Word to Your Mother

I hope you all had a good weekend. We were busy, busy, busy with year-end activities and sports for the kids. We've been incredibly swamped with stuff, which is why I haven't been able to post the last few days. We did take some time out on Sunday to celebrate Mother's Day. The "children" sent me a lovely bouquet of flowers from Foxgloves & Ivy (the website is wonky, but the flowers are very pretty) and a necklace. In a role-reversal, Mom gave me some cute Vera Bradley flip flops like this:

Available in Decatur at Seventeen Steps.

The children all made their own gifts, as well. The Baby decorated a flowerpot at school:

Which was very cute until she realized that the flowers were plunged into green play-doh (not capitalized because I think it's homemade) to hold them in place. She then deconstructed the entire gift, pulling out all the flowers, the pink Easter grass, and finally the green play-doh. After she got tired of playing with the individual elements of my gift, I put it all back together and cleaned up the stray Easter grass and play-doh that had fallen on the floor. Nothing like a gift that keeps on taking.

While I love the Baby's gift, I think that when kids get a little older and can make their own gifts, you get some really awesome stuff. Which brings me to the Girl's gift, a coupon book, and the Boy's gift, the most awesome Mother's Day card ever.

Wrapping and Ribbon

I know that you'd think that being home for over two weeks straight with sick children would mean that I was totally finished with my Christmas present wrapping. Not so. Let me show you the current state of affairs here:

If that doesn't make you want to eat an entire jar of Nutella, you have more self-control than I do. I'm going to bed tonight and hope that Abe the Elf will do something other than replace Baby Jesus in our nativity scene:

or rig up a basketball hoop:

I hope he'll wrap all the Christmas gifts! Yes, yes, it seems unlikely to me, too, but I can always dream.

An additional problem is that I may run out of gift wrap and bags because the children have already raided my supplies to "wrap" their gifts. I have to say that I cried a little inside when I saw that instead of using gift tags, the Girl wrote each gift recipient's name in green Sharpie on the outside of the bags so that we can't reuse any of them.

Also, the gifts? Not so desirable. Unless I miss my guess, the Boy will not be that excited about the eight inch Canadian flag (a leftover favor from his birthday party) and the rock that the Baby got him for Christmas. Yes, damn it, I looked in the gift bags. I was so curious about how they could have gotten everyone gifts without leaving the house that I couldn't help myself. Next year I'm totally doing the same thing: I'm just going to walk around the house and start wrapping up random objects for everyone. When next Christmas rolls around and the K gets a back issue of "Southern Living" and a can of soup, that'll be why.

While we're on the subject of wrapping and ribbons, I wanted to share the Facebook post of a sorority sister who lives in in a town near Newtown, Connecticut. She writes, "[w]e thought we would put green ribbons (Newtown school color) around our trees to show our support for our neighbors. We hope we can get this to catch on throughout the country. Please pass it on. For our younger ones we are just telling them we are decorating our trees."

I've got mine.

Obligatory Elf on the Shelf Post

With an early Thanksgiving, it seems like Christmas is bearing down on us with unrepentant fury. Every day I sift through emails with titles like: "We love Christmas Cookies! Dozens of Great Recipes!" and "101 Christmas Decorating Ideas." I feel like the hoopla surrounding the holiday season is a will-o'-the-wisp that draws me off the path of what is important about the holiday and on to tangents full of table settings, cookie recipes, and gift-giving guides. I feel like Christmas has too much content. What other holiday do we have that involves extreme house decorating:

Extreme baking:

And extreme gift-buying:

And, I haven't even touched on holiday cards, holiday parties, and all the charity events and activities around in December. We could easily split Christmas into three different holidays and have more than enough to do for each one. Never mind that not one thing I mentioned has a smidgen to do with the birth of Jesus. He was born in a manger for goodness sake, not a suburban house festooned with colored electric lights and inflatable snowmen in the front yard.

Okay, I think I'm being a bit of a Grinch because I really haven't done anything yet for the holidays and I'm kind of freaking out. Every day that passes, I see decorations going up and cars with trees tied to the roofs. I check my email and I realize that I've missed all the big sale days and now will be forced to pay full price for something I could have bought yesterday in exchange for some shiny rocks and beads. I look at Pinterest and I'm overwhelmed by pictures of cakes and pies and quick gift ideas and evergreen centerpieces. What I really need is a pin that tells you how get through Christmas with a shred of sanity remaining.

So, it's with a heavy heart that I am joining with the holiday insanity by posting about Elf on the Shelf. If you don't know what the Elf is, read the manufacturer's description on the Amazon link. Also, how have you avoided hearing of Elf on the Shelf? Were you perhaps on a sequestered jury and unable to access any media or small children? Never mind. There seem to be two Elf camps: one is that group of over-achievers who have gazillions of ideas of funny things for your elf to do. You know, like this lady over at Blossom Bunkhouse (Mayim Bialik just let out a big "oy vey") whose list of 101 Elf on the Shelf ideas has been all over Pinterest. Even though this has been pointed out, many of her ideas involve the Elf making a huge mess. WTF? We have children to do that. In the other Elf camp, there are folks like this chick who want to punch over-achieving Elf moms in the throat. Also in this camp is the Baby Rabies lady and her Inappropriate Elf Contest. It's the second annual contest and please, if you have a minute, go check out some of last year's entries. Look at this one:

So, in which camp am I? I haven't figured that out yet. Here's the deal: this is our first year with the little guy and we're in the honeymoon period. Since Elf on the Shelf is far more like a month-long April Fool's Day joke than anything Christmas-related, I'm kinda in my element. I may not be able to make a Christmas cookie that doesn't look like an amoeba, but if sufficiently sleep deprived, I can be pretty creative. I should add that doing Elf on the Shelf doesn't contradict my earlier statement that I haven't done anything for Christmas because he arrived in mid-November in a box from Amazon and all I did was open up the box and stick him on the bookcase in our family room. Nary a sprig of holly decorates the shelf on which he perches.

The kids named our elf Abe (I'm thinking it's as in Lincoln, rather than Froman, sausage king of Chicago). By the way:

Abe is not a mess-making elf. He is a silly elf. Here are some of the things that Abe has done:

Made off with our remote controls:

Swung from the chandelier:

Read in the guest bathroom:

Lifted some marshmallow weights:

Gorged himself on Halloween candy:

Helped himself to a drink in the fridge:

I can promise you that Abe will never, ever do anything that requires me to do more than laugh with the kids and put him back on the shelf. Forget about cleaning up feathers or replacing all the lightbulbs. I have better things to do, like complain, procrastinate, and then blog about complaining and procrastinating! Do you all have any good Elf ideas that don't involve messes? Or, do you have something to submit to the inappropriate elf contest? They're giving away some good stuff, so don't hold back. I know you all could come up with something really inappropriate! Unfortunately, Honey Boo Boo Elf, Hoarding Elf, and Spring Break Elf have already been taken. Poor Santa.