a peek inside the fishbowl

Today:

I want to curl up in bed and have the house magically tidy itself.
I would like my hair to trim and colour itself. 
I would like the fridge to fill itself and the pantry to restock itself.
I would like to find a pot of soup bubbling happily away on the stove and a loaf of bread cooling on the counter.

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I am tired of talking about myself. Is it bloggy burnout?

Tell me about you …

Sarah and I were walking to school. I was whistling Christmas carols. We do this a lot, that is, I whistle, and she tries to guess the song. I picked some of my old favourites, the ones I remember from my childhood: Oh Come All Ye Faithful, Oh Little Town of Bethlehem, Silent Night.

I have great memories of singing all these songs in elementary school. The week before Christmas break the music teacher would wheel the piano to the front foyer and the entire student body would sit on the floor and sing our hearts out.

I whistled my Christmas songs and Sarah couldn’t guess the titles of any of them.

“Stop doing the LORDY SONGS mum,” she said. “Pick one I know.”

I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry.

We had the first the first big snowfall of the winter last week. It finally feels more like Christmas! Snow certainly helps, doesn’t it?

Day 7 (Monday): Did I mention that I’m stuffing the envelopes the night before? I find this works better for me because I’m able to plan it a little more. I kept it simple for Monday. We have swimming lessons after dinner and it’s always a rush. The advent activity was toenail painting, although we elected to do fancy neon colours on fingernails instead. (Later we discovered they glow when exposed the a black light – coooool!)

Day 8 (Tuesday): The activity for Day 8 was “dress for dinner” … “dressing” being a very subjective term. The youngest found something “fancy” in the dress up trunk and the older one wore the dress she wore for picture day. I threw on a dress over my jeans and Mark donned a tie. Dinner itself was “make your own sandwich,” although it was accompanied by bubbly pomegranate drink served in our best crystal stemware.

Day 9 (Wednesday – snow day!): Both girls were home. We had pancakes for breakfast. Since it was declared to be a snow day, the advent was switched at the last minute and became about lolling around in pj’s while watching Christmas movies (thank god for the PVR!).

Day 10 – (Thursday) I actually forgot to put the activity in the envelope the night before. BAD MOM, er, should I say TIRED MOM. Clearly my brain is full and overflowing. At the last minute I decided to go with the good ol’ standby, the candlelit bubble bath (for the kids, not me). It’s so simple, but they love it. I let them eat licorice in the tub AND they got a good scrubbing. A win-win situation if you ask me.

Day 11 – We picked up the tree! We ran into friends, so the girls didn’t actually pick out the tree – they just ran in circles around the lot.

Day 12 (today – Saturday) – will involve lots of family time and some baking (although to what extent, I’m not sure yet.) The girls still miss “the cookie lady” and ask whether or not I’m going to be photographing cookies this year or not.

To make up for my lack of patience and skill with cookies I think we might even do some of Turtlehead’s Peppermint Bark (recipe at the bottom of this post).

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