Getting ready for Christmas

One night the week before Christmas I had to do something to keep the kids busy because Geoff would be teaching at home. He has taught his online classes at home before and it usually works out okay but it isn't always easy when you have to keep 4 kids quiet in a small house. We started out the night decorating our gingerbread house.

I did lose track of Maddie for just a minute while I was in the bathroom and she thought I was the one in the office with the door closed so she began screaming and banging on the door. She can't stand to have me in a room with the door closed. So all of Geoff's students heard that little tantrum. We got settled back down and had fun with our project.

After our gingerbread house was done, we decided to write our letters to Santa. When I was little we had a tradition to have our letters to Santa be sent by the "fire fairies." We always had a fireplace so after we wrote our letters we would throw them in the fire and the little sparks that fly up when you put paper in would be the fire fairies taking your letter to the North Pole and then they would put it back together. I remember it being such a fun and magical thing. We have done it with my kids before but not every year because we don't have a fireplace. Well, this year they wanted to try it. We lit the first letter and had it burning over a cookie sheet but it kept going out before much of the letter was burned. I lit about a dozen matches just on the first letter. I started to notice that it was pretty smoky in the house. Then I realized that it was pretty likely the smoke alarm would be going off any second. Geoff was already not happy that Maddie had been screaming to interrupt his class. I new I would be in so much trouble if the alarm went off. We hurried and opened the back door and tried to get all the smoke out. Luckily we didn't have that false alarm and we burned the rest of the letters in the backyard. It is just so much better in a fireplace. I know in AZ you really don't need one but it would be nice around Christmas time. At least we made memories.