Samantha's first blog

pamelamyers | December 24, 2015

Christmas Eve is a fun time in our house. Samantha is always bouncing off the walls waiting for Santa to come and we usually have the grandparents over in the evening to visit and help pass the time! It’s hard to deal with a crazed little one on the night Santa comes!

The weather has been weirdly warm (I’m talking 70 degrees or so. In December. In Pennsylvania. Yeah, weird.) Sam had a shower and put on her Christmas Eve nightgown then wanted to go outside for some air. How could I resist on such a gorgeous day? Sam went swinging away on her swing, one of her favorite things to do.

Our last rose, surrounded by Christmas lights. This does not make sense….

After we came in, we popped some Christmas crackers. Sam has been obsessed with them since she first saw them on Peppa Pig last year. She saw them again on the Christmas episode of Ben and Holly’s Little Kingdom (from the Peppa Pig folks). A very British tradition, apparently. I managed to get some on Amazon. Sam loved them!

Each cracker has a little prize, a very bad joke, and a paper crown that the winner of the cracking is supposed to wear.

Everyone had to pop crackers with Sam. We all let her keep the prizes, of course, but she made everyone wear paper hats. Somehow Mark escaped getting his photo taken. Hmmm…maybe that photo got conveniently deleted…

Samantha gave her grandparents her snowmen ornaments. Of course, they loved them!

Before long, it was time to put out snacks for Santa and the reindeer. Per her list, she put out a Fuji apple and some cranberry juice (which she still calls “Daddy Juice”) for Santa and nine carrots for the nine reindeer.

Sam reminded me that Santa would need a knife and the peeler, so we left those too. At the last minute, she added some Hershey Kisses, a Christmas cracker, instructions for how to make a toy that she found in her cracker (for the elves) and then a toy firetruck and a pipe cleaner candy cane she made (the toy and the candy cane were for the reindeer).

It was off to bed after that. It is always hard to get her to sleep on Christmas Eve, but eventually tiredness wins out and off she goes. We kept hearing weird noises and Sam was convinced it was Santa, already! I told her she’d better get off to sleep! It’s going to be a long day tomorrow!

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pamelamyers | December 23, 2015

Yesterday was Sam’s holiday party at school. Since I am off from work this whole week, I signed up to be one of the parent volunteers. I don’t get into her classroom much (frankly, ever) and I knew Sam would love it if I was there. It was a lot of fun. Sam was thrilled when I showed up (the party was her last hour of school) and I think it was a toss up between whether she was just happy to see me or happy that I was the volunteer in charge of bringing milk! Milk is still her favorite drink and she never has it at school since they only drink water.

I helped the other volunteers put out cookies on their plates and offered the kids milk or water. Here is her classroom. Sam is sitting at her regular seat and table. Actually, all the kids were!

One of the other volunteers offered to take a picture of us. I was dressed in my most festive attire! I had Christmas socks on too, but you can’t see those.

After their snack, the kids were broken up into two groups for party activities. Sam’s group first did a craft of making a reindeer face out of wooden sticks, pom poms and other supplies. The kids all sat on the rug listening to the instructions.

Making antlers out of a pipe cleaner seemed a bit more than most of the kids could do (I made a million….) but Sam did hers herself! Her friend, Ella, who she shares a locker with, is right next to her.

The kids then switched activities and Sam’s group got a chance to throw marshmallow “snowballs” into a bucket. On her first try, Sam got one, but on her next, they both went in!

The remaining time was spent watching a video of someone reading The Polar Express. They seem to like that story. I had never read it before, or saw the movie, and Sam’s teacher lent me the book for winter break.

It was a cute party, but fast, and before we knew it, it was time to go. Sam did give Ms. Cipolloni and Mrs. Biehl her snowmen she made before we left, as well as gift cards. They loved their homemade presents. Sam signed the back of each one. Ms. Cipolloni told Sam that she especiallly loved it because, if Sam remembers, she had just told the class her Christmas tree at home fell down and a lot of her ornaments broke. It was a good thing Sam gave her a new one!

Today is Sam’s last day before winter break. Yay! No school, no homework! Let the Christmasing begin!

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pamelamyers | December 22, 2015

This summer, we had a bad storm that caused massive power outages and a lot of storm damage. Some of the damage were to trees on Mark’s dad’s property. Thankfully, the trees were way in the back up on his hill and nowhere near the house or garage. One tree was a huge cherry tree that fell. There was some good to come out of it. He found a neighbor who wanted the wood to heat his house to cut it down, and we wound up with a lot of the extra wood ourselves. Lots of fires this winter, I hope! (Although, with the warm weather we have been having, who knows when our next fire will be).

Mark found some really nice rounds when he was cutting up the pieces we had into firewood size and he thought up this cute craft for he and Sam to make. They made rustic looking snowmen! Sam had a blast helping Mark put all the pieces together, picking out buttons, and tying the pipe cleaner scarves.

She made enough for us to keep two, and a bunch to give as gifts to both her teachers, to Pop Pop, Aunt Krista and Uncle Adam, Grandmom and Poppy, and Debbie and Joe next door. I decoupaged a label to the back saying who made the snowman and where the wood was from.

Here are all the snowmen! They look great!

Our two now hang proudly on our tree. 🙂

Oh, yes, as a side note, how cute are these cats? I couldn’t resist adding a few photos.

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pamelamyers | December 21, 2015

Time to make the annual Christmas raviolis! The kids said they would help, and it looks from these photos like they were, but it didn’t last. Oh well. The help they gave us for a little while was better than nothing. Sam and Maddox were interested for a while, but they lost interest and went to play.

The biggest challenge of the day wasn’t getting the kids to help, it was keeping Penelope out of the food! It reminded me of the time when we had Zephyr as a kitten and she jumped right up into the rolled out dough. Penelope did make it on the table once, as you can see by the floury footprints she left behind!

Later that night, I asked Sam if she wanted to help me make gingerbread cookies. She couldn’t wait once she saw it involved the cookie cutters and rolling out the dough. She did pretty well! She rolled out dough and cut out most of the cookies. After a while, I sort of left her to it to finish.

All her hard work and she still won’t try even one bite! It is so discouraging. I love baking and I really was looking forward to lots of cookie and cupcake baking with Sam where we’d sample all of our treats, but alas, no. I guess I should be glad she at least enjoys the process if not the eating!

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pamelamyers | December 19, 2015

This year Sam wanted to make a gingerbread train instead of a gingerbread house. She has been telling me that since last year and I really hoped I’d find one. Luckily, I did. We got a bit of a late start on it this year but we finally found the time. This was the first year that Sam really wanted to do the entire thing herself without any help. I only assembled the train, but once it was dry, it’s all Sam! She did a great job. I bought a ton of extra stuff for her to decorate with since I always think the things they give you in the kit are (a) not enough and (b) sort of lame. She took her time and really thought about what she wanted to do, and just worked, worked, worked. I think it turned out great!

Here is the finished train. Sam asked me to take a video of her explaining what everything is, and I did, but I’ll do my best here to spell it out. The snowman family is us, complete with cats. We are baking gingerbread cookies and the mom snowman (me) is holding the icing tip. The gingerbread people in black are carolers (because carolers were black, according to Sam). The little gingerbread man in the front is writing his Christmas list. There is smoke coming out of the smokestack on top of the engine car. The green next to the wreath is holly. Mark helped Sam make the moon in the back.  I think the rest is fairly self-explanatory, but let me know!

Sam was very proud of her snowflake she made on the front. I make pretty good snowflakes in paint and she always wants to know how I do it. I think she did pretty well for her first try.

This is the back. The little gingerbread man in the green frosting in wearing a robe, but the yarn is coming out, it is all unraveling. Where she gets this stuff, I have no idea….

Another snowflake, even better than the first!

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