What happened to January – I’m not sure how it’s already February.

We battled a lot of illness in January.  The kind of illness where Mom gets called to pick you up from school and you curl up on the couch and fall asleep as soon as you get home.

Ava also had her 30 month developmental check-up last week and she’s doing great.  Her doctor commented that she has a very large vocabulary and is a very sociable child.  She also loves to draw and read books.  The only slight issue is that she continues to be slow to gain weight and her weight has dropped several more percentiles for her age so we are switching her back to whole milk from 2% for the time being.

She has been talking about her trip to the doctor for several days now.  She pretended to give both Paul and I shots with the digital thermometer.  Then, she made us a band aid from an instruction manual and told us to keep the band-aid on, because she might get angry if we didn’t listen.  Hmmm, I don’t know where she gets this stuff.

She also likes to pretend to play “go to sleep” where she brings Paul and I a pillow and a blanket and you guessed it, we have to pretend to go to sleep.  Part of that ritual also involves saying ”Goodnight” to almost everyone we know.  Tonight’s rendition went something like this…”Goodnight Henry, Goodnight Chloe, Goodnight Sarah, Goodnight Samantha, Goodnight Applesauce” – both Paul and I cracked up so hard!

I’ve been slow with Oliver monthly updates, but he turned 8 months in January and continues to be the hapmpiest baby ever.  He is on the move and pulling himself up all over the place.  He is more brave than he is steady on his feet so there have been a lot of tumbles and falls recently.

A few days before Christmas, I came down with the worst cold/flu/crud imaginable.  It started with just a sore throat that turned into a snotty, hacking cough and fever.  I was hot and then I was cold and then I was hot again.  It was awful and with each passing today, I kept telling myself that I would feel better but this crud lingered and more than overstayed its’ welcome.  I spent most of Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and the following day in bed.  So thankful that my family was here and Paul was at home to help with the kids.  I would normally take tons of pictures but this year, it just didn’t happen.  Being sick really makes you realize how easy it is to take good health for granted.  I’m so thankful both of my kids have been really healthy so far.  Ava had one really bad case of chicken pox at 11 months old, but other than that we’ve had no ear infections, fevers or anything but the odd sniffle or runny nose.   It’s the second day into the New Year and I’m feeling much better but still not 100 percent yet.

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year!  Here’s to the first week of the New Year!  I love a nice break but I love our regular weekly routine even more.

It’s been a busy month so far.  My intention was to post more regularly throughout December, but oh well.  Here are some of the highlights of what we’ve been up to this month…

Waiting for the parade to start in Middleburg, Virginia

Munching on a brownie while waiting…

Watching all the horses and hounds head home.

We went to a Christmas party at school.

Baking, baking and lots of baking…

Hung the stockings

Decorating, decorating and more decorating

There is even mistletoe

Merry Christmas!

Visit Santa

A complete success, I’d say.  I’m putting this one in a frame and saving for years to come.

We changed up our plans for day 2 on our Advent Calendar because Paul had Friday afternoon and was home with us.  We decided to take advantage of the afternoon and head into DC to visit the US Botanical Gardens.

The highlight for Ava was probably the train that went around this Christmas tree.  She waited…

and then screamed with delight when the train first appeared.

Then, she continued jumping and screaming as the train went around.

She pushed the boundaries and…

tried to get as close as possible.

Oliver was there too.  Poor Boy gave up his afternoon nap to hang out with us.

It’s been a little while since my last post.  I wanted to give a brief update on Thanksgiving.  Our Thanksgiving meal was awesome.  I loved, loved every recipe except the sweet potatoes.  It’s not that they weren’t any good, but just still too sweet for my taste.  Next year, I’ll definitely look for a recipe without any kind of sugar.

I struggled alot with my pumpkin pie crust.  It was still delicious but I had a hard time making it work.  Might have to buy a pre-made store bought crust next year.

Oliver enjoyed himself too.

We spent the next few days following Thanksgiving trying to come up with creative things to do with the leftovers.  We learned warmed cranberry sauce is really, really awesome with vanilla ice cream.  I also made a really great stuffing hash, which is just leftover stuffing, spicy Italian sausage, an egg over easy with arugula.  Delicious, I could’ve eaten this every day for a week but we used it all up after making this recipe once.

We kicked off our Advent calendar this year with a gingerbread house.  See that gingerbread house kit on the table.  I found it at Target.  It turned out to be a bit of a disaster.  Two of the sides of the house were broken.  It’s kind of hard to hold up a roof when both of the support walls are in two pieces.  I tried and tried but no amount of royal icing was going to save this thing.  Also, the candy canes were both broken.  I was literally ready to scrap the whole project and then I found a bakery box and created kind of a support frame for this thing.  It worked.  Sort of.

Then, I had to remind my inner Virgo perfectionist why we were doing this in the first place.  We are definitely not winning any decorating awards, but Ava sure had fun.  She calls it her “candy house” and we’re working on a few gingerbread men to go along with it.

Ava did a lot of the decorating and was more than happy to sample any of the candy pieces that may have fallen off.

Note:  This Christmas book advent calendar is a 2-3 year project in the making.  I originally wrote this post in December 2009 and posted it again here today.

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I started collecting ideas for Christmas traditions that are especially fun for kids last year.  Ava will be 5 months old at Christmas this year and we will be keeping things really low key for her this year.  This year, I got Ava some Christmas pajamas, an ornament, a stocking with her name on it and one little toy that I haven’t told Paul about yet! ha!  In my family, we always got Christmas pajamas that we would open on Christmas Eve which is a tradition I would like to continue and I’d like to get Ava an ornament every year so that by the time she is 18 she has her own little collection of memories from her childhood.

Another idea that I would like to do in the future is to gather up 25 different children’s Christmas books and wrap them individually.  25 is quite a few Christmas books so I’ll start collecting a few here and there now and maybe even borrow some from the library when the time comes.  I’ll just need to keep careful track of when they need to be returned and for the ones that we own, I’ll probably box them up for most of the year and just bring them out in December.   Then, on the 25 days leading up to Christmas, Ava and etc, etc, etc (if we have any more kids, ha!) can unwrap a book each night that Paul or I will read to her/them.

Picture from Babyccino Kids.

I think it a wonderful and simple way to have some quality family time and something to look forward to in the days leading up to Christmas.  Plus, because Ava is opening a “gift” each day throughout the month of December, my hope is that it will curb some of the desire to open gifts NOW that I had as a kid.  It could work, right?!

Here are some of the books on my wish list for this little project…

1.  The Snowman

2.  The Spirit of Christmas

3.  How the Grinch Stole Christmas

4.  Olivia Helps with Christmas

5.  Elf on the Shelf

6.  Nutty Nutcracker Christmas

7.  Polar Express

8.  The Snowy Day

9.  The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

10.  Babar and Father Christmas

11.  The Nutcracker

12.  Fancy Nancy:  Splendiforous Christmas

13.  Olive, the Reindeer

14.  There was an old lady who swallowed a bell

15.  12 days of Christmas in Minnesota

16.  A Very Marley Christmas

17.  My First Christmas

18.  Dream Snow

19.  Snowmen at Christmas

20.  The Story of Christmas

21.  Bear Stays Up For Christmas

22. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

23.  Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree

23.  Madeline’s Christmas

24.  The Night Before Christmas

What other favorite Christmas children’s stories am I missing?

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Since that original post was published in December 2009, I was busy, busy collecting Christmas books and now I have a stack that looks like this.  This is *almost* all 24 of them.  There were still a couple on order in the mail when I took this photo.

Here are the ones we have in our collection:

1.  My 1st Christmas

2. What is Christmas

3. Little Drummer Boy

4. The Night Before Christmas

5. Olivia Helps with Christmas

6. Bear Stays Up for Christmas

7. Snowmen at Night

8. A Nutty Nutcracker Christmas

9. Olive, the Other Reindeer

10. If you take a Mouse to the Movies

11. The Story of Holly & Ivy

12. The Snowman

13. God Gave Us Christmas

14. The Sweet Smell of Christmas

15. A Wish to Be a Christmas Tree

16. Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree

17. The Santa Trap

18. How the Grinch Stole Christmas

19. White Snow, Bright Snow

20. The Polar Express

21. The Snowy Day

22. Llama Llama Holiday Drama

23. Dream Snow

24. Duck and Goose It’s Time for Christmas

This is the first year, I am actually going to start this tradition with Ava.  I’ve got about half of the books wrapped and since December 1 is tomorrow, I better get to the rest of them!

I have a brief Thanksgiving update that I would like to post at some point, but before I forget I wanted to tell you that my advent calendar is FINALLY finished!  24 individually wrapped packages with a few pieces of candy and a slip of paper explaining the activity for each day.

This list is not in order, but this year our list of Christmas activities includes:

1.  Address and send X-Mas cards

2. Make homemade hot chocolate and marshmellows

3.  Watch the parade in Middleburg, VA

4. Go on a sleigh ride

5. Hang mistletoe

6. Watch “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”

7. Attend a Christmas cookie exchange

8. Watch “The Grinch who Stole Christmas”

9. Go ice skating

10. Go to a Christmas Sing-a-long

11. Buy a new Christmas album

12. Make a cinnamon ornament

13. Make a red and green paper garland

14. Decorate the Christmas tree

15. Hang mistletoe

16. Visit Santa

17. Make Christmas cookies

18. Watch “Olivia” – the Christmas movie

19. See the Bull Run Festival of Lights

20. Stroll around in Old Town Alexandria

21. See the White House Christmas tree

22. Set out cookies and milk for Santa

23. Pick out a toy for Toys for Tots and donate canned goods

24. Make gingerbread pancakes

Today’s To Do List:

• Buy flowers
• Set table
• Set out serving dishes and find a matching utensils
• Make cornbread for the stuffing
• Make candied pecans for my arugula salad
• Gather up kitchen utensils (gravy strainer, potato ricer, meat thermometer, twine, turkey baster, etc) for easy access Thursday morning

The table is set.  We’ll be eating our meals on the stools and counter in the kitchen until Thursday.

The little pumpkins are leftover from Halloween.  The flowers are just a store bought bouquet divided into three mint julep cups because I like low arrangements are for tables.

This is an easy job to do in advance and it saves a lot of time on the day of Thanksgiving.  Decide which serving dishes you want to use for each dish and find an appropriate serving utensil.  Also, if you are like me, and you don’t use the “good” stuff all that often, some of the dishes may need to be washed too.  Although some of the pieces are obvious what they are for like the gravy boat, pie dish, etc, I like to use a post it note to labels the bowls especially so that I know where to put everything.

Random kitchen gadgets all in one place.

Cornbread for the stuffing done.

Candied pecans done.

Wednesday’s to do list:

• Pick up turkey
• Brine turkey
• Make pumpkin pie
• Make cranberry suace
• Assemble (but not bake) stuffing
• All veggie prep – wash, peel, chop, etc, stored in ziplock bags overnight ready for Thursday morning

I’ll also be talking about a couple of advent calendar projects in the works and I’ll be blogging about those projects later in the week.

You’ve heard of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, but have you heard of Small Business Saturday??  Shop small on November 26.

I definitely purchase more than my fair share of stuff from online retailers like Amazon and places like Target, but there is something really lovely and feel good fun about shopping small.   If you make just one purchase, it will go along way towards supporting small businesses on Main Streets across America.