Hello, Santa

Apparently I'm into photographing E eating this week. It's not an intentional theme, but we laughed so hard at dinner tonight that I couldn't resist snapping a photo. The hijinks started innocently, when Ben reached across the table to scoop a taste of E's yogurt, expecting it to be vanilla. It was banana. The surprised, slightly disgusted expression on Ben's face was priceless! A few minutes later, E put a scoop of his banana yogurt into A's empty (vanilla) yogurt container, and offered it to Ben. "Dad, here, there's some vanilla left," he said sweetly. "Thanks, buddy," replied Ben, taking a bite. The surprise/disgust returned, this time followed immediately by a huge burst of laughter when he realized that E had tricked him. E couldn't stop laughing, either - he was so proud of himself!

After all the yogurt shenanigans, the kids finished their ravioli and broccoli and went to retrieve their chocolate Santas. A friend
brought these for the kids when she and her family came for dinner last night, and A and E eagerly anticipated devouring them all day! As soon as E unwrapped his, he declared, "Hello, Santa! I'm going to eat you now!" and then dissolved again into fits of laughter.

It was a good day overall, with plenty of time for creativity. When I picked A up from after-school care, she was just finishing an awesome puppet - with a papier-mache head, clay eyes and ears, and yarn hair. The cool project, and her excitement over it, reminded me just how much I like her aftercare program - which is such a nice feeling.

After dinner tonight, A, E, and I got out some old jars, magazines, stickers, construction paper, scissors, and modge podge - and had fun decorating pencil holders for their desks. We have been moving a lot of things around at our house as we prepare to re-carpet the downstairs, so the bounty of arts & crafts supplies was recently relocated to the dining room closet. Having them close at hand has been an inspiration for us all!