St. Patrick's Day

My mom was such a Pinterest mom before there even was Pinterest.  Or blogs.  Or even the internet.  She would come up with festive ways to celebrate even the "little" holidays like St. Patrick's Day.  Leah and I would come down for breakfast to find little leprechauns had dyed our milk green and left us Lucky Charms to eat for breakfast.  In retrospect, Mom loses a little bit of credit, since I'm pretty sure she did that just so we would search the house for an hour for our teeny, tiny visitors and she could then drink her coffee in peace.  Well played, Mom.  Well played. 

You will likely never see me with a creative enough idea to go viral on Pinterest, but the popularity of Elf on the Shelf in our home means the ante has been raised for the other holidays.  Harper especially is eating up every bit of tradition, celebration, festivity. So when she caught wind of leprechauns coming around near St. Paddy's Day, she was on giddy high alert, and I wanted to make it fun for her.

Harper goes to preschool Monday/Wednesday/Friday, so they "celebrated" the luck of the Irish a day early. I was amazed to hear her come home and tell me all about how people may pinch you if you don't wear green and that the day is about a man who was from England and was kidnapped by pirates (not the Jake and the Neverland pirate kind, she noted) and taken to Ireland but loved it so much that even once he was freed, he chose to go back to Ireland.  What?  Turns out it's true (ish).   

 

Christmas made its way into SPD in that we needed to make a treat to set out for the little leprechauns coming to visit our house, and green Rice Krispies with Lucky Charm marshmallows sounded like just the thing. So while I was cooking dinner (ok, assembling dinner), the girls got to dig through a giant bowl of Lucky Charms to hand select each marshmallow.  They did so much better than I would have... how can you not just eat them?!  I think Harper had a healthy dose of paranoia about the leprechauns so I don't think she wanted to chance stealing their Lucky Charms.  Ha!  So, while the girls chowed down on their spinach turkey wraps, I whipped our SPDRKT.  Y'know, our St. Paddy's Day Rice Krispie Treats.

Pretend they are supposed to look tie dyed.  ;)

 

Those sneaky leprechauns did find their way into our house, and sure enough, we ended up with green milk.  Mommy may have been paranoid about not waking up in time to sneak down and dye the milk before Harper went down to check, so I may or may not have dyed the whole half gallon the night before just to be sure.  Eliminating food dyes may have to be on next year's resolutions.  :)  Love these little girls and all the fun I get to have with them!

Santa Came Early! Christmas {Frozen} Magic

Earlier this year, I stumbled on a quote that says, "Collect moments, not things," and it has stuck with me.  As Sam and I have talked over the last month about what to get these spoiled girlies for Christmas, we kept coming back to two things-- 

(1) something related to Frozen

(2) an "experience" in lieu of stuff

We knew that Disney World had an Elsa-themed fireworks display at the Magic Kingdom castle, and we seriously considered taking a long weekend with the girls and going down for it.  And then we decided that was crazy town.  At least for now.  There are lots of fun things to do last minute, Disney does not strike me as one of them.  To make the most of it, it requires some advanced planning, so we shelved that for another day and time. 

Then, we saw that Elsa and Olaf were going to be at The Greenbrier for meet and greets on certain weekends throughout December, so I thought about going and staying the night there and letting the girls meet their favorite characters.  But, then I wondered what we would do the rest of our visit.  Take Wills to high tea? Stroll by some fine china with the preschoolers?  That sounded more like a form of parental stress torture rather than a fun Christmas experience for our family.

The girls often hijack our phones to pull up videos while we are out to eat or I'm cooking dinner.  Time and time again, they are based on Frozen. Well, several times I've seen them watching videos from Frozen on Ice.  On Monday night (after Elfie appeared and we decorated the tree), Harper took my phone and sat for an hour watching Frozen on Ice videos, and I got the idea to check and see if there happened to be one touring within a few hours of us.  Sure enough, Disney's Frozen on Ice was scheduled for Greesnboro, NC (about an hour and forty minutes from our house) for this week!  Tickets were ridiculous to even get in the building (like $70 for the cheapest seat in the building), so I checked on eBay.  I found a set of 4 VIP social section tickets for cheaper than I could buy the 4 cheapest tickets on Ticket Master, so I pulled the trigger for a performance on Saturday, December 6 at the Greensboro Coliseum.  We decided to keep it a secret from the girls and let "Elf on the Elf" surprise them on Saturday morning.  

I let them unwrap their "something to wear" presents (since we've liked the idea of something you want, something you need, something to wear, something to read for their Christmas gifts), and ta-da!  Harper and Willa Kate, errr...Anna and Elsa!

 

I really, really, really wanted a picture of them together before we left, but Wills refused.  She was in a bad mood from having to get up a little earlier than she would've liked (we had to leave our house by 8:30 to make our 11:00 showing), and that meant she didn't even want sissy to look at her, much less put her arm around her for a picture.  Oh, Willa.  

 

 

We made it to the Coliseum with about 20 minutes to spare (what. on. earth?!?! The Fertittas were early?!), and so we bought the girls some snow cones in Frozen souvenir cups, and set off to find our seats. 

I knew they were going to be in one of the lower sections since we were 116 Row B, but when we were directed by the seating attendant to go all the way to the front, I about fell over.  Row B was the SECOND ROW, and no one sat in front of us.  It was awesome.  

 

One of my most favorite things about motherhood is getting to create and experience magic and excitement for my daughters.  Christmas is so much fun, Disney is so much fun, adventure is so much fun with these little sweethearts to do it with.  As the characters came out and the excitement grew, I had tears in my eyes.  How fun.  How blessed we are to get to do this with and for our girls.

 

Here comes the snow!

 

They were pretty much in shock for the entire performance.  I don't think that Wills moved an inch for the entire hour and a half.  She just ate her snow cone, her eyes not moving from the ice.  The special effects in the production were amazing, and my favorite part is when it would start snowing.  Literally snowing on us.  Harper looked so cute with her arms stretched out trying to catch snowflakes.  

I am so glad we stumbled across this early Christmas gift for Harper and Willa.  It was worth every penny, for them and for us.  Before we went back to Roanoke, we decided to eat somewhere close to the Coliseum, and we found a place called Harper's.  It had some yummy food, and despite it being a little nicer than what we were anticipating (read: we wanted something barely above fast food since it was 1:30 a.k.a. nap time), but we all had some yummy food.  Sam had a crab cake sandwich, I had chicken, and the girls had salmon with green beans, and they ate every bit.  

Even Willa likes Harper's

I hope this is a memory for the girls.  I hope when they think back of one of the first Christmas memories they have, they think to this fun day, all four of us together.  It may not be the conventional big "Santa present" under the tree, but I saw lots of smiles today that meant so much more.  

Welcome back, Christmas Tree and Elfie!

Elfie's back. Back again. Elfie's back. Tell a friend. 

It's officially Elf on the Shelf season around here, as Elfie made his arrival on the night of December 1st.  Yes, I realize most people's elves probably arrived in the morning, but December 1 was a Monday, so a hectic weekday morning was not ideal for his annual debut.  So, since it was 70 degrees outside (isn't that craziness?  I'll take it.), we let Harper know that he was waiting until it cooled down in the evening to come from the North Pole.  

He appeared by the little Christmas tree in Willa Kate's room, with the Elf on the Shelf book and some Elf pajamas for each girl.  He said, 

"Hello, Harper and Willa, I'm back, it's me!  

It's your favorite friend from the North Pole, Elfie!  

Here's a little gift, some new jammies, 

To wear as you decorate your Christmas tree!"

 

Poor little Elfie didn't know that our house would be 76 degrees inside when he bought matching fleece footed pajamas for each girl.  We won't tell him that we found both girls nearly naked when they woke up sweaty the next morning.  Ha! 

We did Elf on the Shelf last year with Harper, but Willa Kate only being 9 months old didn't pay much mind to it.  This year, she has so excited to go with big sissy each morning to find where "Elf on the Elf" (as Harper calls him) has landed.  The idea is that each day, he watches the girls and then leaves every night to report to Santa, only to return before they wake to a new location in the house.  You'll see on Pinterest and about every other blog you read, creative ideas for all the messes these little elves make in their downtime each night.  They drive cars, do snow angels in flour, have a snowball fight with marshmallows... But, since so many of those things involve messes that I'm essentially making for myself, and since I have two little elves named Harper and Willa who make more messes than I can keep up with, we have opted to keep things simple and have Elfie just reappear in a new location each morning.  The girls wake up excited and so it is just fine for their age.  Maybe when they're older and need a little more entertainment and convincing from Elfie we'll have a Pinterest board dedicated to what our mischievous Elf can get into.  But, don't quote me on that.  Ha.  

 

I also got some of our Christmas decorations out, and our tree went up!  Since the presents I have wrapped are on top of the hutch in the dining room (so that little hands don't begin unwrapping them already), I put these pretty lighted letters that spell "HOPE" under our tree.  And we love it.  When Harper came down to see the tree all lit up, she asked what the word spelled and I told her.  What a sweet time to get to lay on the hardwood with her in front of our tree, and give her a butchered, rambling explanation of the idea of Hope.  But, what a gift to be able to tell her that Hope is why we celebrate Christmas.  Having this at the base of our Christmas tree symbolizes the Hope we have in this season and that it truly is the best Gift ever given.  Hope for a struggling marriage.  Hope for a mom missing her sweet child.  Hope for exhausted parents.  Hope for families battling addiction.  His coming to earth immediately gifted us all with the Hope of Heaven.  How sweet a reminder.