Merry Christmas!

To Do List:

1. Discourage the cat from eating tinsel.

2. Sweep the floor and light candles instead of using all the lights. That way it looks mopped as well.

3. Discourage the cat from jumping into the middle of the presents.

4. Hide ripped wrapping paper with tape and a strategically placed gift bag.

5. Thaw turkey.

6. Discourage cat from getting on kitchen counters to investigate thawing turkey.

7. Make candy cane cookies for Santa.

8. Agree to children's demands to make gingerbread poop for Santa as well.

9. Wonder aloud why all the stockings aren't full of coal.

10. Read the Christmas story.

11. Discourage the cat from "playing" with the ceramic nativity set.

12. Super glue the hapless shepherd's head back in place.

13. Renew adamant objection to cat's preference for ingesting tinsel.

14. Remind cat that tinsel is always much nicer on the way in than on the way out.

15. Realize cat either A) doesn't understand what you're saying or B) doesn't care and that you have sunk to the level of having one-sided passionate debates with a four-legged animal and break out the eggnog.

16. Let kids open an early present.

17. Listen to Starshine's earnest explanation of why his new Bakugon toys aren't fit for three year olds.

18. Agree solemnly that even though a Bakugon is the size of a plum, a three year old could swallow it.

19. Remember Daredevil's early childhood and decide Starshine's explanation holds merit.

20. Discourage the cat from chewing through the Christmas light cord.

21. Turn on Sirius Radio Christmas music channel.

22. Ignore children's protests when "boring" songs by Nat King Cole and Karen Carpenter are played.

23. Track Santa's progress on NASA's Santa tracker web site.

24. Set out cookies and eggnog for Santa and forcibly shove all three boys into bed with promises that if they're still awake when Santa gets here, he'll skip them.

25. Sternly discourage the cat AND the dog from eating Santa's cookies.

26. Eat Santa's cookies.

27. Go to bed with the knowledge that even though we've told the kids not to wake us up before 7 am, we'll hear them outside our door by 6:30.

Merry Christmas to you and your family and may your day be filled with warmth and love!

Gingerbread...WHAT??

I spent some time talking about the Christmas traditions that have been a part of my family since I was little and that I've carried on today (with some alterations...)

But one tradition is unique to my immediate family alone.

The tradition of making Gingerbread Poop.

I did not start out my stint in motherhood with the goal of instituting a tradition whereupon all the participants would use cookie dough to create replicas of excrement.

I planned on baking plates full of all sorts of homemade goodies, an apron wrapped around me, my cherubic children lined up to stir, roll, decorate, and lick the beaters.

Of course, I neglected to plan for boys.

Boys change the rules of the game by virtue of being boys. They don't stir cookie batter, they attack it with the sole intent of mastering the flour, sugar, and eggs and demonstrating who is boss.

Boys don't roll out dough, boys annihilate dough with a wooden rolling pin as their weapon of mass destruction.

Boys don't decorate cookies, boys fling heaping piles of sprinkles or frosting in the general direction of the cookie as they are racing through the room chasing, being chased, or on their way to rig the ceiling fan with legos for their unsuspecting mother again.

Boys do, however, lick beaters.

When we first moved to Tennessee, Scientist was 5, Daredevil was 4, and Starshine was 2. I decided we would start a new tradition of making gingerbread cookies for Santa. I mixed the dough, rolled it out, asked for volunteers to man the cookie cutters and baked pan after pan of perfect little gingerbread men.

When I got to the last pan, I had enough dough left over to give a chunk to each boy to design his own cookies, sans cookie cutter. The boys worked on their individual masterpieces and then I place them in a row beneath the perfectly proportioned gingerbread men, baked it for ten minutes, and pulled the pan out to see that dough crunched up, rolled up, and smashed by little boy hands had expanded beneath the gingerbread men's legs to look like nothing more than some pretty impressive specimens of poop.

Anyone with boys knows that poop is one of their favorite subjects.

They were beside themselves with glee. They'd made POOP! In an oven!! And now they got to eat poop and drink eggnog! (because Mom was a spoilsport and firmly declined the notion that Santa would love to eat some poop too.)

That Christmas passed and, being a girl, I forgot about the poop incident. My boys, however, did not. Somewhere in the back of their testosterone-soaked brains, hidden behind the alphabet, how to ride a bike, and plans for the eventual destruction of middle Tennesse, lurked a memory of the most enjoyable Christmas tradition they'd even encountered.

And so it happened that the following Christmas, when I hauled out the rolling pin and announced my need for helpers to create gingerbread men for Santa, I was met with an excited chorus of little boy voices all exclaiming one thing:

"Yay! We get to make gingerbread poop!!"

Thus it began. Every year since, I roll out dough, cut perfectly proportioned gingernbread men and then hand an ever increasing amount of dough to my boys to make their poop masterpieces. Honestly, it's the most interest in cooking any of them have ever shown.

I took pictures of this year's delicacies. The first shows the offerings from the Scientist (always precise, even when dealing with excrement) and Daredevil (whose work looks like a cross between poop and seriously over-worked roadkill). The second pic is Starshine's unique interpretation.





As proof that I have completely capitulated, this year I pulled the pan out of the oven and yelled up the stairs, "Come down for poop and eggnog!"

Nativity Cake

My hubby made a cake recently for a Christmas party for the elders of our church and he videotaped the process. The banner he wraps around the back of the base cake is the Christmas story from Luke 2. The nativity scene figurines are made of white chocolate. Enjoy!

Merry Christmas

"And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear. And the angel said to them, "Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Fo unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord."
- Luke 2:8-11

May your Christmas be full of great joy.

Favorite Christmas Memories

1. The reel to reel tapes of Christmas music my dad played on a continuous basis for the entire month of December. He copied them recently onto CDs for me so now I can do the same...though with my 6 disc changer, I have other musical influences in there as well.

2. The time my mom got me Strawberry Shortcake underwear - 7 pair. Each labeled for a specific day of the week. And yes, I am just anal enough that I never wore a pair unless it matched that day.

3. The year my little sister panicked because she felt our stockings and they were empty (a week before Christmas, I think). Worried that I wouldn't get anything in my stocking, she gathered "treasures" from her desk and dumped them into my stocking. I was so suprised when I upended my stocking Christmas morning and my pile of little presents was topped by used erasers, pencil shavings, and rocks. =) Starshine has filled each of his brother's stockings with hand-drawn notes and pictures or used items he thinks they'll love. He keeps bringing down another book or toy of his that he wants me to wrap up for one of his brothers and place under the tree.

4. Baking plates of cookies for our neighbors: candy cane cookies, molasses, chocolate chips, Jello cookies (both red and green), and almond brittle. I still bake for my neighbors but my kids deliver pumpkin bread instead of plates of cookies. It saves on time and sanity (though we still bake candy cane cookies and gingerbread men for Santa).

5. Singing and acting in Christmas plays.

6. Christmas lights. All kinds. Except the houses that are outlined entirely in blue. Or red. That just looks menacing.

7. Setting up the nativity scene.

8. Christmas morning breakfast - between stockings and presents, my dad made his incredible "from scratch" waffles. I do Christmas breakfast now - eggs, pancakes, and sausage.

9. Cats stuck in the Christmas tree or diving on packages or running around the house with tinsel hanging from their ears.

10. Lazy Christmas afternoons curled up with one of my new books (always the perfect gift for me!).

11. Eggnog

12. Seeing my kids enjoy traditions from my childhood and making a few new ones of our own. (will blog about one of those soon...with pics)

Christmas Lights

Because some people have a lot of time on their hands. =) Enjoy!

On The First Day of Christmas...

*Again, borrowed the idea from LiveJournal, even though we aren't quite on amicable terms yet.*

The concept is to list some of your Christmas wishes, whatever they might be, and to browse other's blogs/journals and see if there are any wishes there you might fulfill. =)

1. This is my true heart's longing and no one but God can fulfill it but all I really want for Christmas is my daughter.

2. I would love a fancy title/heading on my LJ like all my friends have but since I am barely on speaking terms with icons (and even then, I can't change them out on individual comments/posts without changing ALL of them...*sigh*), I can't figure it out and instead, I have a bar of annoying ads on mine.

3. A new battery for my laptop. This one lasts approximately 35 seconds once the plug comes loose (which, unfortunately, happens easily) and that isn't all that helpful in the grand scheme of things.

4. A bag of groceries and some coats to a family in your area who needs it. Don't know who needs it? The principal of your local elementary school surely does.

5. My carpet steam cleaned.

6. An offer from my dream agent to represent Shadowing Fate. (Especially since I just learned today that I already have a publisher interested in it!!)

7. That we would all take some of the money we would have spent on ourselves or our family and use it on someone else instead...Sudanese refugees, orphans, your local homeless shelter, a neighbor you know needs some help.

Those are my 7 Christmas wishes. Make your own list, let us all know, and we'll see what we can accomplish together!