Is it wrong...

to be amused that Doug was trying to make sure that a certain child in his preschool class was on Santa's naughty list?

Sometimes this guy amazes me

While Santa and his one night sleigh ride are pretty amazing, I think Andy amazes me more. He has his moments of stubbornness, he can get easily distracted, and yet his persistence in other areas can be frustrating at times (since it's usually over something I don't want him to do).

We went to our church Christmas dinner on Wednesday night. My kids were pretty excited because they knew that Santa was going to show up (or at least he has the past two years).
When I mentioned that it was time to get in the car to go to church Andy announced that he had a gift for Santa. This may be slightly inspired by the Phineas and Ferb Christmas special, but Andy picked one of his Christmas craft projects, found a bag to put it in, choose an art paper he had brought home from preschool (where apparently December is the season of glitter), and then wanted some candy to put in the bag.
He held on to it and showed it to people until Santa made his entrance. Then he ran up to him to hand it to Santa right away and was excited to talk to him.
Then what does he ask for?
The child asked for "toys for his cats."

Psuedo-gingerbread houses

Andy going for the "action" shot (notice that the lid is on the candy container...I did not stage this...it's all him).
Doug and his "clubhouse" version.
Josie's house.
We made "gingerbread" houses using graham crackers and candy we had on hand. I just happened to have gray colored frosting in the fridge (why...I'm not sure) so that is what we used. Each house fell in a couple of times. I probably should have had them do the decorations on the wall before we put them together but it worked out. Other than there was lots of snacking going on while we were building them it has taken at least two sittings for each child to eat his or her house. It was also fun so I am counting it as a success and will do it again sometime.

Belated pictures

Our Christmas tree featuring many Andy ornaments.
Josie wearing a dress our baby-sitter's mom made for his little sister.
Doug's shark face painting.

Our tree

I need to take a picture of this year's Christmas tree.
It has a lot of Andy made ornaments on it that he has made at school.
They are all paper shapes (a star, a gingerbread man, an angel, etc.) that are large and they all have lots of glitter. He usually comes home with things in his backpack and I have to remember to pull the stuff out and look at it. However, lately he has been emptying his own backpack to find whatever ornament was made.
He even managed to glitter himself one day because he was trying to hold his star and put on his coat and managed to shake the star upside-down above his head during this process. There was glitter everywhere.
It is not a tree that any "Martha Stewart" would love, but I think it's great.

We did it

I finally got the kids in for their second H1N1 shot. It took three tries. We went one day and were 30 minutes after they stopped giving them. We went another day and it turned out to be a day that they were not doing shots. So we finally made it today.

Josie did great. She cried a little but was okay.
Andy was a bit apprehensive but no tears.
Doug, who has been building this up and worrying about it had to be held down.

So thankfully that is over. I don't know whether I am glad or not that I have not heard of any of the regular flu shots available around here or not. I think I could get one for Josie but our pediatrician will not do them for older children unless they get more doses in.

Are you real?

I don't know that it is exactly that Andy thinks people become pretend if they die, but he knows that they are not here with us any more. Somehow rather than asking if someone is still alive he will ask if someone is real.
Often the kids will play that bad guys are coming and sometimes one of them will get shot and require a medic.

This is all information to frame what I heard today.
I'm sort of bad about letting the kids get hooked on watching something on TV while I fix lunch and then we often end up watching it while we eat.
Today I ran downstairs to do something on the computer while the kids were eating lunch watching TV. As I came up the steps I could hear Andy say "Josie are you real?"

I assumed he was trying to check to see if she was faking death.
However she was not.
She must have been very busy at preschool today because she had fallen asleep in front of the TV after eating most of her lunch.

Birthday Parties

I had not really thought about if Doug and Andy are in different classes that they would get invited to different birthday parties. It had occurred to me that we would have two classes to invite to their birthday party when that rolls around, but the reverse had not occurred to me until recently.
So far my tact has been to call and say "You might not be aware of it but Doug/Andy has a twin in the other four-year old class..." and both boys have ended up going. Today was the first party that was in a home (rather than at a place like a church or an event place) so the mother was worried about space.
So Doug went by himself. He was fine with this. Andy and Josie were not. However, we went and did something special and then picked him up. He had a marvelous shark painted on his face. I will have to get the pictures of it off the camera.
These pictures of Josie are from a previous party that had a carnival theme. All three children went to it but Josie had the most elaborate face painting. There were bouncies, games, the face painter, a clown doing balloon things, a pinata, and so much cake/junk food. I think one of my goals when we have our birthdays in May will be to not feed children cake and ice cream and then send them home with more candy.

There be pirates here

I do not remember quite where it started, but my boys (and Josie too) like pirates. Nana and Pop have ten acres with sections that have many trees and have put up some faces on some of the trees. One of those faces happens to be a pirate face.
So recently the pirates "visited" the farm, ran their flag up the flag pole, and left treasure. They were careless pirates and dropped their map and left provisions along the path to the treasure. These pictures are of Doug and Pop discussing the map prior to the treasure hunt.
The treasure was eventually found (and apparently the provisions were delicious, fresh, and kid friendly).
Doug keeps hunting for more treasure but the pirates have not finished their plundering and looting yet and therefore have not dropped any off recently.
I have a feeling they will visit again some time.