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Merry Christmas from our family to yours.
Dec 252009
We’re going through a phase in this household that is really important to understand when it comes to gift-giving times. We experienced it full force last month and only then truly understood the depth of the issue. What is it? What you give to one child you must also give to the other child.
Trust me.
While their Christmas gifts differ a little bit (bicycle versus tricycle, Tag Reader versus Tag Junior), there’s a lot of similarity going on in this household right now. And woe to whomever is in charge of bedtime if you do not dress these two brothers in matching pajamas. Woe to you.
I am safe, however, with their stockings. I didn’t necessarily plan for them to be 99.9% matching but they are. I also think that they will be interesting for both of the boys in their own ways. Let’s look at what we have.
A crayon roll is the biggest thing. (Our stockings are for small gifts, not big ones.) A necessity, if you will. I scoured Etsy for weeks and weeks until I found a store that had two similar crayon rolls (Cars print material on these ones). We’ve needed a way to keep track of crayons in our out-and-about bag for quite awhile now. I kept finding stores that had one of Cars and one of Toy Story and one with Princesses and one with tractors but never two with the same stuff. If one boy got a Toy Story one and one boy got a Cars one, they’d fight. Trust me. Now the boys each have their own though they’re easy to tell apart. Win for them. Win for me. Everyone is happy.
The rest of the stocking includes: Disney’s Toy Story alien fork and spoon set (each), Disney Pixar Cars that are shaped to look like Toy Story characters, and Disney underwear (2T-3T and size 4, big boys, sigh). A rather Disneyfied stocking, that’s true, especially coming from a Mom who said she’d never get “into” all that licensed character stuff. If you know my children, however, you would know how happy they will be with these small stocking stuffers.
Little does LittleBrother know that the underwear are a great ploy to get him to finish potty training. (LOOK! You have the SAME! UNDERWEAR! as BigBrother! Isn’t that COOL?!) The utensils were also needed because, I swear, if I hear these kids fight over who gets the Nemo spoon and who gets the Lightning McQueen fork one more time, well, I won’t do anything more than die a little inside. Hopefully this calms some of the meal time drama.
Hopefully.
Of course, these gifts (and a very small amount of candy) will be put in by Santa after these dudes are snug in their beds on Christmas Eve. Stuffed happily into their fire truck stockings that I snagged on eBay last year. (That’s right, Pottery Barn! I shun your prices!) That said, BigBrother’s stocking came embroidered with his name but I still haven’t gotten LittleBrother’s stocking embroidered. Poor, poor youngest child.
I’m well aware that gifts like these pale in comparison to everything else they’ll receive over the next week. But I was always a lover of those “little” things in my stocking growing up. Perhaps character branded underwear won’t always be fun for them to receive in their stockings but this year it is… and for that I am grateful.
As I said, we checked out some special firefighter Christmas books from our library earlier this month. I’ve already reviewed one, A Small Christmas, and now it’s time for another!
Firefighter’s Night Before Christmas
In this particular Night Before Christmas series book, we see how the firefighters have gotten ready for Christmas by playing Santa (warning if you haven’t had the “he’s a helper of Santa because Santa is very busy” conversation), made a meal and so on. They were the “unlucky stiffs” who had to work the “Christmas Eve shift.” This makes us laugh this year as FireDad will be working Christmas Eve (but has Christmas Day off, thankfully). When, much to their surprise, Santa shows up! On an aerial rig with “lights on display,” because what else would Santa drive?
Then, as Santa is sampling their five-alarm chili, what else should happen but the alarm going off? I got all teary eyed when I got to the part that really hits home with any fire family:
We jumped in our boots as we’d all done before,
But a Christmas Eve call was different for sure.
Visions of families flashed in our heads,
While all of us hoped ours were safe in their beds.
Sniffle.
The firefighters race off to fight the fire into the dawning hours of Christmas morning. Tired, they return to their house to find a Christmas miracle: snow, a snowman and a “shiny new pumper.” And a laptop! And a toy chest! And new socks! And a new grill! And a bed! And a TV! And lounge chairs! And finished paperwork!
BigBrother loves reading through what everyone received. He also likes the part at the end of the book where Santa Claus signs the paperwork as “Ol’ Sergeant Nick.” The rhyme scheme of the book, familiar to them from the original story, keeps their attention as do the fun, festive illustrations. One review accused this book of having “halting” rhymes but I’m assuming that reader wasn’t familiar with some of the fire terminology. I do believe that this book will also be purchased for our library of Christmas books. I mean, it’s the perfect addition, is it not?
I think Firefighter’s Night Before Christmas
_
[Disclosure: Book is from the library. Links are Amazon Associate links.]
Dec 172009
When Beth challenged us to take pictures of our favorite Christmas decorations for this week’s You Capture challenge, I’ll admit that I was bummed. I already did a very detailed photo post of our Fire Tree (please go see it; I promise that it is awesome). I couldn’t figure out what I was going to photograph. Over the week, I took a few pictures and finished it off this morning.
Turns out I have more favorites than I knew. Most with great stories.
This was the centerpiece in our wedding. That’s right. We had a Christmas themed wedding. Actually, our anniversary is tomorrow. My grandmother did the flowers for our wedding. This centerpiece sat in front of us at the head table. It was gorgeous then and it’s gorgeous every year when I pull it out of our holiday closet, dust it off and situate it on our half wall with the little Christmas trees that were the centerpieces on the guests’ tables.
See?
I added lights for the first time this year, which I’m loving. Though we plan to be in this house for another three years, give or take a Christmas, I hope that our next home has an easy place, like our half wall, to display our centerpieces. Other than our Fire Tree, it really is my favorite part of our decorations.
Next we have our front door which also brings us a gem from our wedding. Maybe your front door has a wreath. Maybe you also have a bell attached to your front door right now. We have… wait for it… two wreaths (small), tied together, made entirely of jingle bells. These were made for the front of the church on our wedding day.
Love them. I love how they jingle every time the door is opened or closed… even if you’re trying to be oh-so-quiet because you’re carrying a sleeping child in the door. Okay, well, maybe that part isn’t so hot but, otherwise, I love their shiny silver greeting every time I look at our front door. (Ignore the bows. I haven’t re-fluffed them since the wind storm we had last week. They’re a bit… mashed looking.) But, yes, I love the shiny beauty they bring to the door… even if you can see me, with morning hair, in my robe (no socks again! but no snow) on the front porch.
Finally, the last bit of favoriteness also sits on our front porch. You see, we have a firefighter that sits next to our front door. He guards it, if you will. He stands about hip high. On me, you know, since I’m short. At Christmas time, I take out a bow and wrap it around his neck like a scarf. It’s also another bow related to our wedding. It was some ribbon my mother had purchased to see if I wanted it for anything in the wedding or reception. While I love Christmas, it was a little too Christmas-y for the wedding. But I kept the bow. When we moved into the house and celebrated our first Christmas, I delegated the firefighter to wear the bow. Our front porch is festive and safe. No?
Did you really expect my favorite Christmas decorations to lack something fire related? Never!
And so, there you have it. These are my favorite Christmas decorations in our home, minus our Fire Tree. Though I do have a post coming with all of our Nativity sets. Turns out we have quite a few! (Do they make a firefighter Nativity set? If not, they should.) I’d head over to I Should Be Folding Laundry to view today’s You Capture post if you’re interested in viewing others’ favorites.
The next challenge is YOUR HOLIDAY. Meaning mine, not yours. I’m not showing up to capture your holiday! (A side note, there will be no You Capture next week due to Christmas Eve on Thursday and Christmas on Friday! We’ll be back on December 30th with a smorgasbord of our holiday pictures. Which works well for our family because we’re not celebrating in Pennsylvania with my side of the family until the 28th! WIN!)
Finally, come back tomorrow if you want to hear me blather on about FireDad, our marriage and general awesomeness.
