St Nicholas Day

Each year Stephen mentions to me that growing up he used to celebrate St Nicholas Day with his family. It was the day that St Nick came to his house and filled a stocking for each member of the family. Each year we remember AFTER St Nicholas Day. This year I was determined to ensure that didn't happen again. I knew the day was in December, but when? Not sure. I know what you're thinking - Ask SA. For the first 8 years we were together he had to confirm my birthday before filling out a form. Non-starter.

What's a girl to do when they don't know the answer to a question? Right. Google it!!! I did. It said December 6th. Awesome. I had two days to get us ready to go. Only... I didn't google the right thing. (Which subsequently resulted in the husband indicating I need a lesson in google-fu. <- nice.)

I googled "when is St Nicholas Day". NOT "when is St Nicholas Day on the Julian Calendar". The answer to the former (Gregorian calendar) is 12/6. The Julian Calendar (which is the calendar we use to celebrate all holidays) says 12/19. Given the hype we'd already made about St Nicholas coming... He had to come on 12/6. I attempted to say that mommy had the dates wrong and the tears were immediate and plentiful. Just kidding sweetie. Forget I ever said that! *Yikes*

We'd made some cards for St Nick and Santa on Sunday afternoon. We're still working on the whole Christmas is more about love, family and sharing than presents, but at the tender age of 3.5... "present" is a pretty powerful word. We've now moved to we have presents to celebrate baby Jesus' birthday. She really digs that Jesus shares his presents with everyone through Santa. I'll be honest here folks, I'm sure there are better ways to explain things but we're doing the best we can. She knows that Jesus is God's son. She knows that Christmas is His birthday. And she knows the "queen" is Mary. (We're working on who Joseph is... It's a rather difficult concept.)

Last night we left out two cookies, one for St Nick and one for him to take to Santa - because they're BFFs you know, milk and our cards.

Our stockings were hung over the side of the railing above the foyer and off to sleep she went.

It was the first night in weeks that she hasn't gotten up multiple times to go potty before finally going to sleep so she was up at 6:45am. She had been told that she couldn't touch her stocking or go to it until Mommy and Daddy went with her. As soon as we heard her finishing in the bathroom I went to go check out the scene. St Nick had come during the night and left some pretty awesome treasures. K craned her neck as best as she could on her way back to her room to try to see what was stuffed in the stocking. When I went to get her she said she didn't know what St Nick had left for her.

As we walked out of her room I had her cover her eyes and follow me. She giggled all the way. When we arrived at the stockings she was pretty excited, to say the least. =)

Listen as she looks at a few things...

We took our stockings to the big bed to see what treasures St Nick had left for us. Here's a few minutes of our fun... Click here to watch the fun!

After we went through our stockings we went downstairs to see if St Nick had eaten the cookies and taken the cards we'd made. I'll say he did... And had some fun with Snowy and some marshmallows too!! He even left us a letter!!! We were all pretty excited! 

St Nick left us a letter and a few marshmallows on the plate. One even had a bite out of it!!! Whoa!!!

Evidently Snowy gave St Nick some marshmallows as a snack - Guess the cookies weren't enough?!

After all of our morning excitement we still had to get on with our day... Off to school and work. Tonight we had some extra fun reading our new books & eating a santa hat cupcake. =) Yumm!! *Thanks Tootsie for the idea!!*

I'll leave you with some pictures I had some fun with using an app on my phone. ;) 

Happy St Nicholas Day! xo

D, S & K

The Rockwells & The Alekszas

Have little in common. There. I said it. As much as I try each year to try to create a Norman Rockwell scene... Alas... It alludes me.

When I thought about decorating the trees this year I thought (as I do each year) we'll make some hot cocoa, eat some cookies, sing some Christmas music, laugh... It'll be fabulous. FUN & fabulous!!

Yesterday we put the lights on the family room tree. All 1400 of them. The good news: They're all LED lights. The bad news: They were ALL the LED lights we had. And we still had one more tree to put lights on. And did I mention that last year we tossed all of the non-LED lights? Mmmhhmm. We did.

The first round of lights on the tree involved minimal argument. K did attempt to jump rope with the lights but fortunately was distracted with her awesome (read: LOUD) new toy I had gotten for her at the thrift store. As a side note, we now know why the (loud) hot pink barbie guitar was at the thrift store.

After an early morning wake up, when our bed came crashing to the floor, (a whole different story) I went downstairs to try to sleep a little more.

^The collapsed bed.

When that didn't work, I decided to see what we could do about the lights on the other tree. Since we had no lights to speak of, that required obtaining some.

Before I could get out of the house we entered a time-out war with K. She had 8 minutes in time-out after a series of incidents involving numerous transgressions. I believe Snowy witnessed the whole event and will be reporting to the big guy. Fortunately by the time I got home K and S were on speaking terms again and the war was over. *whew* We didn't have another the rest of the day.

I went out to get LED lights however those will need to wait until post holiday sales. Seriously - $12 for 100 lights? You're out of your mind. I'll wait till the same ones are $3 or less thanks. But that still left me lightless. I finally found some that would work but neglected to notice that they were on white wire instead of green. Awesome. Good job DMA. Good job. At that point I was committed to the operation since I had already come home. And I wasn't going back out again.

Also, while I was out I bought some Toll House sugar cookies to help with my scene. I know. It's not from scratch but a girls gotta do what a girls gotta do. Break and bake it is. And I'll have you know that we did roll some dough, use a cookie cutter and sprinkle some sugar on top of 3 cookies. Three cookies made of the extra dough from the break and bakes. Oh, and we even managed to squeeze in eating some dough. See. Just like when I was little. Kinda. Good times. Besides, K didn't much care that they were break and bake. In fact she thought that Santa, Christmas Trees and snowmen were pretty cool.

Lights on tree #2 went without major issue. I also had the assistance of my family in the decorating of the tree. S hooked the ornaments while K and I had hanging duty. Coaching K to find a "lonely space" to put her ornaments in didn't work quite like I'd hoped. This is one such "lonely" space that she decorated with jingle bells. There were 5 there. I had already moved two. =)

Both trees are now decorated and K helped. We didn't sing Christmas songs or drink hot cocoa but the cookies were made and the trees are up and there was no major fighting. I'll put this in the win category.

After a long day of work making the house look a lil more like Christmas, Daddy & KK enjoyed a lil cuddle time on the couch. Don't worry, as soon as this picture was taken I hopped in there myself. ;) My two favorite people, cuddling under a blanket watching Nina?! I was sooo there!!!

Our two trees... (and yes I do realize one looks like the leaning tower. I call it "character".)

^Tree in the Living Room (AKA Playroom)

^Tree in the Family Room

Thank goodness the trees are done... St Nicholas comes tomorrow night. =) It will be our first year celebrating the tradition that Stephen and his family used to celebrate in his youth. I'm pretty excited. K is pretty excited for her "stockings to be filled with stuffing". Silly girl.

xo
D, S & K

Pizza, Ornaments & Santa = FUN

Yesterday K and I went out with a friend from school & her family. We started out with some pizza then went to a pottery place to paint an ornament, see Santa, have a cookie and drink some hot chocolate.

K had a GREAT time with her friend Bella and her family. Bella's Daddy was loads of fun at dinner playing with the lil ladies. K thought he was so funny! =)

When we arrived at the pottery shop K saw Santa and initially was super excited. Until we went inside. Then she was terrified to go see the big guy. The reason... Really, rather funny - Although I'm sure not to her. You see, we have an Elf on a Shelf named Snowy. And for those that don't know about Elves like Snowy, they go back to the North Pole each night to report on the children of the house. Were they naughty? Were they Nice? Snowy can see you where ever you are... When he returns back to your house, before you wake up, he finds a new place to "land".

K with her BFF Snowy who yesterday landed inside the bow of the wreath when he came back from the North Pole. SMH. Silly Elf. ;)

I asked her why she didn't want to go see Santa. She said, "Because he knows Mommy!!" What does he know?? Evidently she thought that Snowy had told Santa about some naughty behavior from the night before. Girl didn't want to go up to see Santa because she was worried he'd tell her she wasn't going to get any presents. I'll admit to having a giggle moment here (but suppressed it as best as I could).

I want to add that I didn't tell her she doesn't get presents if she's naughty. She came home from school one day and said that one of her friends told her that if she was naughty that Santa writes a letter saying that you don't get any presents. No, I didn't say that wasn't true. I did say, wow, really? Sounds like you should make sure you behave, huh? "Yeah, Mommy!" -> Don't judge.

So when she thought Santa was going to confront her about her previous transgressions she freaked. I understand. I would too. We decided to go talk to Santa and see what he knew. Santa evidently had heard from Snowy. He heard that K had been a good girl. Gurlfriend was RELIEVED. She actually let out a big breath. (insert another mommy giggle)

The next 45 minutes she spent painting her angel and asking Santa to look at how good she was doing. Santa obligingly looked and told her how beautiful it was.

Another very amusing thing from the evening was a couple of little girls that really wanted to have a sleep over. (Not our girls... Two tween-ish girls.) They'd asked the moms and they had said no. The ladies then went to Santa to tell him that they were tracked out of school and would REALLY like a sleep over. I believe they used a line about him granting wishes or something to that effect. He went to talk to the Moms sharing that the ladies had asked him if he could help them convince the moms to let them have a sleep over. After he finishes talking to the Mom's he comes back over by us and I ask - "So, are the girls having a sleep over?!" His response, "Of course they are! Who says no to Santa?!" Wow, ladies. Way to go. Way to go... I sure hope K didn't hear that whole thing going down! She needs no lessons on manipulation!

Lots of fun & more memories! =)

This picture Santa took with his phone because he wanted to show Mrs Claus cute lil Katherine. (Or so he told me when he asked me to take the picture.) Thanks Santa! ;) We thought you were pretty awesome too!!