Christmas Shenanigans

We had our annual Breakfast with Santa event at our church on Saturday and this year was the first year Evie went to visit him by herself.  She at first wanted to walk up with Lydia, and I discouraged her from that, saying that Lydia needed to do that with her family.  So then she started walking towards him and then grabbed by hand and said, "Come with me, Mama."  I said, "Okay" and we started walking, but then she dropped by hand and said, "No, I can do it..." and walked over to him.  She handed him her letter and talked softly to him, but she conquered her fear of solo Santa visits.  In case you are wondering, she asked him for a magic wand that does real magic, but if he couldn't do that, then just a magic kit would do.

Evie has taken quite an interest in helping in the kitchen lately, so she and I tried a new brining technique on some chicken and she was introduced to the meat thermometer.  She sat in the kitchen floor with her apron on, watching the degrees go up and reporting every 5 degrees or so how close we were to 170.

My favorite Christmas movie is Home Alone and every year I have asked myself how old Evie needs to be before she will be ready to see it.  Well I decided that this was the year since she handled Hocus Pocus so well.  So I told her that it was a little bit more grown up than the movies she usually watched but that I thought she would like it.  Well, I read that wrong....  She doesn't like it when people do things they're not supposed to do, and so she spent a while yelling at the parents for being mean to the kid and the kid for doing bad things, and then when the main character (an 8 year old boy) is going to take a sled down the stairs and out the door, she yelled at him for not wearing a helmet.  The last straw was when the kid climbs his older brother's bookshelves in an effort to get to the money box at the top, and the shelves break in half.  She stood up, turned off the TV, and said, "I can't take it!" and walked into her bedroom.  She later said her major concern was that she was afraid the tarantula is going to bite the little boy.  I told her that the tarantula actually turns out to be a good guy and she was intrigued again and agreed to finish watching, so long as everything was going to turn out alright.  I assured her and so the next night she finished watching it.  While it wasn't her favorite movie, I think she enjoyed it once she let loose.

Today was the last day of school before winter break so we had her class party.  I went to help the kids decorate cookies, play Bingo, and make other crafts.  Having heard from Evie recently about how loud the classroom is, I was interested to see what the party was going to be like and it was pretty chaotic, so I understand how she feels the room can be too loud at times.

I'm very excited to have this girl at home for two weeks!