Ah...the power of Santa Claus

I've now realized that the magic of Santa Claus was dreamed up by a really, REALLY smart parent many years ago. I've been able to leverage his pending arrival quite a bit this month. Camryn has been accident free for more than 2 weeks now and she's shipped her binkeys off to good ol' Saint Nick. Just this morning, out of the blue she told me that she's been really good because she knows "Snta Coz" is watching her.

I'm a believer in the magic!! Thank you Santa!

The binkeys are gone (well...almost)

The last couple of weeks, the three of us have talked about mailing Santa all of Camryn's binkeys so he can give them to little babies that need them at Christmas time. She tells me "I'm big now." so we worked with that and tell her bigger girls don't need binkeys anymore. They snuggle with their dollies instead. She's only had a binkey at nap & bed time for quite a while, but we felt it's a good time to start transitioning her off of them. Well Christmas is coming up, so we needed to get the box shipped to Santa if we were going to do it this season.

So on Friday, I grabbed an empty box, put some tissue paper in it and lined up all of Cam's binkeys in front of her on the floor. I asked her if she was ready and she replied "yes." She put all of them in the box and looked at them. Then looked at me and said "Not et mommy...maybe t'morrow." So I told her that was fine and we waited. Talked about it more on Saturday and she said "Not all of my binkeys. Some." I figured it was all or nothing, but MaMa Karen came to her rescue and suggested that maybe she could just keep one (and then maybe it gets lost sometime soon).

So last night we grabbed the box and packed them all up. I got the same look I did on Friday and so I told her she could pick out her favorite, but Santa really needed the rest of them. She picked one out, helped me tape up the box. I marked "SANTA" on the box and opened the door. She tossed the box out on the porch for Santa to pick up last night, and seemed pretty proud of herself.

Unfortunately the teachers will have to deal with the first nap without the binkey (hee, hee), because the one remaining is not aloud to leave her bedroom. Craig took her to school for a bit today and said he had a long talk with her this morning and she took her stuffed Rudolph to snuggle with at nap time. Here's hoping the withdrawal phase is fairly easy. Although, I don't guess we're quite to the cold turkey phase yet.

'Tis the season

So let me take care of last Saturday & Sunday before time escapes me any further. On Saturday we had a neighborhood candy cane hunt. One of our neighbors hosted everyone in their garage. We brought cookies to share and they supplied the hot chocolate.

They spread 300 small candy canes across 3 front yards and passed out bags with the instruction that once each kid got 10 candy canes, they needed to stop. That didn't stop some of them coming back with probably close to 30 in their bags, but fortunately kids like Camryn aren't old enough to care (nor did I want to bring home 10 candy canes). Turns out Camryn really likes candy canes. She consumes just about anything that qualifies as food (except bread).

After the hunt, we had the cookies and hot chocolate, although I thing most of the hot chocolate was spilled on their garage floor. At the last count I heard, I think 8 different kids spilled their cups of cocoa.

Did I mention it was freezing? But we knew we had a special guest coming soon so we stuck it out. At last it was time to take the kids around back for a group photo. I figured it would take longer, but those kids lined up pretty good.


Then the kids were told to head back up front, and guess who was there when they got there?? Santa! Not sure if we can ever repeat this in the upcoming years. The element of surprise would be gone. But it was fun to watch all of the kids get excited. Santa had all of the parents stand on one side of the garage and all of the kids stand on the other side. We then had to take turns singing jingle bells and whichever group was better, Santa had brought something special. The kids won (are you surprised?), so they huddled as tight as they could get around Santa and watched him pull the first gift out of his bag. He had one with each kid's name on it. They took turns sitting on his lap and opening them up. It was so sweet!

Camryn got a Hello Kitty dolly and some stickers to match.

And then on Sunday we were invited to have dinner over at Craig's Aunt Wanda's house. Kind of an early Christmas gathering, which was fun. We always have a great time with Susan, Jon & Wanda. Wish our schedules matched up a little better.

Susan, Wanda & Jon

Susan brought her reindeer ears and nose which were a hit with everyone. The nose was passed around and we all had to take a turn being Rudolph. Craig even wore it while the group sang "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer."


Rudolph Camryn. She seems to be infatuated with Rudolph this year, although she doesn't care for the TV show that has come on every year since I can remember. She doesn't like the Bumble. Even though she tells me he's a good monster because he puts the star on the tree at the end, you can tell the character bothers her.

Collins Family

Jessie and me

(part of my quest to make sure I'm in some of the family gathering pictures, and not just the one taking them)