Christmas Construction

 
 

Handmade

Microwaveless

It's been over three weeks since our microwave failed us. It still operates, but the door no longer opens, rendering it less useful. I've had to compensate by being original:

--heating soup on the stove
--heating servings in the oven
--melting honey in a hot water bath
--thawing blueberries on a pie tin over a steaming pan

It feels so rustic, I'm practically a pioneer.

When I decide I'd rather sacrifice counter space to have a microwave again, we can bring up the old one that we've stored in the basement against just such an emergency. (See a friend's great post on saving stuff to save money.) So far, counter space is winning.

Preschooler Math

Alex quizzes his aunt on math problems:
"What's one hundred minus four?"
"What's four minus one hundred?"
"What's a house plus a big tree?" (Answer: 195 pancakes.)

The Polar Express

I just read this book to my children and ended up crying so hard at the ending I couldn't finish. Katherine had to read the last page.

So my question is this: is it better to believe in a fictional Santa Claus or not believe? If I pretend to believe hard enough, will Santa Claus come to my door?

Overheard

When my children were playing some game I didn't quite understand:

K: "Baby."
A: "Yes."
K: "Baby."
A: "No."
K: "Baby."
A: "No."
K: "Baby."
A: "Stop saying baby!"
K: "Baby, baby, baby!"
(Pause)
K: "Can I say person?"
A: "Yes."
K: "Person."
A: "Yes."

Great music and computer smashing

A friend of ours is an a capella singer who often records music for internet videos. Here's his latest project, featuring a computer user who gets hacked and takes it out on his machine. (He composed much of the song, sang all the parts, and was the sole actor in the video.)

Hacker's Holiday by Mister Tim

What didn't make the card

Every year I end the card with family news (if you missed it, look on the back!) But this year we ended up with some extra bullets:

· Rebecca can say several words, including “At!” (that) and “Es” (yes)
· Loralee started clogging, and can now do a single, a fancy double, a triple, a stomp double, a grapevine, a Utah basic, and an MJ
· Alex invented the “Trople Step” for dancing. Partners hold hands and straddle-step from foot to foot.
· Loralee wrote about gold mining, Northwest trains (spending most of her earnings on family tickets), and homemade Christmas cards.
· Loralee created www.candyexperiments.com and has received 72 emails, with only some of them from herself!
· Laramie took kids backpacking/camping nine times. At least half of the times they left in the daytime.
· If you ask Rebecca about body parts, she can point to her nose, rub her hair, and stick out her tongue. But when you say "eye," she points to her ear.
· Rebecca rolls back on cue to be tickled when we read the Tickle book
· Rebecca thinks sippy cups are for babies
· Loralee did about 200 yoga planks (one with each load of laundry), and Alex invented some new poses.
· Laramie invented a new Thanksgiving recipe: Upside-down Chocolate Pecan Pie. But you have to eat it off the floor.

Put it all together, and a whole lot of wasted days turn into a year's worth of accomplishment!

Nobel (noble?) Obama

I heard a lot of coverage about Obama's Nobel Prize speech. Commentators all over the radio were puzzling over his choice of subjects: using his speech to defend a just war as he sends more troops to Afganistan.

Why aren't enough of them asking a more basic question: why did he get the prize in the first place? He was fighting this war back then, too.

Car Break-in

Robbers smashed our minivan window on Sunday at church. I suppose they saw the bags inside. I never really thought the danger of leaving bags, even though my sister's car was once broken into, and purses were stolen from cars at the stake center last year. Guess this was a lesson we had to learn the hard way.

What they took:
--our diaper bag, containing about 1 diaper, 4 wipes, 12 stickers, a chiming elephant I'd bought new, a cloth book with crackling pages, plastic chain links, and random Goodwill toys (including the phone with buttons that Rebecca loved)
--my primary music bag, containing my primary music book, a gospel art book, a zippered nativity set, a ripped Ziploc bags of crayons, two pens and a pencil, primary class drawings, my hand-drawn visual aids for "For the Beauty of the Earth," old Relief Society announcements, and a couple of pass-along cards.

We're hoping somebody gets converted.

This year's Christmas list

This is partly a Christmas list and partly a to-do-list.

In my dreams...
--a medieval calendar such as castles, cathedrals, cottages, or illuminated manuscripts (but not fake medieval castles!)
--new washcloths
--a new sweater (cardigan?) to add variety to the blue/orange routine I've been in since a certain Ann Taylor shopping trip
--Smartwool socks with no snowflakes on them
--any Cambridge Singers CDs (except their "Best of"), especially Christmas music
--a microwave that works with our venting system (our old microwave still operates, but the door doesn't open.)
--also a King's College Nine Lessons and Carols, and the "Dancing Day" carols by John Rutter
--a finished fence
--a new bedroom closet
--an organized storeroom
--the new Shannon Hale books (Forest Born, The Actor and the Housewife)
--a new microwave that works with our venting system
--help organizing my children's art scrapbook
--my kitchen wired for sound (why do electricians keep bailing on me?)
--nylons
--a year's supply of chocolate pecans (hey, it's for food storage!)
--a big whiteboard for the hall to put postcards and kid pictures on (but I ought to paint the hall first, and if I paint the hall we ought to paint the living room, but we shouldn't do that until we sand out cracks and fix the sheet rock...)

And for anybody reading this in Annabelle:
--scrubbers
--herbs for cold and flu (like Navajo tea or echinecea)
--Grandpa salve
--Redmond Real Salt as garlic salt or rock salt

Last Year's Christmas List

So I was thinking about what I wanted for Christmas last year, and how it turned out. Here's the list:

--books that are as fabulous as the dragon series by Novik
Well, I'm not sure if I found any better, but I read some great books: Resistance by Agnes Humbert, Ropemaker by Peter Dickinson, Gregor the Overlander, Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series, Ranger's Apprentice, lots of books by Margaret Peterson Haddix, In Defense of Food by Michael Pollack, Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder, and The Science of Sugar Confectionery (a real page-turner!) Plus Book Club elected me to be in charge of a fantasy year (easy for them to commit to when we're only reading 3 books)
--annual reports from the British Portable Antiquities Scheme, because nothing makes for fun family reading like illustrated archaeological reports
Well, I haven't gotten the reports, but I did get an email from their department, so I'm very optimistic!
--a vacuum cleaner that works--hey, I'm vacuuming again (now that baby rolls around on the carpet finding things)
Didn't get a new vacuum cleaner, but I finally fixed my old one
--a piano bench that's tall enough without textbooks piled on top
Hah, forgot this one. We didn't get a bench, but we got three tall stools--perfect for side-by-side kid lessons!
--my banister
Ordered it myself, and it's beautiful
--and my fence
Lar installed a gate and one very tal fence post. Every year a little closer!
--to fix the leak in my kitchen faucet
I actually set foot in a plumbing store! Leak fixed.
--replacements for my broken blinds
Rethreaded one of them when summer got so hot we needed the shade. It used to be stuck up; now it's stuck down unless I wrap the string around a bag clip. Got used to the other broken blind.
--the Leavitt calendar
Loved the calendar, Sarah, it was beautiful!
--a medieval calendar
Ended up buying three of them for a dollar apiece in February.
--long sleeved Shade-type shirts
Yup, got a few of those. Course now I think I need more.
--warm cute cardigans and cardigan lessons
Beware what you ask for, you may get it, especially if you go shopping in Ann Taylor with Katie!
--to learn how to play really complicated jazzy chords
This one looked like a total loss, until I was invited to play accompaniment for a jazzy Christmas number at the Stake Choir. It's taken way more work than I planned, but hey, it's jazzy!
--to find my missing exercise band
Got that one even before last Christmas
--cute pants that fit
Got one pair at Bellevue Square and one at Goodwill.
--a designer's advice on where to hang my framed pictures
Got a designer, now I just have to frame the pictures.
--fun dates
Lar decided we should take a rock climbing class. So now we can do something he likes--and I even sometimes remember to schedule a babysitter!
--the perfect plan to arrange the kids in bedrooms without losing my study
We just squashed them all in one room. Hooray for bunk beds.
--nice soft lovely background music that is real classical music and not muzak
Radio is a wonderful thing. So is the KPLU online jazz stream.
--peace and QUIET
Alex is in preschool; Becca now takes naps. Occasional peace and quiet now in the realm of possibility!

Wow, it looks like I got about everything on my list. Amazing. Here's hoping I do as well with this year's list--if I can think of one.

Mommy Morning

Things I have done so far:

--made breakfast
--dressed the baby (who had other plans)
--run two loads of laundry
--played Tic Tac Toe with Alex
--emptied the dishwasher
--promised Alex to play Chutes and Ladders when he emptied the silverware, but he never did
--ended up teaching Alex piano instead (hey, it was his choice)
--practiced the piano for the number I'm accompanying tomorrow night (about time I practiced!)
--untangled two entwined toy parachutes

And my kitchen is still a mess!