Winter Solstice

Our first stay home day of the long winter break started with Alice getting into the cupboard above the fridge where we keep parental-supervision kids items like slime kits, science experiments, and this weird beaded play-doh stuff. While we were sleeping in, the kids were busy making things. Alice must've known she wasn't supposed to get it down, because she actually did a fairly good job of keeping the mess contained. Anyway, they made these deranged snowmen that were pretty cool.

The next project was to make Alice clean out her backpack before stowing it away for the break. I didn't want to find something like moldy chicken nuggets in there two weeks later. (She has really brought chicken nuggets home from school before in her backpack.) She's a bit of a disorganized hoarder...

The next activity of the morning was to play dreidel. Simon learned the game at school as part of their unit on holidays around the world, and he seems to really like it. Our friend Rachel gave us some dreidels to use, I bought some gold coins at Harris Teeter, and we played. It's entirely a game of luck (which I find quite annoying) but Simon loved it because he was winning. Alice ended up going out first and had a major breakdown.

After lunch, we made sugar cookies. This was our first time doing this as a family as far as I can recall, and it went pretty well. The kids really liked it!

Ellie came over just in time to help with the frosting.

We finally got rid of the frosting that had been in our fridge since the summer birthdays.

That night after supper, we went out for our solstice fire. Our neighbor Kim even joined us for a bit.

What a day!

Last day of school...for 16 days

Today was the last day the kids went to school. It was pajama day. They'll now be on break for a grand total of 16 days straight (including weekends). Lord give me strength.

Tricky Words

Simon is back to writing lists of words...unprompted...on his own...for fun?

Gingerbread Houses

The kids' after school care program invited parents to join their kids for some gingerbread (graham cracker) house decorating on Wednesday. Reader, it was horrible. They had hand sanitizer, but no wipes or paper towels.  In addition to the stickiness, it was socially awkward for me. I hate parenting in public, and participating in activities designed to help parents bond with their kids are particularly excruciating. I suffer from mom imposter syndrome as it is, so I just generally shut down at these sort of things.  Plus, I like to just let the kids figure out stuff by themselves, with minimal help from me. I am not the parent who will do their children's project for them. And here's the proof:

The kids had fun anyway.

_________

Simon made another one with his class the next day at school. His teacher sent us this picture.

Impeachment Eve

Zac joined protesters in downtown Raleigh encouraging our representatives to vote for the articles of impeachment against Trump.

Christmas with the Arc-Burbs

We did our Christmas celebration with Zac's dad early this year--partly because they would be spending Christmas in London, and partly because it coincided with our attending Eleanor's play, A Christmas Carol.  They made a delicious proper Christmas dinner for us -- turkey and all.  It was quite impressive!

Just as Norman Rockwell would have painted it: Grandfather watches boy play with drone.  (-:

Back at home, the kids got to work on their new lego sets.

Simon also made some additional ornaments for the tree out of paper. This is probably more likely the Norman Rockwell painting...

Family Photo Fun

On Saturday afternoon, after the Reindeer Romp, with Alice's hair still having hues of blues, we took our family portrait for the Christmas card. It was kind of the last possible opportunity, and Simon put up a fuss at first, but eventually complied. I bet behind almost every happy smiling family Christmas card portrait is actually a morning of misery and parents yelling at kids to cooperate and smile!

Phew, the stress of that's finally over! Now we can return to normal enjoyable pursuits...

Reindeer Romp: Alice's First 5K

For the past several months, Alice has been enrolled in an after-school program called Girls on the Run. They meet twice a week for about an hour and a half and the girls run and learn self-esteem and goal-setting type things. Alice loved it. The semester culminates with the girls participating in the Reindeer Romp, a local 5K. Zac did a practice run with a Alice a couple weeks in advance, and said it didn't go very well, that she didn't actually run much.  So we weren't putting pressure on her, and we had fairly low expectations--generally hoping she would just finish the race without some sort of melt down. I bought some energy chews from REI that Zac could keep in his pocket in case she literally ran out of energy.

The morning of the race was warm -- 50s -- but rainy.  Luckily it didn't end up raining during the race! Alice met some of her teammates in their tent before the race. The coaches were there, but there didn't seem to be any last minute pep talks or group bonding or anything.  Although, due to traffic, we did get there a bit late so maybe that occurred prior to our arrival.

Zac was Alice's "running buddy" for the race.  Thank goodness--because I certainly couldn't have done it! I was still in pain when I was standing up, but I managed to hobble around the parking lot with Simon.

There were hoards of people there! It was quite exciting!

I didn't know the route of the course, so Simon and I found a good spot to wait for Zac and Alice to return to the finish line in the parking lot.  It would be the last turn of the race, and there was a tree Simon could climb while waiting.

After about 34 minutes, we saw them jogging around the corner!  They looked in good form and nobody was crying! (Ok, well, I was crying because I felt so proud of Alice and was also frustrated with myself for having so many health problems and just not being a runner in general. I got hit with an unexpected wave of emotions!)

Girls with accomplishments!

Zac reported that Alice did a great job and ran the whole way -- only pausing to grab a cup of water on the way. She was in good spirits and had a great attitude!

One of the things she seemed most focused on in the days leading up to the race was that one of the coaches mentioned you could get your hair dyed at the race. Alice was really fixated on that.  Sure enough, she found the place and got hair dye sprayed on.  She was so happy about it.

From bibs to bibs...they grow up fast.

Alice's Art is....evolving

A Tale of Two Children

See what you can infer about each child based on the their purchasing plan after visiting their school's Holiday Shop.

Trimming the Christmas Tree

Today we got the Christmas tree in the morning, then I took the kids to the park for a couple of hours after lunch so Zac could put the lights on it undisturbed.  Then we came home and trimmed the tree.

The kids also wrote their letters to Santa.

Let the holiday fun begin!

Girl, Snakes, Cat

Alice loves to read in bed at night.

Durham

Because I was still mostly incapacitated, Zac took the kids to Durham on Sunday to get them out of the house on the fifth stay-home day of Thanksgiving break.

We're so lucky to have such a great resource nearby!