The girls and I were finally able to talk Wesley into going to Wild Lights at Woodland Park Zoo (Wesley has been the Party of NO lately).  Of course, he had the best time of all of us, but that is sometimes to be expected from the epitome of contrariness!

My phone camera does not do well with the Christmas Light/Dark Background, but I need them to recall the pictures I took in my heart:

It was the was the Snow Ball Fight, nay, the Snow Ball War that made Wes the Happiest Child that night. I never caught a recognizable picture of Wes or Kyla that night, but Piper stopped long enough while stuffing projectiles into her Santa hat to let me take this shot:

Wesley isn’t mad here; he just prefers a fighting stance to be his current pose of choice. Should make Christmas pix a hoot!

The butterfly garden was open!

The girls and I were pleased to see the penguins let out of their enclosure this year!

Recently christened “the Fun Mom” (by wiser parents), I let Piper invite her  closest school buddies, one little sister and one little brother (Wesley’s age).  They came home after school with us (after I taught—okay, “taught”—a full day in a 5th grade classroom) to start Winter Break off right. 

After a taco dinner with red and white “wine” options, they decorated ugly sweater cookies (a shout out to Joe, as in Trader!). 

(That face is Piper’s parting shot at me right before I scraped off most of her frosting and then let her eat it.  This is not the first time we’ve done this routine.)

Then they watched Wall-E, and played until moms came.  It was a lovely, if not slightly overwhelming, evening. Far better than when I’ve invited all the girls from her class, though.  I dislike exclusivity, but the squealing of 20+ girls takes me from “Fun Mom” to “FU Mom”!

First of all, I love my Christmas outfits  If nothing else, they are the icebreakers that help me make new friends.  Secondly, I rock the Wicked Elf look.

Wesley and Kyla did children’s choir this year, playing Joy to the World on handbells and singing (and signing) two carols.

(Wesley is “dressed up” in a purple shirt that he hasn’t slept in recently and his newest gray sweats that come down to his socks, so he’s looking extra spiffy in the center there.  Kyla is wearing one of my 3 LBD—little black dresses, translated for dads—and is one of the tallest kids in the back row.)

This is what church is like for me, especially when there is no Sunday School.  Piper on my lap, Wesley snuggled up to my side, and Kyla snuggled up to Wesley, and as close to me as she can get.  It’s like they don’t catch me sitting in one place long very often!

I won’t go into all the gruesome details but Wesley has been spending a lot of time in the red zone (angry,  frustrated, fuming) lately. We’re trying two things, starting today, but in the meantime, here’s a related story.

Wesley usually sleeps with Kyla, as he’s a kid who doesn’t sleep well on his own. But he makes a lot of demands on Kyla (no light! no reading! not that story!), so she understandably kicks him out sometimes.  This particularly time (and he was being extra grouchy), he accused her of liking books more than liking him.  She didn’t respond.  He got into as much as a fight as you can being one-sided and all, and stormed off to his bedroom, leaving this note in front of her door. 

Dwyane found it and brought it to me, explaining Wesley’s side. Then he looked at me more closely, and commented that I probably thought that liking a book more than a person was a reasonable thing. Like Kyla, I didn’t answer.  Just picked up my book and started reading, while ruing my children’s awful spelling.

As much as we go out to the cabin, I rarely get time to meander through Langley.  I didn’t too much today, either, as Kyla adores shopping for about 30 minutes, and then is stick-a-fork-in-me-and-take-me-home-to-my-happy-place done.  But Langley is even more adorable at Christmastime, enough so that now the Victorian Clipper makes trips from Seattle to the Village-by-the-Sea so tourists can enjoy a day of shopping and meandering in the same place we can drive to in 4 minutes. 

Kyla, Piper, and her BFF, Abby, all joined me for a bit of Christmas shopping on 1st and 2nd street (2nd has Sweet Mona’s and 1st has Chocolate Flower Farm and Star Store).  The girls were quite darling, and a nice break from Whiney Wesley!

I found someone to kiss underneath the bough!

Merry Christmas, Langley!  You put extra roses in our cheeks!

We had a choice of getting them at the Cookie Party with all the other guests, or a few hours in morning, just our bunch.  So we chose to get them all to ourselves, and went to Emily and Matt’s for brunch.  The kids scattered quickly and eventually came back with a salamander and presumably, her eggs.  Quite the find!

I wear a lot of hats.  I have 6 separate email accounts, but many, many more roles and titles.  I’ve been our school’s NSD Foundation ambassador for maybe 5 years now, helping teacher submit grants applications and recruiting potential donors.  Usually I’m also on the grant selection committee (after ghost writing a few of the grants on the table), but this round of grants was being determined during a week that I ran our Scholastic Book Fair, Camp Read-A-Lot, and Math Team.  I have no pictures of those, but here I am delivering “You Won” messages to our school’s recipients, which takes pretty much no effort.  But I have the pix that say otherwise!