Goings on

I don't usually associate blood and gore with the selection of a Christmas tree. However, when we went to get ours a few weeks back, Zack tripped over the trunk of a tree that was leaning on a fence, hit the concrete face first, bit through lip and entirely chipped his front tooth. Mouths bleed like CRAZY and it took us a while to calm him down and to truly assess the extent of his injuries. I have decided that Home Depot is not the greatest place for trauma, yet that is where this one went down. Zack was wearing a new shirt and a newish coat at the time, so I was trying to catch his pooling blood in my hands to save his clothes while Ben dashed for wet paper towels. By the time Ben came back, we had a lot of curious and disgusted onlookers and my hands looked like I had committed a gruesome murder.




I love Christmas time. The tree is up, the stockings are hung, the decorations are out. It is the one fun time of the year to head to the mailbox. Thank you for your Christmas cards! We love getting them.

Mylie loves the Christmas tree. She spends a portion of her time each day rearranging the ornaments. She also decided to take her My Little Ponies and Zack's cars down to see the tree. This is what I found when I came downstairs yesterday:



This year the Christmas list top request for each child are as follows:

*Maddie wants a cell phone
*Andrew wants Webkinz and Beanie Baby 2.0 and things from tv like a Snuggie ("Mom, hurry and order now and they'll sell you two for the price of one!") and the perfect brownie cutter ("Mom, we NEED that!")
*Zack wants transformers and bakugan stuff
*Mylie wants "ponies" and all the toys she sees advertised on television

They've also asked for things like laptops, Nintendo DS systems, trips to Disney World, etc. Well, it doesn't hurt to ask. Plus, they are "asking Santa for the expensive stuff" so I shouldn't worry.

Zack was the V.I.P. (Very Important Preschooler) at his school last week. What that boils down to is a lot of stress, responsibilities, and homework tossed to mom. One VIP assignment involved us decorating a rainbow since he is in the rainbow class, we chose to make a collage in the mode of Eric Carle. We poured over old magazines trying to find ads that used various rainbow colors and cut out each individual color block out from the ads. Yellow was our hardest color to find. Most yellows were too goldy or orangish. While the outcome was excellent, the term overkill came to mind as I glued on the last billion tiny squares. Zack was really good at helping for the first hour, the last hour I flew solo.



VIP parents also are tasked with creating a photo poster spotlighting their child. I don't print out pictures really any more and our printer was out of ink, so the only recent photo I had of Zack was the soccer photo his coach sent us. So for four of the five days that was the only picture on his poster, then the last day we got new ink for the printer and I hurried to print some recent pictures of Zack out. Definitely not a mother of the year worthy moment.

We also had to take care of the class's toy dog and write two paragraphs a day about his adventures with Zack during the week. That meant trying not to lose or ruin the class dog, and then quickly making up things that Zack may or may not have done with the dog for the sake of their being something to share with the class...

Then, on Friday, he got to choose a special guest to come in to do something with his class. He chose his Grandma Winnie and she was a hit! She came in and told the class a Christmas poem, then she pulled out bells for each child and they sang some songs together.



Afterwards, she took me and Mylie out for a treat at Panera. As you can see from this picture, Mylie was more intent on biting off the gingerbread man's arm than posing for a picture: