chocolate factory tour

Free chocolate factory tour with free samples!

playing with reflections in the window

Maya in her Harry Potter glasses (we're going to Wizarding World of Harry Potter later this week).

some pictures from this week

side-by-side online multiplayer gaming

making more paper toys

figuring out how many pages we need to read each day to finish Sorcerer's Stone before our trip

Some of Seth's paper kaiju toys

various things people made or have been looking at this week

making Harry Potter character plaster casts

I cleaned out Maya's closet this week and freed up an extra shelf, which she decorated

balancing hangers

this week, in no particular order

Entrance to a dollhouse Maya made for her Lalaloopsy miniature

Inside the dollhouse

Our friend Chooj's New Years' Day birthday party

Seth and Chooj

Maya and Hayes

Riley took some of his Christmas money to buy a second-hand airsoft gun from a friend.

Maya playing out stories with a mix of toys and her homemade paper doll characters

Highlights Magazine's Which Way USA: Florida puzzle/activity book and map. We'll be there for real in a couple of weeks!!!

Maya listening to music & working on a picture in the kitchen. In the background: Riley's Eiffel Tower model and work-in-progress K'Next roller coaster.

Climb-a-mountain-do-a-flip. I used to do this with Maya a lot when she was younger and overwhelmed -- she would hold my hands, walk up my legs, then flip over backwards. She loved it, and the hanging by her arms and being upside down seemed to help her re-center. I forget sometimes how much it helped. Here, I was getting really frustrated, but then remembered with Seth just before we both melted down!

Seth's photo of Matt and me laughing over a funny Facebook thread

Hanging out talking

Playing Huggermugger
More Huggermugger (and yes, that's how Maya prefers to hold a pen when she writes)

Making & watching videos with a friend

Lots of experimenting with recipes from these

7 books, 7 months until the final movie

Lego

Riley skating our backyard ramp we built this past fall

Maya

Lots of gaming. Riley and Seth are loving playing with friends via X-box Live lately.

Riley

brothers

Christmas Morning

On Santa Claus

Riley had a pretty unpleasant experience of being "told the truth" about Santa when he was fairly young. He was heartbroken. In addition to being disappointed, he felt lied to. Trust has always been hugely important to me, and I had thought of myself as a fairly authentic, honest, and trustworthy parent up until that point. We had never used Santa or his elves as a way to manipulate behavior: no elves peeking through windows, no naughty/nice lists, no threats of phone calls to Santa or lumps of coal. Still, it felt terrible to have, despite my intentions of playing and making magic at Christmas time, instead broken my child's trust. Over the weeks and months that followed, we talked a lot about what Santa means to people, the stories of Saint Nicholas, love, trust, and wonder.

Since then, even when Maya and Seth were still little, our approach to Santa has been more "Yes, Virginia There Is a Santa Claus" than a literal one. We treat Santa (and the tooth fairy and Easter bunny) as a story, a character we get into when we are gift giving, decorating, wrapping presents, and most especially when we're sneaking around plotting surprises for each other. When any of us shop for surprise Christmas gifts for each other, we don't call it "helping Santa," we call it, "being Santa." It's about making magic for each other, and it's something we all get to enjoy doing.

This year, Riley (12), Maya (9), and Seth(7) talked about maybe wanting us to put out presents on Christmas Eve before they went to bed. In the end, they decided it was more fun and exciting to go to bed with nothing under the tree and leave room for the magic of Santa.

Merry Christmas!