Busy Time (and one more birthday cake)

Whew.  We just finished birthday season, we hosted Thanksgiving, and we just started focusing in on the Christmas stuff.  I'm always amazed with how little room there is in our regular weekly schedule of rehearsals and lessons and appointments that we can cram in any more at this time of year, but somehow we do.  Here's a whirlwind recap mostly for my own record:

My mom, brother Arno, and niece were at our house for Thanksgiving this year.  The next day my brother Barrett joined us while his wife and baby continued their visit down in Illinois with her family.  It was a great Thanksgiving, despite it being the first one without my dad.  Thanksgiving is also my parents' wedding anniversary, so a certain amount of sadness was unavoidable, but overall we mostly had fun.  My mom did most of the cooking and everything was delicious, we played telephone-pictionary which is always hilarious, and we mostly just enjoyed being together.  I love having everyone in my house.

Mona made beautiful turkeys out of duct tape and paper for every person at the table.  Each one was different and I loved them all.

Mommy's Sweatshop Relentlessly Cranks Out the Joy

I believe in holiday cards.  I know we stay better connected online anymore, but there is nothing like getting a real piece of mail from someone you care about to make you smile while sorting through the junk and bills.  There are even some people we only really catch up with at this time of year, and when I'm going through my address book and figuring out how many cards to put together I'm glad to stop and think of them.

Some years when we are pressed for time we just take a family portrait and use that as our card.  But when we can we like to make our cards.  We set up the assembly line and I put the kids to work.

This year we went with a potato print of a Christmas cookie.  We haven't done a potato print in a while.  The last time was three years ago where we made trees and decorated them with stickers.

For the most part that worked out well.  The kids liked stamping the trees one day, and the next when the paint was dry we broke out the giant sticker box and I told them to use whatever struck their fancy.  They used a lot of foil stars and shiny things.

But then Quinn, in his 3-year-old innocence, came up with this bit of horror that I kept for myself because it makes me laugh every time:

(The heart reads "1 month old" in case you can't read it and want to fully appreciate the inappropriateness of this card.)


The kids like helping make the cards, but it always happens on a deadline around birthday season and preparing for concerts and lots of visitors, so I have to keep things somewhat simple, and I have to remind myself it's supposed to be fun and not lose my patience with the production line.

Thankfully the median age in my in-home sweatshop keeps rising and the quality of my slave labor fun crafting projects seems to improve, or at least get more efficient.