7 Quick Takes about Decorating Like It's 1899, Knowing How To Party When School Is Cancelled, and Revoking All My Previously-Held Notions as a Parent

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

As of yesterday morning, there were no Christmas decorations up in our house. Zero.

It's been on our list, but to be honest I just don't enjoy the decorating process (although having them up is nice) and it keeps getting pushed back. The kids have been asking me if we're even going to celebrate Christmas this year. Of course! I just... haven't gotten around to getting the boxes down from the attic.

Anyway, yesterday we finally pulled out the garland and the stockings and decked the halls. Of course, we still don't have a tree.

I saw that the farm stand down the street has now marked their trees down to $20, and probably if we just wait until Christmas Eve (which we basically are, at this point) they might give it to us for practically nothing. So that's kind of my plan.

Waiting until Christmas Eve is what people used to do originally, anyway. The Christmas tree was put up on December 24^th and left up until The Twelfth Night on January 5. In fact, people thought it was bad luck to put it up earlier.

So we're not hopelessly behind on life, we're just traditionalists.

—2—

We have been thinking a lot about Christmas, though. We've been talking about the Nativity with the kids, watching Christmas movies and The Nutcracker ballet, and wrapping a ton of presents.

Phillip and I just finished a major wrapping session on Wednesday night and left all the flattened Amazon boxes (thanks for making our Christmas possible, Amazon!) in a pile on the floor to deal with the next day.

When I stepped out of the shower Thursday morning, I discovered the 3-year-old had spread them throughout the house and used them to make a track for his cars. He'd also constructed some sort of finish line out of the empty cardboard wrapping paper tubes.

One other funny story is that one of the boxes was completely empty when we opened it, except for two of those squishy air pillows and a packing slip. But not  the actual product on the packing receipt. (Phillip and I learned from 2016, when we waited until Christmas Eve to wrap everything and discovered several similar mistakes it was too late to do anything about.)

—3—

This week my kids had another snow day, and I wasn't happy. We've blown through 3 snow days this year already, and winter here doesn't even properly start until January...

Last year, our school district tried out a "blizzard bag" program where instead of tacking extra days onto the end of the school year every time school is cancelled, the kids just do a packet of worksheets and stuff at home to make it up. I really liked it, but apparently others didn't because we're not doing it this year. Sigh.

Anyway, it's fine. We'll be in school until July at this rate, but whatever. It's fine.

Besides, with all the free labor suddenly at my disposal during this last snow day, taking everything out of the kitchen cabinets and cleaning/organizing all the contents went a lot  faster.

(I think when I die, the thing my kids will remember about me is that I was a really fun mom.)

—4—

Regrettably, I introduced my kids to the bad version of O Holy Night. I knew they'd think it was funny, but I didn't anticipate that they'd play it 1,000 times on repeat.

I really should've seen that coming.

If you don't know what "the bad version" is, then you've never heard it. You'd know. Honestly, I don't even like listening to it, it's so cringey (for those of you who don't have teenagers, "cringe-y" means "so awkward it makes me physically uncomfortable.")

The kids were playing it one night and Phillip turned to me and said, "You know, it sounds like that guy is actually a trained singer trying to sing as badly as possible."

That piqued my curiosity, so I had to look it up. The identity of the original singer is kind of a mystery, and the version that went viral years ago is just audio and has no credit.

But I found it! I found this video by the original creator, and I actually feel better about the song now knowing it's truly just a guy joking around and not an innocent man who's been made a Christmas laughingstock.


The funny thing about this video is that if you watch it on mute, his gestures and facial expressions suggest that he is Feeling The Music to the n^th degree and he sounds just like Josh Groban. Just mute your screen and watch starting at 7:52, then go back to that point and watch it with the sound. You'll die.

—5—

My 8-year-old has been into drawing cute animals lately. She found a lady on YouTube who does step-by-step videos, and she's been studiously copying many of the designs.

More focus than I've seen on all homework combined, ever.

They are really stinking cute, though, aren't they? 

My daughter showed me this picture and said, "she also drew a cute poop smiling next to the animals, but I thought I shouldn't do that one."

I respect her decision-making skills. 

—6—

After hearing about our struggles to get my underweight 5-year-old to eat a little more, my mother-in-law bought us this plate.

My son calls this "his maze plate."

As a general rule, I don't believe in stuff like this.

I've never understood pushing kids to eat more than they want, and I raised his four older siblings on the philosophy that they'll eat when they're hungry and won't starve if you're regularly serving them food.

My 5-year-old, however, is the same size as his 3-year-old brother and up until we started encouraging him to eat more, he used to complain of mysterious "belly aches" that must have been hunger pains.

Even when he's hungry, he seems to think eating is just too boring to be worth his time. (Which is exactly the way I feel about sleeping so I actually have a lot of sympathy for the kid.)

Maybe it was because he was a preemie who started out on a feeding tube and never truly figured out hunger. I don't know. This is why I always say if you think you know what you're doing as a parent, you don't have enough kids. You're eventually bound to get one who disproves every one of your brilliant theories.

This kid sat down and ate an entire piece of toast and 2 eggs. Mind blown.

So anyway, these plates have been a lifesaver. We never make him finish if he says he doesn't want to, but if he just feels "meh" about being at the table this encourages him to stay focused.

My mother-in-law bought it at a local kitchen store, but I found a few similar designs on Amazon here and here (affiliate links, in case you want to buy them for Christmas!)

—7—

Speaking of Christmas, I wanted to share this short but sweet video:


I promise we won't all be as theatrically happy as they show in this video. We'll just be a bunch of regular people who love Jesus Christ and would be happy to have you with us.

On that note, I want to wish you all a merry Christmas. It's truly hard to express what I feel when I think about my Savior — not just what He did for me, but also how much He does to guide, correct, and improve me on a daily basis. I'm not sure what my life would look like without Him, but it would certainly be missing the most amazing parts.

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