We spent most of the month of December house/cat/dog sitting for some friends. So the kids’ stockings actually got to hang over a real fireplace.
On Christmas Eve, we decided to play the family recycle game we bought at the Christmas market a few days earlier. You can see Elora was really excited. Ollie was happy too. What’s cool about this game, is you can see the mini trash cans in the background. Those are exact replicas of the recycling bins they have here. And the point of the game is to sort the little trash “coins” into the appropriate container. Where does the dog poop go? How about branches? Egg shells? Batteries? Teddy bears or sofas? Where do you put metal cans? Clear glass? Plastic items? Paper items? Tinted glass?
Here we are deciding what goes where. You can see they were both having a good time pretending they were saving the planet one recycled dog poop at a time.
Ollie got tired of the game after we told him he shouldn’t put the batteries in the plastic container, so he decided to go play with Marion instead.
After that, we pulled out the little kids stable & manger set we have. This was a favorite of Elora’s when she was just one year old. She’d chew and suck on all of the little pieces. The kids each pretended they were Mary and Joseph respectively and were travelling to the stable.
Then baby Jesus was born and Elora was thrilled.
Here’s Oliver with the 3 wisemen and Elora with Mary and Joseph.
After that we did our next Christmas tradition. Which is to watch Mr. Bean’s Christmas. Good times. The kids really really love Mr. Bean, so we think we will use this as part of our normal Christmas Even routine. Next, we watched Mr. Krueger’s Christmas with Jimmy Stewart, another favorite.
Marion didn’t really know what was going on, but she was still pretty cute. She’s starting to smile at you when you smile at her, and she makes the occasional squeak.
Here’s Elora showing Skye the cats on her pajamas. The kids were thrilled to have a rambunctious puppy, but at the same time they were very cautious because Skye liked to jump around a lot. If we put his energy to good use chewing on towels he was ok. (Towels were better for us than the other things he chewed up – all of Oliver’s pacifiers, two of Marion’s pacifiers, a boot, a pair of slippers, a baby mitten, two socks, a used diaper, a baby nasal aspirator, a few Jenga blocks, and a few other toys…) A few days later, when we went back home, the first thing Elora said was, “I really miss Skye…”
Elora loves the ribbon just as much as the presents. On Christmas Eve we let each of them open up one present to wet their appetite for Christmas morning.
Here’s Grampy, not quite sure what to do with baby Marion.
Here’s Mommy, putting the baby to sleep with her magical touch.
