermist," one of Tinkerbell's buddies. I pulled up a picture on my phone to confirm. It's just way to easy to figure things out without them having a clue at this age. Tinkerbell was easily purchased at Target, but to get Silvermist, I had to venture online to K-Mart.com and ended up paying twice as much in the store with the shipping. Oh well, it was done!!! We're writing letters to Santa much earlier next year.

Another tricky thing I've discovered is trying to relate Santa to the true meaning of Christmas, something I do bring up on a regular basis with the girls. Right now all I've come up with is that Santa is helping people be happy and that is what Jesus wants us to do. So, essentially, Santa is like one of Jesus' helpers. Yeah, any suggestions on that would be appreciated. I am trying to be really careful not to discuss a partnership between them because 1. I didn't care to do Santa in the first place, the girls thought it up on their own, and 2. Santa and the true meaning of Christmas really have nothing to do with each other! Duh! Now if we believed in Saints...like Saint Nicholas...

We didn't do much for Christmas dinner. If I remember correctly, we didn't have much in the house and we were all enjoying the generally laziness of the day. Plus, we were getting ready to do some cooking for Peter's sister, Jenny and her family when they came to visit the next day. If I remember correctly, we had some appetizers. Tortilla roll-ups and pigs in a blanket? It's just not much fun to plan when Mommy and Margie have such a restricted diet :( Enjoy the photos!!