Sophie’s faves:

Dora Fiesta Favorites Kitchen Playset:

This was the “big-ticket item” that Sophie really wanted, and I’m glad we got it. (Of course I got a sweet deal on it, because regular price is a bit steep for me.)  The quality is good, Dora says lots of different phrases, the toy food & dishes are a nice quality, and you can change the window scene if you’re feeling creative.  It’s just a great pretend toy with the advantage of having the voice & image of Dora, whom Sophie adores.  Jonah absolutely LOVES playing with this also, so BONUS!

Learning Resources Pretend & Play School Set:

This set is SO much fun! I had  my mom get this for Sophie because I just really wanted her to have it and I knew she would love it.  What I didn’t count on was that Joshua would love it too and that they would love playing it together. Double BONUS!  Those two have had so much fun with it.  It comes with a school bell, map, dry-erase calendar and board, pointer for the teacher, stickers, worksheets, pencils, hall passes, all kinds of great supplies. The kids have been pretending up a STORM with this thing, and of course I’ve gotten into the act too. It also folds up so nicely for storage or to transport it somewhere – and is very sturdy! It is just a great set. I highly recommend it!

Joshua:

Transformers Kre-O sets by Hasbro:

this pic is from my husband's Facebook profile. Because he's a Transformers NERD!

Confession: I picked these toys out to buy for Joshua because I also knew how much my hubby loved Transformers as a kid.  And they have had SO MUCH FUN building them together.  Bobby has just been so impressed with the quality of the Kre-O.  I hunted down the big Optimus Prime set when it was on a good sale, and took advantage of sales and coupons both in-store and online on some of the other sets.  We like these so much that Joshua bought another one with his own Christmas money, and we bought another one for his birthday which is coming up in February (shh, don’t tell!) These bricks work with lego, which is great if you already have those, but they are great in their own right.  Bobby and Joshua had a lot of fun and bonding time building and playing with these over the holiday!  We will definitely be buying these for awhile I am sure.

Mario Kart K’nex:

Let me first just say that I was super, super worried about spending any $$ on this because up until now, ever Mario toy I’ve bought has been CRAP. But, I crossed my fingers that the respected K’nex brand would not produce crap, and it was a good gamble, because this is AWESOME!  The downside is that it is also giant and in my living room, but we will put it away eventually. We’re just having too much fun with it right now.  The tracks are not hard to put together so it’s no problem to get them back out to play.  The cars are FAST and they really stay on the track (of course you CAN build it so that they fly off or crash if you want to).  The cars do eat up batteries somewhat but we’ve been playing with them non-stop so that’s not surprising to me.  Overall, I am very impressed. The cars work GREAT, are easy to build, the track is nice quality, it’s fun, it’s fast, it’s customizable, and it was a good investment.  Once again, I took advantage of a sale and already got Joshua another set of these for his birthday (again with the SHH!)

Jonah:

Playskool Poppin Park Elefun Busy Ball Bopper:

Technically I got this for review, full disclosure, but I have included it as Jonah’s favorite Christmas toy because it’s super-cool and definitely the top of all his toys! It’s my favorite as a parent as well!  It’s got fun music, it works GREAT, Jonah figured out how to work it instantly and he adores it.  He dances to the music as he plays, it’s pretty much adorable.  The big kids like playing it with him as well.  I love everything about this toy. I would buy one ten times over.  If you know a baby who has a birthday coming up, buy them this!!  All Jonah’s boring parents got him were socks and onesies, so thanks Playskool, for this one!

Well, there’s our favorite Christmas toy round-up! All of them were paid for with our own hard-earned money or were given by family except for the Elefun toy.  What toys are most glad that your kiddos received for Christmas?

A couple of days before Christmas I got a wonderful care package from my friends at Vicks!  Seriously, like, the motherload:

Score!  It’s nice to have our medicine cabinet so well-stocked for cold and flu season.  Of course, I’m hoping to not catch anything, but if Bobby or I do, we are well prepared.  And we’ve got plenty of VapoRub for us and the big kids now.  Poor Jonah seems to get a cold every couple weeks so his Vicks BabyRub has been getting quite a bit of use as well.

There are lots of great Vicks products to choose from when you’re feeling bad (I’m really intrigued by the new Vicks NatureFusion products – they have natural honey, but no alcohol, and are gluten-free, and dye-free!), but if you’re wondering which one is best for when you come down with a little something, Vicks.com has a great tool to help you find the right Vicks product to help you feel better!  It’s called the Vicks Solution Finder and you can check it out here.  In three easy steps you can choose your symptoms, your age, and what approach you want to take in caring for yourself, and the Solution Finder will tell you which Vicks products will be best for you. It’s really cool, and really fast!

I’m thrilled to continue bringing you the latest from Vicks as a Vicks Blogger in 2012, so stay tuned for more Vicks news and giveaways.  Have a happy and healthy New Year!  And don’t forget to check out Vicks VapoRub on Facebook to send your friends a “Feel Better Friend” virtual care package and get the latest on all things VapoRub.

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I am being compensated for my role as a Vicks Blogger.  All opinions on the products are my own.

Then after  a couple hours of play, we headed off to both of my Grandma’s houses.  I am so blessed to still have two Grandmas!  Here we are all dressed up:

At my 2nd Grandma’s house, we got to meet up with the Emily & Anna and their families. Emily and I had a giggle that we were dressed just a little too similarly, in Lands’ End of course! Starfish leggings FOR THE WIN!

We had an awesome but exhausting day! I am so thankful for my wonderful extended family. Now, we do round 2 today, as we didn’t get to have Christmas with my immediate family because of the Apukealypse so that’s what we are up for today -Christmas at my mom & dad’s with my brothers & their families.

Hope you all had a sweet, fun day celebrating the birth of Jesus and your families. Leave a comment and let me know how it was!

And so I learned that Sophie has been paying attention at school to her multicultural holiday education.  The next day she came home and excitedly said, “Mommy! Guess what?? Kamri celebrates Kwanzaa because she has BLACK SKIN!”  Kamri is one of Sophie’s good buddies, and she does, in fact have black skin.  So does one of Sophie’s teachers and another classmate (her class is very racially mixed, with Hispanic and Caucasians tied for majority). So I said, “Do Mr. G and Honest’I celebrate Kwanzaa too?”  and she said, “Nope, just Kamri.”  It kind of cracked me up, because it didn’t seem to bother her that those two didn’t celebrate Kwanzaa even though they also had “black skin”.  Then today, she told me rather longingly that she wished we could also celebrate Kwanzaa.  I think she’s just aiming for more presents, though.

Next, her class moved on to Christmas, however the extent of their education on Christmas was Santa coming to visit class and the making of a stocking.  This was kind of confusing to Sophie because we’ve never tried to pull the whole Santa thing over on our kids, and we just told them that he is pretend. Only now, she thinks he is real because CLEARLY he came to her school.  Hmm.  Good thing we have our nativity scene, Advent calendar, and you know, Bible at home. Not too mention the many books we read to try to explain about Jesus’ birth.

Next, her class moved on to Hannukah.   “Mom, Hannukah is another holiday. And it has candles TOO! But it’s not right now, but it’s in a few days.  And we played a Hanukkah game with pretzels!  And we made a dreidel!”  That’s all the info I got on Hannukah, though when she came home Wednesday with her dreidel, Kwanzaa mat, and stocking that she had made over the past few weeks, she was rather jazzed about them all.

Learning about others is awesome!

Truth be told, as funny as Sophie’s interpretations of what she is learning about at school are, I am really glad she IS learning about other families’ traditions, and that she thinks it’s all awesome.  Obviously, we celebrate Christmas and we believe in Christ, but it’s excellent for her to start to learn and understand about the different people in our very urban part of town.

And it sure is cute to hear her explain all about what she’s learning.

So whatever holiday you celebrate, I hope you have a very happy one!  And should you be short one Kwanzaa mat at your holiday table…well, Sophie might let you borrow hers!  If there’s a present in it for her.

So of course that’s what came to visit us, because I was not expecting it at all.  It started last Tuesday night when Joshua was complaining of a headache. I took his temperature and lo and behold, it was 101.4!  So I declared that he was not going to school the next day and put him to bed.  When he woke up still feverish the next morning and puked a couple times, I was pretty nervous.  But throughout the day, he actually improved.  His fever responded to ibuprofen, and he didn’t vomit anymore.  He was still peaked, but he ate a couple popsicles.  When Sophie got home from school, they played really nicely together.  She was rather happy to have her big brother home.  Then he started feeling bad again, as it got later, and I wasn’t sure whether he’d be well enough to go to school Thursday or not.  We put both big kids to bed in the hopes that he would wake up all better.

And THEN Sophie woke up and vomited alllll over her bedroom at about 11:15.  I got her undressed and threw her in the bathtub while Bobby went to work on her bedroom. Let me tell you that one of the pleasures of having a daughter with long, glorious hair is scrubbing puke out of it in the middle of the night. Oh, did I say pleasures? Because I meant HORRORS!!  Ick. Poor Soph had a rough night and also a rough early morning.  She was quite a bit sicker than Joshua had been.  He still had a fever in the morning, though, so I kept them both home.  At about 3:30 in the afternoon, an exhausted and sick Sophie girl fell asleep on the couch.  She slept for almost three hours!

Pathetic!

Joshua was doing ok, but he started feeling bad again as night fell and his fever went back up to 101.4.  So, I kept him home Friday too.  Friday – day 3 with two sick big kids!  But Friday wasn’t too bad – they were definitely recovering.  Less TV and more playing, and they both ate peanut butter toast instead of just popsicles.  By Saturday morning, they were both back to normal.  Joshua’s energy was through the ROOF! You could tell he hadn’t been out in a few days.

So, Saturday was good. Saturday we were all gloriously healthy.  All seemed right again.

Until I woke up at 3:30 Sunday morning to feed the baby, and had to throw, I mean, quickly place him back in his crib to avoid throwing up all over him.

Oh, I was sick. SO, SO sick.  I can’t remember the last time I was that sick!  I threw up a million more times that the kids did combined.  All day Sunday, I laid in bed because I couldn’t sit up with having to throw up. It. Was. Baaaad.  Bobby took care of the kids, took them to a birthday party, brought me whatever I needed – he was great.  I couldn’t even sit up to nurse Jonah, I had to nurse him lying down. I don’t know what I would have done had this occurred on a week day!

So – we’ve had our holiday sickness!  Please germs and cooties, stay away from us at least until after Christmas, we’ve paid our dues and sacrificed to the porcelain god.

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P.S. I totally stole the term “Apukealypse” from my pal Dawn.

Elf on the Shelf.

The premise is that (and I haven’t read the book so I’m just reporting what I’ve gleaned from the interwebz) an elf shows up at your house, checks out what’s going on there, and reports back to Santa whether the kids are being naughty or nice. But, the elf shows up in different places every day.

I know it’s been popular for a few years, but apparently my kids hadn’t heard of it before now. This year, though, they really wanted an elf!

I couldn’t bring myself to buy the $30 brand name version, though, so meet Fake Elf.

I bought him for $7.99 at a local gift shop and printed a letter I found online, explaining who he was.

The kids totally bought it, and I saved myself $22.

So, Fake Elf has been bouncing around our house, hanging from light fixtures, doing snow angels in powdered sugar, and sitting atop a pineapple, among other things. It takes 5 seconds to do and it’s so fun to hear the kids search for him and squeal in excitement when they find him. I love hearing them conjecture about how Fake Elf got from where he was last night to where he turned up this morning.

Of course, there are a million people more creative than their elves than I am, and I’ve seen some really cute elf hi-jinks! In fact, there’s a whole Flickr pool dedicated to the subject. Here are a few of my favorites:

My elf placement has been much less involved than those, but aren’t they cute?

Do you have an elf on a shelf?

(Click on the number to go to the original post to find details)

1.

Santa hat jello shots - brilliant.

2.

Peanut butter reindeer cookies - these would be fun with the kids!

3.

An alternative to my famous pumpkin roll, for people who hate pumpkin (aka Jenny)

4.

Peppermint Chex mix - yum.

5.

A lighted ribbon garland (and tons of other stuff)

6.

Handprint calendar - great present for the grandparents.

7.

I'm not a beer drinker, but this is so cute!

8.

I suppose there should be SOME kind of healthy food at Christmas...

9.

Store ornaments in egg cartons - brilliant!

10.

Chocolate & coconut, need I say more.

For more Top Ten Tuesday, visit OhAmanda!

May I present, the Advent section of our dining room:

We are all about it, yo!

From left to right, we have: Little People Nativity (minus two wise men, this is what happens when you leave it out all year and let your kids play with it!), Hal the Moose from Build-a-Bear, who you know, has everything to do with Jesus’  birth, our Christmas tree calendar that has an advent activity that we will do as a family every day leading up to Christmas, our chocolate advent calendar which combines two of my favorite things, Scripture verses & chocolate, a random puppy dog dressed for Christmas, and finally, the ol’ mouse advent calendar that was in my house as a child.

WHEW!

We are having great fun doing each of our three calendars each day.  The kids are sharing the chocolate really well, we are learning from the Bible verses, and we are having a great time with the activities.  Most of the activities I just made up, like today’s “read the Christmas story from the Bible”, and some I have found online, like “make and play Christmas tic tac toe.”  They range from watching a Christmas movie, to reading a Christmas book, to making Christmas cookies.

I must confess, I am loving it!  I am loving doing these things with my kids, teaching them about Jesus’ birth, and adding some purpose and fun to the anticipation of Christmas morning.

I’m practically a fun mom!! Eek!  Well, ’tis the season!  What are you doing to celebrate this season with your kids?

One of the things that’s been on my mind (read: that I’ve been having ridiculous anxiety over) is how to keep my family healthy over the holidays.  I will completely freak out if any of the kids are sick and have to miss any of the family festivities!  I remember a few years ago when Joshua was a baby, I myself got the flu and had to miss a family Christmas. It was not cool!

So. How do I keep them healthy??  Since I am a Vicks Blogger, I decided to go to their website to see if they had anything to add to this healthy-for-the-holidays scheme.   Here are a few tips I picked up:

• Get outdoors if you can!  Spending more time indoors breathing germy air is part of the reason we get sick more often in the winter.  So put on your coats and spend a little time outside if it’s sunny and dry.
• Cover those coughs and sneezes!  I know this seems basic, but I’ve been drilling the “cough into your elbow” thing into my kids and it’s helped SO MUCH.  And I know it’s cutting down on them spreading the germs around to each other that they bring home from their respective schools.
• Detail those remotes! Something my kids touch all the time are the TV remote and Wii controllers, and I NEVER thought to clean them, until now.  From now on I will be wiping them down daily at least!
• Add humidity!  I hate humidity in the summer, but it’s a good thing in the winter.  Consider using a Vicks humidifier to keep the air in your home moist – cold viruses thrive in dry air.

Now if my little boogers DO get sick (and totally RUIN Christmas!!) at least I know how to treat their coughs & colds – with my favorite Vicks VapoRub and Vicks Vaporizer with VapoSteam to keep them as comfortable and soothed as possible.  To keep updated on how Vicks Products can help your family this cold & flu season, check out their Facebook page.

What measures are you taking to keep your family healthy this holiday season?

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I am being compensated for my role as a Vicks Blogger. All opinions about Vicks Products are my own.

What’s upon us?

Why, the holiday season, of course!

I don’t know about you, but Thanksgiving has completely snuck up on me this year. In fact, I’m still kind of in denial that it’s happening next week. After Thanksgiving, though, it’s off to the races! Our December calendar is already filling up fast, and I haven’t even taken into account things like shopping, wrapping, baking… or enjoying my family.

Something is holding me back this year, cautioning me against the frenzy, against the onslaught of stuff.

I don’t want the most special season of the year to go by in a blur of rushing, stress and empty cardboard boxes.

A few nights ago I was talking with Kate about the importance of putting our time and resources into experiences rather than into things. I don’t think it completely sunk in, but I want to continue the conversation and figure out how we can make experiences the cornerstone of our holidays, of our family. Honestly, neither of the kids have thought of anything they really, really want to find under the Christmas tree (except a puppy, but that is a conversation for another time), and I kind of want to take advantage of that situation and see if we can’t change the way we approach the whole thing. Not that I’m opposed to presents – I quite like them. But I don’t want to replicate the years that the kids have been inundated with so. much. stuff. that they can’t even remember what they got.

That’s not meaningful for anyone.

So, readers, what do you think? How do you and your family make the most of the holidays? How do you put aside the messages that tell us we need to buy, buy, buy and focus on what actually matters?

That is my goal this year. Remind me of that, okay?