Christmas Eve

Filed under things I never did before children: sweeping the table. No, not washing the table, sweeping the table. Today we made sugar cookies (for Saint Nick, of course!). I mixed the dough ahead of time. Matthew and Melissa rolled it out, cut Christmas shapes, and placed them on the cookie sheet. In the process they made approximately 1,000,000 pieces of cookie dough crumbs. These crumbs managed to migrate through much of the dining room leaving only 500,000 still on the table.

Reminds me of play-doh days.

Then I added frosting to the mess. Oh yeah. Such fun!

Matthew, the traditionalist, opted for green and white frosting. Melissa, our "pink" girl, naturally wanted pink frosting only for her cookies. She made a pink tree, snowmen, candycane, and bell.

Uncle Chris called from Korea tonight. It's Christmas day over there. The kids were thrilled to talk to him. Uncles are so much fun! It's hard to believe it's him! My baby brother Chris is sounding so much older and more mature now. I miss him. It appears that he is working hard and really loves the Korean people.

I mentioned to him that Matthew is reading pretty well, and he asked me if I remembered teaching him to read. Of course I remember that summer! Chris's teacher during the school year didn't know how to teach kids how to read. They were using "whole word recognition," which turned out to be disastrous.* Chris didn't think he was smart enough to read and was determined to be proved right. Mom and I took turns with him going over sounds using hooked on phonics. It was a slow and frustrating process. This was not because Chris was slow, quite the reverse. He'd just had such a bad experience that he didn't want to try. Gradually he started having some success and now he loves to read. Growing up, I'd often find him squirreled in some odd nook with a book in hand. Anyways, tonight Chris thanked me for teaching him. Aww shucks, of course!

After Chris's call we read the Christmas story in Luke, and tucked the kids in bed. It's quiet now...have they fallen asleep with sugar plums dancing in their head? I hope so. Santa wants to finish with his work so that he and Mrs. Claus can retire to bed as well.

Oh wait, an Isaac is stirring. Sigh. At least he's pleasant.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!




*This is part of the reason Jonathan and I are so determined that Matthew have a positive experience in school. We really, really want him to love learning new things and not have it be a drudgery. Kids are born programmed to learn, and are inquisitive from the get go. We'd hate for our kids to lose that!