Part 1: Christmas 2010

One of my favorite Christmas traditions growing up was the advent calendar my mom did every year for us kids. As a matter of fact, she continued the calendar for us up until each of us were married. I am so excited to be continuing the tradition with our own children. The boys rotate days, and I will admit it was very difficult to come up with 8 special things for Domenic. He had several "stay up an hour late" options, which of course was completely irrelevant to a 7 month old baby, but gave Quinton and Roman the idea that Domenic did get something special. One of Quinton's advent days was to go to the Children's Museum of Atlanta. It has become a sort of tradition in and of itself to go to the museum every December. Here are this year's crop of pictures:

Playing with the moon sand. I have to say, the sand was really neat! It holds its shape, although it is not "wet." I am not ashamed to admit that I really enjoy doing a lot of the "kid" activities with Quinton. They are still super fun to do as an adult!



At the train table with a fellow train aficionado:






We really lucked out in that the weekend we went, there happened to be a HUGE model train on display. It was quite amazing - there were all of these buttons every foot or so that you could push and it would make a electrify a little scene along the track. Quinton basically parked himself in front of this particular button which controlled a RR Crossing Arm. He took the responsibility very seriously to raise and lower the arm every time the train came around the track. Luckily for me there was a nice big beanbag chair positioned just perfectly to sit and watch since he manned his station for quite a while!



And of course, where we spent the lion's share of our time: at the ball factory!



Well, the whole family got really sick the week or two before Christmas. First it was a stomach virus, then some sort of flu-like virus with fever, etc. Needless to say, I got really behind in my Christmas plans. A piano student gave me these beautiful cupcakes. Because of being sick, I didn't get to my Christmas cookie baking when I had originally planned, so I didn't have the cookies that I was originally going to give Quinton's teachers. I know this sounds terrible, but I regifted the cupcakes to his teachers. I went out and got cup holders and gift cards for Dunkin' Donuts and put together these gifts.




Quinton's school Christmas party. It was fun and well-organized, but boy, was it LONG!! Two hours, which may not seem long, but when you have your other 2 children with you and are trying to keep them out of the festivities, it was about an hour and a half too long! I usually don't take the other kids with me when I go to Quinton's school activities, but I am always asking friends to watch my kids for Roman's doctors' appointments, that I didn't want to ask yet again for someone to watch the kids. Several other parents bring their children with them, but whew! I think next time I'll risk asking another favor and have a friend watch the boys!

Pizza for lunch.

Roman pointing to something which I don't remember.

A snowman pinata.


A "snowball" toss game.


Another sibling of a student - she was very sweet and was very attentive to the boys!


One of several crafts the children made.


The night of Quinton's Christmas program for school he got sick. He threw up in the early afternoon but he told me he "felt good." So he got all dressed and in my infinite wisdom :-), I brought a bowl with me in the car. We didn't even get out of the garage before he threw up again. So we came back in the house and called his teacher to let her know we weren't going to make it. (This was the beginning of the stomach virus that made its way through the family before the flu-ish virus made its way through the family) He looked so handsome, though, that I took his picture before he changed back into his pajamas.



I did finally get around to making the cookies. It was very tempting to just not bother with it since I had so much to get done in such a short period of time, and I was still feeling pretty exhausted even after the fever and aches went away. But, why is it that there are SO MANY gifts to give at Christmas time?? The visiting teachers, the visiting teachees, the home teachers, the home teachees, close church friends, neighbors, etc etc etc... Well, cookies was my plan for all of these people, so if I didn't make them, I'd have to come up with something else. Plus, I really love to make the cookies, it is just that this year I was feeling a little overwhelmed. Luckily it went pretty smoothly and I was able to get them all done with few problems.

This year's sugar cookies.




Quinton helping put coconut gumdrops in mini fluted cups. He was quite proud of himself after he filled up the whole tray!



The "cookie factory."


Closeups of the cookie trays. Each tray had 8 sugar cookies, 4 caramallows, 12 gumdrops, 5 lemon cranberry crunch cookies, 8 mexican wedding cookies ("snowballs") and 10 ginger chewies.




I have lots more to share from Christmas, namely Christmas day, but I am going to do that in a separate post because I am tired!!