Christmas Catch-up: Crafty Times

The girls had a whole week off school before Christmas. We had time for a fun little craft: candy cane reindeers. The kids made these for themselves and for taking to some of their friends. I remember making them with my mom when I was younger, so I credit her with this idea.

Pipe cleaner antlers, pom pom noses, and googly eyes on candy cane bodies--put it all together with a little hot glue and voila. At first the girls wanted them all to have brown antlers and red noses, a la Rudolph, but since we also had a selection of fruity candy canes in non-traditional colors, we got creative with our pipe cleaners and pom poms, too.

Gunnar loves orange. He was not loving life that week, however.

He was feeling pretty sick the day we made these (December 23), with what we thought was an ear infection. Since doctors are not routinely giving antibiotics for ear infections these days, we didn't rush him into the doctor. Rather, we waited to see if it would resolve on its own. He spent a couple of days with a sore ear, a fever, and obvious discomfort. We had a party the evening after making these reindeer and Gunnar ended up sleeping on the floor through the whole thing! Poor kid. He perked up on Christmas Eve (see below), but relapsed a bit during gift opening and then the morning after Christmas, so that he and I went into the ER Sunday morning where he was diagnose with swimmer's ear! It was essentially caused by a plug of earwax that created a moist space that resulted in a very irritated eardrum. Some special ear drops acquired en route to Salt Lake City (more on that later) seemed to do the trick.

Back to our Christmas crafting . . .

We don't own Christmas stockings. It's something we've just never purchased. Damon and I couldn't ever find any that we both liked, and then we just kind of decided to wait. We created a Christmas Eve tradition to fill this gap. We make and decorate paper grocer bag stockings. (Notice happier Gunnar during this rebound--or Tylenol-induced respite?)

The whole family gathers 'round the table with glitter, glue, yarn, sequins, markers, crayons--the supplies vary each year--to create a new masterpiece for Santa to fill.

It sounds like a lot of fun, right? Yes and no. We enjoy it, but it does often create a bit of a stressful mess on a day when we tend to also have other fun plans. Part of our reason for never purchasing stockings was my own anal desire to have them all match or coordinate in some way. As long as I knew we might be adding children to our family, I hesitated to make any purchases for fear that later on I couldn't add to what we had. So, now that Holly is here and we feel that our family is complete, you can look for new (reusable) Christmas stockings to debut next year. In fact, I think I've convinced my mom to knit them for us. We just need to choose our yarn!