Merry Christmas Eve!

Pla Shee plays Jingle Bells!

Underachievement

Winter is not a great time for egg production.  In the spring and summer months, our chickens produce between 12 and 18 eggs per day.  In winter, we're lucky to get four.  So we know that most of the chickens are just free loaders for the winter months.  But this takes under-achieving to a whole new level.

Happy Birthday, Pla Shee!

Today is Pla Shee's 11th birthday!  To celebrate, we made sugar cookies and decorated both the cookies and later ourselves.  Lots of giggles ensued.

North Park Mall

A trip to the mall has become a major excursion nowadays, and most of the time it is a lot more trouble than it's worth.  But as a person who goes stir crazy after staying home with three kids for more than about 24 hours, I had my fill yesterday, so today we ventured to NorthPark Mall.  I'm not much of a "mall" person, and I'm definitely not much of a shopper, but North Park is special because it's the mall that I used to go to as a kid.  And while it's changed A LOT, it's also very much the same.

There's still the big fountain where kids drape themselves over the concrete rim.  There's always that one kid whose parents either don't care or aren't watching who runs around the rim and with the slightest misstep could fall face first into the fountain.  When I was little, I think the fountain used to have lights in it that made it change colors, and I thought it would shoot water really high sometimes, but it doesn't do those things any more.  Maybe it just seemed bigger because I was little?

Anyway, there's the fountain.  And there's Scrooge, who is a puppet that leans out of the window at the top of his house jarring and joking with his adoring fans every hour during the holidays.  But most importantly, there's Santa.  Otherwise known as "THE REAL SANTA."  He's the Santa that's been at North Park for more than 20 years.  He has his PhD in Counseling.  According to Pla Shee's explanation today, the other Santas (the ones at other malls, the one that came to his school, etc.) report to this main Santa, who comes to North Park during the day to meet with children, and flies back to the North Pole in the evenings to get his sleigh ready for Christmas.

Needless to say, we were looking forward to putting in a good word to Santa today.  Unfortunately we were not the only family to have this brilliant idea.  When we got to Santa's photo studio at the mall at 12:30, we were told that our assigned time to have our moment with THE REAL SANTA would be 8:30 this evening. 

Umm...no.  On to Plan B.  Plan B=Take a handful of pennies, close your eyes, think of all of your Christmas wishes, and chuck the pennies in the big fountain.  Legend has it that Santa gets the message that way, too.  :)

Silly boy!

Yesterday evening as I was helping Pla Shee put the final touches on some of his handmade Christmas presents, Kai was playing in the living room and Ruby was hanging out in her bouncy seat.  Then Kai walked into the kitchen pleading, "Zip me, Mamma, zip me"!  Turns out "zip" also means button, snap, or fasten.  He had found Ruby's sweater and pants in the dirty clothes, managed to put both on correctly, and just needed some help with the finishing touches--the buttons on the sweater.  He was so proud of himself!

 Later in the evening we headed to Pla Shee's basketball game and yes, Kai proudly sported this lovely outfit in public for all of Venus to admire. He is such a silly little guy.

A tired little boy...

On Sunday I left Aaron at home with Ruby (Pla Shee was in Dallas visiting his first family), and Kai and I braved the cold to do a little Christmas shopping.  This year 95% of the gifts we give will be homemade, but the presents from Santa will be purchased.  I neglected to take into account that our shopping excursion coincided with Kai's naptime.  As you can see from the picture*, he did not let shopping interfere with his napping plans.  He was sound asleep! :)

*Please note that despite the fact that the cart is from Wal-Mart, we were not actually shopping at Wal-Mart.  We were at Big Lots (which probably isn't a lot better, if we're being honest).  If you want to know more about why we boycott Wal-Mart, check out the excellent (and entertaining) documentary below.

Mondays are the new Friday

It just so happens that Aaron's day off is on Monday, and today I stayed home too because Ruby had her 2 month check-up this afternoon.  It was so nice to hang out in our pajamas all morning, especially since a huge cold front blew in yesterday and brought a lot of nasty weather.  Here's my Roo at 10 weeks old this morning:

She was 10.8 pounds, so she's doubled in size since she was a week old.  Kai had better look out...we have wagers on when she'll surpass the little guy on the scale.  It shouldn't be too long, at this rate!

This is Kai hanging out in his pj's this morning and cooking up an apple for brunch.  He's just recently gotten into a lot of pretend play, so we do lots of "cooking" on the kitchen set that Pu Lue built, which now sits in Ruby's room.

This picture of the kitchen set was taken before we painted the walls and rearranged the furniture, but you get the idea.  Kai gladly hopped in Ruby's crib this morning to show off her cute hand-painted walls, courtesy of Gigi (Ann-Marie Barker).  Ann-Marie is a really talented artist, and you can check out some of her recent work on her website.

Big Brother Kai

Kai created this whole set-up for Ruby to "watch tv" (it's really just a music box) with him.  What a sweet big brother!