What We've Been Up To Lately. . .

This week has been pretty crazy. It feels like Christmastime came much faster this year. Henry doesn't seem nervous, but I was sure feeling overwhelmed. Perhaps the Light Saber Drawing app kept him calm.

I figured out that free shipping ended on Sunday for both my family calendars and our "Santa" shipment of toys (I love fatbrain.com stuff), so I was pretty beat Monday morning after lots of online work and very little sleep.

Hey, at least they shipped our calendars quickly! That's the hanging hole on Nick's mouth in the bottom picture in the middle, in case you were wondering. 

Besides the usual last week before winter break rigmarole, I had to pack up my entire classroom, because the carpeting is being replaced. I transferred all 57 of my plants into the classroom of a very generous friend of mine. The after-school packing is what did me in, though. It resulted in two twelve-hour days in a row, and twenty six boxes of Christmas cheer.

Since I had a grad school class Monday night, this made three days this week where I didn't get to see my kids before bedtime. I'm going to hug them extra hard now that I'm on winter break. 

My friend Michelle heard about Henry's repeated destruction of our Christmas ornaments, so she gave me some adorable "guaranteed to be shatterproof" ornaments. Henry tried very, very hard to disprove the guarantee.

True to their promises, these awesome ornaments did not shatter, even when sat upon and thrown with gleeful energy. My ornament-choosing friend chose wisely.  :)

Yes, that's a towel-cape that Nick was wearing. He was pretending to be Darth Vader.

Henry was very snuggly tonight, and he kept repeating my words. We read "Pete the Cat Saves Christmas," and he was trying to repeat every line. I noticed him reading the book to himself after I went downstairs. It was adorable.

Nicholas was far more help in the ornament-hanging department, especially after a nice dinner of leftover french toast with chocolate syrup and bananas. (I'm not going to deny the fact that I ate three gingerbread cookies and a cream puff for dinner. Why not, right?)  Anyway, Nick had quite a few questions about how Terrance, our "Elf on the Shelf" ended up at a fancy dinner with some of his Lego guys.

Yup, they're eating a mini pizza. I have no idea why the space dude has a wand. Nick wanted to know if he was a fairy.

No, I don't know what was in those little wine glasses. Perhaps Terrance needed a little something once he realized he was having dinner with a man in a spacesuit with a star wand and a mechanic with a wrench. Terrance may be moving on to harder liquors in the future, poor guy. Watching two active boys is quite the job.

Speaking of hard jobs, I made sure to give custom Christmas/Thank You Notes and gifts for Nick and Henry's teachers, assistants, and therapists. These things take some time, but I want everyone to know how much of a difference they are making with my boys.

So, that's what we have been up to lately. I'm pretty tired and sore right now, and a mountain of Christmas shopping awaits me tomorrow.