Christmas Eve

We had a very Christmassy Day today. It started off with the last pocket in the Advent Calendar for Wren. I made him one this year filled with a few Playmobil animal sets and a bit of Candy (don't do that again if the Calendar is to be opened at Breakfast). Today he received a mother fox. You can see him opening it and checking all the empty boxes in case he left some candy in there. When I made it I hadn't realized how much foliage there is in a Playmobil set. This is one bushy advent forest!



After that we had a few disasters. I made gingerbread but found out, half way through, that there was no ground ginger. I had to adapt and grate fresh ginger. Then Wren decided to dump molasses and eat it or dump flour and eat it or... you get the picture.

Afterwards we had kippers for breakfast. YES KIPPERS. I love kippers and bought them at the British Pantry in Redmond yesterday. They were marked 99p but I paid $5. It was worth every cent. I sang this nursery rhyme to Wren and he demanded more and more and more kipper.

"Sing to your daddy oh, my little babby
Sing to your daddy oh, my little one.
You shall have a fishy, in a little dishy
You shall have a fishy when the boat comes in."

"More Fishy" he said.

Those Nutcrackers are Ornaments!
Then there was the next disaster. The nutcracker soldier we were using to crack hazelnuts broke in half. Actually, he became wonky, wobbled and then lost his head and an arm. Frost and I deduced that those painted soldier nutcrackers are ornaments not real nutcrackers. It was doing a lousy job cracking nuts anyway. I shall have to buy the family a nutcracker now. We are really keen on doing it and have two bags of nuts in shells!

Bath bombs explode
I took down another craft from a few days before - the bath fizzies we had made from witchhazel, citric acid and baking soda. They smelled great but had subsided into a large pancake instead of being nice egg-shapes. They still work so its not so bad but I don't understand what we did wrong.

Thankfully, Lauren and Ruben invited us over for a fabulous Christmas Eve Mexican dinner with more food than I could even sample. They even made their own tortillas and tamales. Wren and I ate a lot and Wren found his vocation as a rock musician playing Rock Band.


Snow Update
Still snowing this morning but its now turned to rain. The snow is slushy but still covers the street. I expect this thaw to continue tomorrow if it doesn't cool down considerably. Frost spent much of the day having snowball fights with Alexander and our neighbour, Elias. Here is a movie from a few days ago showing Josh and Wren sledding at Dahl field.