It seems like longer than a week ago that the kids had their last day of school. Wednesday they had their candy cane walk. They walk around the nature trail of our subdivision and find the hidden candy canes along the way. Hayden was excited about this, until he realized it was like 85 degrees out, then he wanted no part in it. Yes, I know, most of you reading this are thinking 'what I wouldn't give for it to be 85 degrees'. Even for us that seems too warm this time of year. I'm disappointed because my electric bill is supposed to be super low this time of year due to the lack of air conditioning. When they got home from a hard day at school of having parties, going on their candy cane walk, playing board games, and watching movies, I had made them a 'Welcome to Christmas Vacation' with red streamers to run through. Hayden was terrified of walking through the streamers for some reason, though. The other two thought it was great. Then, I had hidden parts of Santa's Suit hidden around the house in Christmas decorations and they had to locate them- because Santa can't deliver presents in his underwear and suspenders.
Thursday the boys were most pleased they had spent all of Tuesday night cleaning the house, because they just got to play- and didn't have to spend their time cleaning the house. We ended up making Reindeer cookies- which were delicious, and not difficult at all to make. I think I'm finally getting the baking cookies thing down, I just take them out when I think they aren't done- and surprisingly, they're done. All those years spent over cooking the cookies, and this whole time it was just me leaving them in like 2 minutes too long. Lesson learned. Undercooked is best, nobody every got sick from raw egg anyway, that's just something people tell you to deter you from eating delicious cookie dough, but my college roommate and I lived on the stuff for six months, and we turned out fine.
We also made mini ornament cupcakes, complete with a pretzel hook. The boys then made Santa hats and Christmas tree cones, that turned out pretty cute. Peyton glued Popsicle sticks to his cone, and painted it all green. Hayden just painted it green and added little baby pom poms as ornaments, and Calib painted his red, and glued felt and pom poms to make it into a Santa hat. I'm pretty light on Christmas decorations, but after all of our crafts this year I think I'm pretty well stocked. Hayden spent most of his day playing with his toys. I walked over at one point to see all his toy story guys sitting in two groups, with buzz all alone. I then heard him say "The fourth person voted out of Survivor Toy Story= Lotso, bring my your torch" Later I heard him calling out 'Immunity goes to Bo Peep', so apparently, it lasted for quite awhile. I never did find out who won- but I'm pretty sure it was down to Woody and Slinky.
Friday was pay day- we have direct deposit so it comes in around midnight Friday morning. I knew I wasn't going to want to deal with the crowd at Walmart for my grocery shopping trip, so I got up at 1 in the morning, and went and got our food for Christmas Dinner and the week. Only problem they apparently don't anticipate people coming to buy a full cart of things at 1 in the morning, and the only lane open was the 20 items or less lane, so I had to pile things on the counter, get a new cart and constantly go between the two. It was annoying, but less annoying than shopping with all of Land O Lakes the next day.
When I got up Friday morning, I got the boys dressed and we went over to Publix to pick up a couple of things I hadn't gotten the night before, and dropped them off at Justins. Asa and I had decided we would only get each other Christmas presents if the budget so fit the middle of the month paycheck, and while it did- that mid month check came two days before Christmas, so I had to go out that day to get his presents, and I didn't want to take the boys because 1. I knew it was going to be madness, and 2. I didn't trust them not to spill the beans about what I had gotten. Going out then was a nightmare though. I had to wait through 4 green arrows at the light on Dale Mabry and Van Dyke, game stop was out of Xbox controllers, and Kohls not only had no pajamas in Calib's size, they also had zero boxers, besides the over priced Haines. I ended up going to 6 different stores, I had planned on 3. But, I got everything I needed, and went back to claim the kids from Justin, who was awesome to watch them for me. By the time I got home, Asa was out of work- and his shopping trips took far less time than mine, so I quickly wrapped his presents, and then we invited Justin over for take out to thank him for putting up with my loud kids for a couple hours.
After dinner, we noticed it had snowed in the living room. It really was just a dusting of the white stuff (notebook paper) but good packing snow for snowballs. So, we put on our hats and headed out to play in it. When the song of Asa's choosing started, we picked up the snow, made it into snowballs and threw it in the other teams territory. Whoever had the least snowballs on their side at the end of the song was the winner. Asa crossed over into the boys territory and was therefore disqualified, leaving only me and Hayden on our team. Needless to say, Justin, Peyton, and Calib were victorious. Hayden didn't really seem to care though, he just laid down and started making snow angels in the snowballs. Asa has also been teaching Calib how to play poker, so we played for a little while, until Calib had some crazy amounts of luck and the rest of us were broke. In a bored moment, Asa complained about not having enough Xbox controllers for Calib, Peyton, Justin and him to play dungeon defenders. I ended up giving him an early Christmas controller, and they spent the rest of the night happily playing their video games.
Christmas Eve we all woke up pretty late, so I made us santa pancakes for brunch, complete with a strawberry hat, and a whipped cream beard. The boys quickly changed the days till Santa number to 1, and punched the very last punch in the board. I knew I would have to fill their day, or they would wander around bored, so the last punch was to draw a activity out of the Christmas jar ever hour from noon to 6. Peyton had gotten in enough trouble he was one strike away from losing privileges for 24 hours, so he spent most of the day in his room, trying desperately to avoid getting the last strike, and therefore losing video games on Christmas. (He had asked for some new ones). At noon, Calib pulled out making cookies for Santa. He happily rolled some chocolate chip cookie dough into balls, with Hayden, and we all ate some of the leftover dough. We were sure Santa wouldn't mind. At one, we played pin the nose on the snowman. Peyton played, and luckily won, or his poor sportsmanship could have been his downfall. Hayden was so far off, I thought he was going to pin the nose on the wall.
At two, we made a chimney, since Hayden was quite worried about how Santa was going to get into the house. We told him if he made one, Santa could use his magic to make it real, So, I cut out the template, and Calib and Hayden laid the bricks with cement (the rubber kind), and hung some socks as stockings. I helped a little, because by the time it was two I was pretty much done watching the Bucs embarrass themselves. At three, we made sugar cone Christmas trees, with green frosting and m&ms. Peyton participated in that one, because I think at that point he was ready for a snack. At four, Hayden made a clay pot Reindeer, complete with a red nose. And Calib made a clay pot snowman complete with ear muffs. At five, Hayden and Calib made some Popsicle stick wreaths, and painted them green. It was the last of our crafty Christmas activities, because at six, we played Christmas Minute-to-win-it. We decided it best to play as a team, to try and keep a lid on the poor sportsmanship that runs rampant in our family. For each task completed successfully, we each got 5 marshmallows in our hot chocolate. The first task one of us and to complete successfully was to eat a cookie by getting it from our foreheads to our mouths without using our hands or dropping the cookie. This is harder than you may think, but Peyton came through for us in about 45 seconds. The second task three of us had to successfully stack 21 cups in a Christmas tree shape. Asa and I came through, with time to spare, but none of the kids could make it happen. Our last task was throwing ornaments into four cups, which we completed in just under the 60 second time limit. I ended up giving everyone fifteen marshmallows anyway in their hot chocolate Santa mugs anyway.
We had the usual Christmas Eve dinner of finger foods, complete with the Sattler family tradition of crab meat dip, and the new addition of the peanut butter ball. The boys opened their new pajama's and put them on, as Waterstraut family tradition states. Then we all watched various Christmas shows we had been DVR-ing for the last month or so. I found Phineas and Ferb more entertaining than I thought it would- mostly because they changed the title song to Christmas Vacation instead of summer vacation. It was pretty catchy. Then Hayden left out is reindeer food, muttering about how he doesn't think thats what they eat, but he'll put it out anyway. Asa and I commented on how the large birds that frequent the streets of our neighborhood for food would probably be pleased if the reindeer didn't like it. Just before bed, it was time to leave the milk and cookies out for Santa. Each of the kid picked one cookie to leave, and Hayden misunderstood what we were doing and took a bite out the cookie. When we explained to him those were for Santa, and he should put it back on the plate he started crying and saying 'But I don't want Santa to know I ate his cookie! He'll be so mad!!" I didn't figure it was worth the argument, so I let him eat that one, and pick a new one for Santa.
We read the boys the Night Before Christmas, and tried to see if they could name all the reindeer. They only had 3 of them before they started spewing out random names of Dixie, and Donald. We let them all have a sleepover in Peyton and Hayden's room, and wrapped up the door to the hallway in crepe paper so they couldn't come out to the livingroom and see all the presents, or wake us up before we wanted to be woken up on Christmas morning. We put out all the presents. In our house, Santa only brings one present, and the rest are from me and Asa. This is good for a few reasons. 1. You don't have to hide the gifts once you wrap them. 2. You can tell them you're wrapping presents, and not to come in, instead of waiting till they're gone or asleep. 3. You can put out presents right away, instead of having to wait until everyone is asleep. It's a pretty awesome system I came up with about 9 years ago. Genius on my part, if I do say so myself. Santa did remember to eat the milk and cookies, and wrote a note thanking Hayden for making the Chimney. He even put a candy cane in Calib and Hayden's sock on the chimney, but a rock for Peyton since he refused to help. I did decide last minute not to make Calib's netbook his Santa present, though, and Asa was quite annoyed that I wanted until 10:30 on Christmas Eve to make such a switch, but I thought it was a good idea, because everyone was going to talk about how we bought it for him, and Hayden might catch on. I decided to make it his open last present (Santa presents are opened first) instead. I had to rewrap them, because Santa presents come in Santa wrapping paper, while nothing else does. I hadn't wrapped the Santa presents ahead of time, and hadn't even opened the box from Amazon that Hayden's bat tower came in. When Asa discovered this at 11 pm on Christmas Eve, he was shocked, and said to me "Wait, so you don't know for sure this is the bat tower', and there it was- the panic had set in. Oh my God, what if this WASN'T the bat tower Hayden had been asking for- for at least two months. Luckily, Amazon's perfect streak of not screwing anything up had continued, but I can't believe I never thought to check it- with my trust issues? Phew. Disaster Averted.
Christmas Morning, we went to go get the boys at 8:30, and Peyton was the only one awake. The other two quickly got up, and raced to the wall of crepe paper we had made the night before. The dogs were also quite confused by this wall. Peyton broke through it, and everyone else followed him. When Hayden checked the chimney he noticed the candy canes, and I said very loudly, "Peyton- I think Santa left you a rock because you didn't want to help with the chimney" The look he gave me like 'come on, mom' was priceless. But, as it was Christmas morning, he didn't do his pout-pout face about it. We opened our Santa presents first, and I could tell Calib was disappointed, but he said nothing. Maybe it was mean to do to him, but he did also have less presents since his laptop was more expensive than his brother's toys. He didn't figure it out until we got down to just a few gifts left, and wondered why he didn't have as many. When he got his open last present he was so excited to see it be a laptop, he's been using it non stop since Christmas morning. Including adding me to skype, and trying to skype me from across the room.
They really enjoyed their presents. I loved seeing them open their pajama eaters, because they saw them, and they were like 'this is cool'- then they saw their drawings in the same box, and were like 'whoa, this is awesome!'. Because of the last minute shopping, I'm still waiting for a present from Asa to me to arrive. I'm pretty excited about it. Hayden was thrilled with his bat tower, and all his imaginext toys. Imaginext is the best toys ever, they're super durable. If you have boys, it's a must get.
I made Christmas morning breakfast, while Asa cleaned up the gigantic living room mess. We had angel food cake french toast with strawberries, hash browns, and bacon. I highly recommend the angel food cake french toast- it was quite yummy. We spent the day unpackaging and untying a whole lot of toys, while the kids played with their new things. We had our usual Seafood Christmas dinner, and Justin came over to play Calib's new board game, Quelf, which I found to be hilarious. Although, apparently my talking like a pirate skills are not up to par, and Justin got sick of me laughing because he had to command me to be silent every time. I still contend it's not my fault I didn't have my thumb on the table that last time. Asa and Calib then went to get my mom from the airport, which apparently was super crowded. I didn't see that one coming. They didn't get back till around 10, so it was pretty close to bedtime at that point, but we did have time to exchange a few gifts.
We've been pretty lazy around here since Christmas. The boys have lots of things to do, and seem pretty occupied most of the time. We had lots of games to play, and I was on track to win Nintendo Monopoly till everyone quit to go play Rugby in the field with their new football. We went out to Wiregrass Monday night to check out the light show one more time, and found all sorts of treasures on the discount table, including a 550 piece Where's Waldo puzzle, that Asa is super excited to do with me. Mom was super rude to the lady at the counter though, and didn't even talk to her. In unrelated news, Mom won the no-talking contest.
Yesterday, Calib went to the Outback Bowl Football Clinic at USF. I should have taken a hoodie, because after it rained, the cold front apparently came through and it went from being 75 to 55, and I was freezing. He had fun though, doing drills with other kids, and some USF players and coaches. He even got a free t-shirt and kickball. By the time we got home, it was dinner time. We made a low country boil for the first time ever. If you've never done this, I highly recommend, it was super easy to cook, very inexpensive, and the best part is you get to serve it on newspaper instead of dishes!
Phew. That took forever to write! I was going to say it was nice to spend a low key Christmas at home, but we sure did do a whole lot for it being 'low key'.
Up Next: Lookout for the Waterstraut Year in Review coming later this week- Plus, I'm hoping to go Strawberry picking, to Sharkys, bubble wrap popping, and ice skating! Yay for living in Florida in December!
