Suggestions Please

It has been with great difficulty that I have restrained myself from beginning the Christmas season in our home. And it doesn't help that every retailer everywhere has decided to bypass Thanksgiving. Walmart is even playing Christmas music which I think is really jumping the gun. Though who am I kidding... I've already bought and played two different christmas albums this year. My kids are singing "Santa Clause is Coming to Town" and "Jingle Bells" and Sam is already planning his letter to Santa, though I did tell him he can't actually write and mail the thing till after Thanksgiving. 

Anyway, the temptation is to go out and buy all the Christmas things I want right now, but though that might help the flagging economy, it wouldn't do much for our check book. So a few years ago I made a resolution to add just a few Christmas things a year to our collection. I get the kids their own ornament each year, trying to find something personal and unique. I've already filled my quota for music this year. The other thing I try to add each year is a Christmas book. I don't have any ideas right now for the 2008 addition,  so I was wondering what YOUR favorite Christmas book is. It can be anything, though preferably a children's book. So help me out and send me your suggestions... what book means 'Christmas is really here' for you; that the season wouldn't be the same without. I'll make sure to post what I end up getting and until then I'll be trying to focus on Thanksgiving and not beyond. I'm experimenting with my signature Brussels Sprout dish to see if I can make it easier for this year. Brussels Sprouts with Honey-Glazed Pearl Onions and Prosciutto. Yum!

If they had their way

Grace's ideas for baby  names:

Cinderella

Princess Aurora

Tinker Bell

Snow White

Grace

Sam's ideas for baby names:

Iron Man

Spiderman

Batman

Wyatt

Annie

Sun Streak

I'm trying not to have ideas for baby names until I have a gender to go by. 

Dodging Bullets

Today Sam and Grace asked me who put the baby in my tummy. 

I told them I was too busy to talk about it.

Maybe they'll forget about asking again. 

What happens when you stop thinking for a moment

So Sam's new Transformer (see previous post) is a big hit here. He and it have been inseparable for the past 48 hours. When we brought it home Saturday night he noticed that there was a name on the packaging for the car: Sun Streak. By early Sunday morning, this had morphed into Sun Streaker, or just Streaker, which is what he was calling it when Rob got up. Rob, in a moment of unthinkingness, decided that the way to stop Sam using the work 'streaker' to describe his car was to tell him what a streaker actually is. And it worked, up to a point. This is what I heard from Sam when I got up. "Look Mom, here's my new transformer. His name is Sun Streak. And guess what! I know what a streaker is. It's someone who runs around without clothes on!" He brought the toy to church with him, and Rob had quite a job heading off the above conversation which Sam attempted to have with just about every person we ran into. I only hope he chose not to talk about his new word at school today. I'd hate to think what his teacher would think of his parents!

Halloween Wrap-up

A few weeks ago I was reading an article on cnn.com about how to make your Halloween more healthy. Really, is there anything healthy about Halloween? I mean the entire holiday is completely focused on getting as much candy as possible! Anyway, the article mentioned some ideas to get some of the candy back from your kids before they rot their teeth to little nubbins. One was to buy back the candy, say at 5 cents a piece. Another was to have your kids trade in their candy for a toy; the more candy they give up, the nicer toy they get. So I was telling Rob about these ideas, in the presence of my kids, and when I got to the toy idea Sam got so excited. He thought it was a GREAT idea! Who'd have thunk it? So Friday night after we got home from all the Halloween festivity, Sam and Grace picked out a few choice pieces of candy and the rest (really, almost all of it. I was surprised at how much they were willing to give up) went with Dad to campus to help stimulate his brain during those long hours of study. Saturday we went toy shopping and Sam ended up with a cool transformer and Grace with a new doll. They are both very happy with their toys and aren't missing the candy at all. They did get into the kept candy yesterday morning while Rob and I were enjoying our extra hour of sleep. Rob got up to find the both of them under the kitchen table, surrounded by candy wrappers. Rob asked Sam how he felt, considering he had just ingested  more sugar in one hour then he usually gets in a week and Sam said, "Great! I can feel my heart beating in my head!"

So it looks as though a new tradition is in the making. The kids loved trick-or-treating and LOVED dressing up, but the candy just wasn't as important to them. How neat is that?