Putting Away Christmas

This morning the girls got up early as usual. I found them snuggled on the sofa in their nightgowns watching television with Grandpa. Glitter had finally warmed up to him enough to sit on his lap.


After breakfast, I decided to take down the Christmas decorations. It took me most of the morning, and I kept walking through the house knowing that I've forgotten something. And then there was the tree, which was covered with confetti. Since it is an artificial tree, I decided that I had to remove all the confetti before putting it in storage. If it had been a real tree, I probably would have left the confetti streams on it, since it would all go into the garbage anyway. But, I really like the fake tree we have, so I picked it clean as best I could.

Once everything was boxed up, it was time to store it all in the closet under the stairs. There is no light in the closet, so I strapped on my Christmas present - an LED headlamp - before going in.


Here are the boxes under the stairs. The three red boxes contain Christmas decorations. There is one more red box that hasn't been put away yet. Wander is in charge of setting up and taking down the nativity. It will go in the last red box and then set on top of the nearer red box. The white box on the far left contains all the garland. Every year, I am amazed that it all fits in the box, and I wonder how I will managed to squish it all back into the box, yet it always fits. The cardboard box contains some candle shaped lights. We didn't put them in the windows this year. (The translucent boxes with the blue lids are Halloween decorations.)



It is very late at night now. So late that it is technically tomorrow. It is the fault of a book that I found. After lunch I took advantage of Grandma and Grandpa and left the girls with them as I went to get some groceries. Since I was by myself, I stopped by a resale shop for fun. There I found a book by Norah Lofts, who also wrote "The Maude Reed Tale," which is one of the very few books that I have kept from my elementary school days. So, I bought the book, "The Town House" hoping for another charming story. Alas, I have the horrible habit of getting sucked into a book and was stuck reading the book all evening, which made me rather sharp with the girls, and I didn't help them clean up their toys at the end of the day as I should have. Then I continued reading the book after they went to bed, and here I am really tired. And worst of all, "The Town House" turned out to be a disappointing read.

Clothespin Art Gallery

My fridge was being overrun with kid art. Both Sparkle and Glitter are fairly prolific produces of papercraft, since they have free access to paper, markers, crayons, colored pencils, scissors, and tape. Usually they use magnets to affix their pictures to the fridge. They even started using letters from the Word Whammer to hold up pictures. I started instituting a rule that if I found a picture on the floor, I would think it must be garbage and throw it away. Sparkle is pretty good about putting up her artwork, but there got to be so much stuff that it was difficult to open the fridge without paper getting in the way.

I decided to try a new idea. A while ago I had Wander install some small eyelet screws under the counter, thinking that I could hang school stuff there. However, my previous attempts at hanging stuff there didn't work out. So, I decided to try installing some clothespins and having the girls hang their own artwork there.





Hopefully this will help contain the artwork more. It will give the kids a place to put artwork without interfering with the operation of the kitchen. It will also give them build up the muscles in the fingers.

There are six clothespins. I originally was going to assign three clothespins to Sparkle, and three to Glitter, but I decided to give them a chance to work out how they wanted to use the clothespins first. Maybe they will work it out. However, if they end up fighting over the clothespins I'll intervene. It didn't take Sparkle long to figure out that she could hang up multiple pictures using a single clothespin.

We'll see how it goes.

Bored? Scrub a Toilet

Today Sparkle made the comment that she was bored. It wasn't surprising as it was a quiet day after last night's party. I asked her if she would like me to suggest something to do, and commented that she probably wouldn't like my suggestions, since she usually doesn't.

At first I rattle off the usual suggestions: read a book, build something with Lego, draw a picture, clean up toys. I don't get much of a reaction from Sparkle. Then, I remember something that I read about online about putting kids to work when they say they are bored, so, as a joke, I suggest wiping the counters or scrubbing the toilet. Suddenly Sparkle perks up. She wants to scrub the toilet! I'm a bit confounded, but hey, I'll go with the flow. I take her to the powder room and squirt some cleaner into the toilet bowl. Then I point out the brush and let Sparkle at it. She asks me to stay with her, but I tell her that I agreed to let her scrub the toilet, not to keep her company. Strangely enough, she commences scrubbing the toilet cheerfully, and I decide to take a picture.



After she finished scrubbing the toilet, she found something else to do. I casually asked if she was bored anymore, and she said "no." So, I guess that the plan worked. I got a cleaner toilet and Sparkle stopped being bored.

New Year's Eve Party - Fireworks

It was chilly outside when we did fireworks.

I insisted that my kids wear sturdy shoes when we do fireworks. Glitter's shoes are Velcro, and I help her with them anyway. However, Sparkle knows that I will no longer put shoes on her and she struggles with getting tennis shoes on. She can actually tie them fairly easily, but she finds it really tough to loosen the laces to get her foot in, straighten the tongue, and then tighten the laces again.


Here are some faces.


Wander is the fuse-man. He really enjoys fireworks. Usually one of the other dads will help him light fireworks, but this time Wander was the only one, even though other families did contribute some fireworks. For some reason my camera wouldn't take decent pictures of the fireworks. I'd press the shutter well before the lights and the camera would think and after the shower of sparks was over the camera would finally take a picture. I got really frustrated at it and finally gave up on trying to capture the aerial fireworks. Here is Wander with a fountain.


Meanwhile, I'm the neighborhood sparkler supplier. (Note: I did ask the parents if it was okay for me give their kids sparklers, and most of the parents supervised their own kids when we were passing out sparklers.) I spent most of my outside time handing out sparklers. I found that the easiest way to light a sparkler is off of another sparkler. So, I kept chaining my sparklers, lighting another one whenever one got low. Then another mom helped hand out sparklers to the kids who would light their sparklers off of mine. We went through an entire box of 144 sparklers (a gross of sparklers)!


Here I am doing my sparkler dance.


We also had a bunch of snaps that the kids liked, however they don't photograph well.

New Year's Eve Party - People

Here are some faces from our New Year's Eve party. It was mostly neighbors, along with some former neighbors and other good friends. Everyone brought a dish to share, so we had good eats without us having to cook. (I did make deviled eggs, but for once decided to skip making piggies.)


I got to enjoy my drink - a "Snowflake" - Sprite mixed with vanilla ice cream.

Since we have young children, we try to keep our parties child friendly. The kids all got along well (and two neighbor girls even show up without their parents!) and there were no major injuries, although the decibel level got a bit high. The kids pretty much took over the play room. By the end of the evening, the floor had disappeared.



The castle tent had at least four giggling girls in it.


Then the kids found the poppers and invented a new way of decorating the Christmas tree. The poppers look like miniature champagne bottles and have a string at one end. When you jerk the string, there's a loud bang and streams of confetti fly out. The kids lined up and launched them at the Christmas tree, covering it with streamers.


Then, of her own accord, Sparkle got the broom and started sweeping! Too bad she didn't finish the job, after a few swipes of the broom she abandoned the task and left the boom in the middle of the floor next to her dust pile.


The party ended shortly after midnight. Most of the guests had young children who needed to get to bed. The kiddos who made it to midnight got to toast each other with sparkling apple juice (non-alcoholic!) in plastic wine glasses. (Amusingly enough, we ended up with *more* bottles of non-alcoholic sparkling juice than bottles of wine and champagne. Grandma and I each bought a bottle, and several other guests with young children also brought bottles.) I was amazed that Sparkle and Glitter stayed up so late. Glitter had taken a late nap, but even so it was *really* late for her. Sparkle refused to take a nap before the party, even though I encouraged her several times, and she didn't get cranky until after everyone left.


I put the girls to bed and then Wander and I started the long clean-up process. We got most of the big stuff cleared out (both in the house and outside) and the food put away before going to bed. Clearing out the playroom ended up being a good opportunity to throw away a bunch of forgotten and broken toys. The floor got swept (four times!), mopped, and vacuumed New Year's Day.