Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Halloween and Christmas Already???

I remember the good old days.  You know, before my kids had their own opinions on what they wanted to dress up as for Halloween.  At this point, I basically have zero say in it.  I'd love it if they would each dress up as a Super Why character, or each take a Star Wars character, or really just about any combination of four related things that hopefully don't involve Disney princesses.  This year though, they each had an opinion.  Well, not so much Maren, but once Quinn had picked out her Anna costume she insisted that her little sister be Elsa.  So, okay, I gave in because honestly I'm just too worn out to try and talk them out of just about anything these days.  What was that?  You want popcorn for dinner?  Sure, whatever.

Here they are - Ninja Shannon, Spiderman Sully, Anna Quinn and Elsa Maren

Trick-or-treating was Halloween night and it was windy and pretty cold.  Needless to say, the kids didn't last too long.  After just a few blocks they were ready to head home.  The little kids went to bed while the older kids stayed up to help hand out candy.  Unfortunately, not many kids came and I was left with multiple bags of candy, not to mention all the candy the kids had collected.  Ugh.

Before Halloween even got here, I was hard at work working on Christmas.  Even typing out that sentence feels strange to me.  In past years I've always felt so far behind when it comes to Christmas so it's weird to be sitting here in early November and feel as though I've have it all under control.  I'm just though that now that I've said it, it will soon all fall apart.  I've bought the kids gifts and even have them wrapped AND I have our Christmas cards in hand.  Normally I'm the one paying tons of extra money for overnight shipping just so I can send out the cards Christmas week.

I'm trying to go smaller this Christmas.  Each child is getting about two gifts from us/Santa and I'm hoping that their grandparents will scale things back as well.  We've really been emphasizing how much the kids love things like swimming and tennis lessons and themed summer camps in the hopes that those things become good gift options vs more stuffed animals or toys. 

One of the favorite gifts I bought this year is for Shannon and only cost $0.99. 

When I was in the fourth grade I read the book the Secret of the Seven Crows, loved it and have never forgotten it.  Something reminded me of it a few weeks ago so I got on Amazon and found one for sale for a mere $0.99.  It arrived the other day and before I wrap it up for Shannon, I'm re-reading it so that when he reads it we'll be able to talk about it.  I'm just hoping he likes it as much as I did way back when.  Passing down a love for reading and books has definitely been a priority of mine and I get a little giddy thinking about sharing all the books I've loved beyond just little kid books like Goodnight Moon and Swimmy.