A weekly list of things accomplished, enjoyed, learned, tried and remembered.
1.The North Pole. One of our favorite Christmas time traditions is to visit the North Pole. Back in the 1950’s, our city built a children’s Christmas wonderland. There are fun rides, food, and yes–the Big Guy–Santa. This is our 5th year going–and even with a few COVID restrictions (having to wear masks and a “distanced” photo with Santa), we still had a great time.
2.Santa video’s. Portablenorthpole.com is a great website that we have enjoyed using for several years. They have several video email messages from Santa to choose from that you can personalize and have sent to your child (or any loved ones). It’s relatively simple to input information and load pictures. At the end of video Santa and his elves let them know if they are on the naughty list, made it on the nice list, or are somewhere in between (you get to choose this during the set up part). Our boys look forward to these each year. They made it on the nice list this year, but Santa and I both know that this is awfully generous of him.
3. Christmas Eve. A long time tradition of ours for Christmas Eve is joining a church in Monument for their candle light service. They asked Super Rockstar and I to lead worship several years ago and it has now become our annual tradition. Afterward, we come home and have a late dinner of tacos and open a night before Christmas gift of new P.J.’s and a book. Then the boys leave some cookies, a beverage and a note to Santa before heading to bed in an attempt to go to sleep as quickly as possible.
4. Christmas Day. I thought that since my boys are tween/teenagers now that maybe they wouldn’t want to get up SO early on Christmas. I was wrong. So very, very wrong. My youngest couldn’t go to sleep–he was so full of anticipation and both of them were up at 4:30am ready to go. I grumpily sent them back to bed until 6:00am. I do love how excited they are Christmas morning as they get their first glimpse of all the gifts piled under our tree and their stockings filled to bursting. It’s a frenzy of about 30 seconds as they tear through them. Then there’s the chaos of getting the stuff out of manufacturers packaging (bank vaults are easier to crack open), finding the right batteries, and reading the tiny print instructions so we can get all the bobbles, boodanglers and foo fluzzlers working. The whole rest of the day is a blur of playing, napping (for me), eating and more playing. It is absolutely worth all of the shopping, wrapping, and even the shortened night of sleep to see the looks of joy and hear the shrieks of excitement. I’m SO glad it only comes once a year.
5. A VERY special Christmas gift. Six years ago, I had been out all day running errands–it was one of those days where there weren’t too many places I hadn’t gone. That evening as I was putting my boys to bed, I looked at my ring finger and noticed that it wasn’t shiny and sparkling–the diamond of my engagement ring was missing. I felt just sick. I looked EVERYWHERE. Combing through every square inch of our home desperately hoping it would just be lying on the floor somewhere. No luck. The following day, I drove to as many of the places I had gone the day before that I could remember–pleading with store owners and random strangers to let me know if they found it. Do you have any idea how sparkly asphalt is? I do now. As I crawled around on my hands and knees–I soon realized that I was indeed searching for a needle in a haystack and that unless I could pinpoint exactly when it fell out, finding my missing diamond was hopeless.
Super Rockstar replaced my ring as a special gift to me this Christmas. I’m ecstatic to look at my left hand and see a shiny sparkly again. I will always mourn the loss of my original, but this new one sure is purty.
6. What we watched. It was nearly ALL family movie Christmas ones this week. Super Rockstar and I did watch one movie–just the two of us. It’s called 2012. It has John Cussack and several other notable actors. It’s an apocalyptical type movie with awesome CGI and over the top action. We loved it! It’s rated PG-13 and is appropriate for tween/teen age–there’s some language and A LOT of intense action.
Since the boys are on break from school we watched a Christmas movie every evening together. The first one was Elf. The boys always cringe at this movie because of how goofy and childlike he is. (the scene where he buys the lingerie for his Dad because the sign says it’s ‘for someone special’ –sends them into shrieks of embarrassment every time) It’s just such a great movie– we all enjoyed it.
Up next was Miracle on 34th Street (the newer one). My boys had never seen this one before and I was a little worried they wouldn’t like it. But, the LOVED it! If you have kiddos that still believe in Santa–I don’t recommend this one. It could be a major spoiler to the idea of if Santa if real or not. Otherwise, it’s great for kids and is such a precious story.
And finally, we watched the newer animated Grinch they came out last year. Super Rockstar hadn’t seen this one before. I love that the Grinch is less “grinchy” than the other versions and his dog, Max, is just so cute in this one. It’s a sweet story too. I love all of it except the remake of the Grinch song–it’s kind of a downer and not as fun.
7. My favorite memes of the week.
As always, I would love to hear from you. I hope you have a great week!
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