Winter has arrived
What nutty weather we’ve been having! I am sweaty and hot, but Mike won’t let me turn on the A/C since it is officially winter even though the thermostat says 76. Opening windows helped. I just don’t like to sleep with the windows open in this neighborhood. There’s way too much noise.
We took the kids to the park in their short sleeves and let them get ice cream from the ice cream truck, simply for the novelty of an ice cream truck adventure on the first day of winter.
In other news, Erik has informed me that Rudolph isn’t real. Duh! Everyone knows he’s just in the movies and TV shows. Santa doesn’t need a reindeer with a glowing nose.
So with that, I am not so sure that he is still a Santa believer. He was 100% sure at the start of the season, but he’s looking for proof that he’s a fake now. We did our Portable North Pole videos today (have kids who believe in Santa? You’ve got to google it and make your kids a free video!). He was totally enthralled and really believed Santa was talking to him. I tried to get him out of the room for Elsa’s video, but he insisted on watching and was not impressed that it was pretty much a repeat with a few things changed.
On Friday I had a wrapping playdate with my MOMS Club. I invited people over to wrap up presents while the kids played in the other room (connected, so it wasn’t like we threw them to the wolves). I was really happy with how things went. We had a total of six moms, which is the perfect number for my little townhouse. I had 12 moms over once and it was a logistical nightmare. Anyway, half of us had gifts to wrap and half didn’t, so the presentless half helped us and it went really quickly. I think this is going to have to become a yearly tradition.
Since I’m a state coordinator with MOMS Club, I pay a lot of attention to the trends in other places and what International MOMS Club recommends. They really want us to do things for moms to make it a moms club, not a kids club. I love that idea, but it is not always easy to find something like that since the kids will be present. I’m trying a few different things (menu planning was a huge hit a couple of months ago), but need to come up with some other creative ideas if I want to continue being the moms’ planner, not the kids’ party planner (believe me, we have plenty kids’ parties).
Oh, and I wanted to mention that yesterday I received a bunch of LJ comments from old entries that were never e-mailed. Sorry if you thought I was ignoring you! I should have went through and answered them, but it has been crazy busy here. The one question was about Elsa’s preschool. I am keeping her at the same preschool but they have different options. I’ve decided I’m going with the four day, less intense option. I talked to her teacher and the director and don’t really see any reason to basically send her to learn everything she’s going to learn in kindergarten. I made that mistake with Erik and it was a nightmare since he was so bored once he got to kindergarten. I still think Elsa will be one of the bright ones in her kindy class, even without being pushed to learn to read at age 4.
At least I think she will be more content with school, even if she is ahead of the curve. She loves to sit and write her letters, read books, color, and all of that. Erik is still putting in the bare minimum effort on his writing assignments. I am going to either e-mail or ask his teacher for a conference after the break. I want to start some sort of incentive for him to actually do his writing assignments. I was thinking that for every 10 writing papers he brings home with a check plus, we’d go out to Chuck E. Cheese. I’ve talked to him and talked to him about doing his writing and he refuses. He says it’s boring so he sits and stares at the clock until writing time is over.
Guess I better wrap this up and go to bed. Gotta have all my energy for cookie baking with the kids tomorrow. They love it, but you know having helpers makes it take three times as long. At least they are learning and having fun, right? They really are good kids and very independent. Now that Elsa is going on four life is getting so much easier!