A Very Post-Christmas Assessment

Well, I had a lot of lofty plans for this Christmas, but since I still don't know whether I am coming or going since our Chicago trip, those plans just went down the drain like half sudsy dishwater.

But, I did manage to salvage two activities and an evening with Ralphie and the Red Ryder BB gun. Never fear. We did not shoot our eye out.

We used graham crackers, icing, gum drops and marshmellows and made an edible nativity. We went through the story piece by piece and made each as we talked about it. The gum drops were the people and the marshmellows were the sheep.

We could have used miniature candy canes for the shepherd's crook and coconut tinted with yellow food coloring for the manger hay, however that would have required a fair amount of preplanning on my part.

Yeah.....

It looks like I gave the baby a butter knife with icing. What kind of mother am I?

We also read the Grinch while the kids colored ornaments. I cut out a Christmas tree from posterboard, they pasted them on and accented with glitter glue.

These activities, Friends, were a stretch for me since I typically avoid disastrous opportunities like the plague.

There was a moment when all the graham crackers spilled out and I thought I might have to step out and breathe into a paper sack, but we gathered them up quickly and pressed on.

We got a new Christmas tree this year, with new ornaments, since all but three of our old ornaments had been broken. We went with blue, which I admit was out of my color scheme comfort zone, but I love how it turned out.

Although after two weeks of rearranging the ornaments higher and higher, the poor tree needed to go into its Rubbermaid home for 11 months of rest.

Why do kids always pick off the wiggle eyes?

Baby Jesus vanished for a few days, but turned up on Christmas morning under the Christmas tree. Exactly as it should be!