Kid's Christmas Party - Part 3

And next came the most delightful of all - the cookie decorating! With sprinkles! I made some vibrantly colored frosting to go with those sprinkles. There were a lot of frosted faces, sprinkled table and floor and bellies filled with sugar!

Look ma! No hands. Ggggrrrrreeeeaaattt

Kid Christmas Party, Part 2

Next up on the kid party agenda was coloring and decorating wooden ornaments. Tiffany found this kit too. It came with markers and a few glitter glue sticks. This was right up Nick's alley. He loves to color these days. He colored a few ornaments, but his main focus was his hands. The speech therapist in the group even got him to say "Yellow, please". Did I mention that these markers where not exactly of the instantaneous washable variety??

Ben was all about the glitter glue. He put his best creative foot forward and combined the penguin ornament with the wooden ornament by first coloring and glitter gluing the wooden ornament, then applying foam sticks to it, more glitter glue and coloring the stickers. It was quite the master piece. 

Again, we got all the kids to sit and do this one too. It was amazing!! But I think the mommies had more fun :) 

Oh, What Silly Mommies... Part 1

Oh, what silly mommies are we, Tiffany, Kristi and I. We (mostly me), had this great idea for a kids Christmas party of crafts and decorating cookies. It's all the rage on Pinterest - 50 Christmas Activities for Preschoolers, Handmade Crafts, Montessori Christmas Ideas, blah blah blah. But really it's just mommy peer pressure to set you up as a failure when it's not all perfect and wonderful like those blogger mommies make it look. Below, and the following posts, are what it really looks like to Christmas craft with three 3 year olds and one 21 month old. Messy. But, it was fun. As long as you had ear plugs. And alcohol. (just be happy there is no video of these escapades). 

I found a cute Christmas banner printable. I have a printables obsession this Christmas season. All about the free.

I made a bunch of sugar cookies for decorating. I cheated and bought buttercream frosting from the bakery instead of making royal frosting. But I convinced myself that it would be easier for the kids to decorate with buttercream.

After some crazy playing time and eating some yummy hot roast beef sandwiches, salad and fruit, we dug right into our first project - penguin ornaments. Tiffany found some really cute foam ornament kits that are perfect for these guys. They just peel the backs off the foam stickers and adhere. I think Nick may have made an attempt at it, even. The kids all sat and made at least one penguin, which I thought was a major win. At one point though, all four of them were calling MOMMY while Avery was beet red screaming in the living room with the boys and Monster was outside barking. Kristi, Tiffany and I all just put our heads down on the table. Then I opened another bottle of wine. 

Kristi and I had issues getting the penguin santa hats to work out. The kids got all crazy and wild while Kristi and I focused on what we were doing wrong. Turns out, there is a front and back to those crazy little penguins...

Next up, coloring ornaments 

What Did You Accomplish Before 9:30am Yesterday?

Me, well I accomplished quite a bit. I woke up with the help of 'Mommy! Mommy! I can't find my elf - he forgot to come back!' Which then resulted in an elfin-hunt. Not to worry, he was found dangling from a hook in the playroom. I then got Nick up before he punched a hole in the wall behind his bed. Then, being a responsible parent, I fed the boys breakfast. Then I got dressed and brushed my teeth. While brushing my teeth the boys were up to some scheme. See if you can guess what they had for breakfast from the pictures below.

Yes, that is Nick covered from head to toe in cheerios and milk. I have no idea what the heck these two were up to, as I was brushing my teeth, but it somehow involved combining cereal into one bowl that then somehow got dumped on Nick's head.

So, then I have Nick a shower.
Then I had to clean up cheerios and milk from the floor, table and chairs.

Then at 8:56 I realized the boys had doctor's appointments at 9:15, not 9:45 as I had thought, and I had to bust it to get out the door. Nick had stepped in dog poop the night before so he had to wear his brand new boots. I didn't have time to find scissors and clip the tags, so I ripped off the tags and left the plastic loop (which the doctor later pointed out to me).

We make it to the doctor at exactly 9:15. Ben was cleared of pneumonia finally but then there was Nick. I figured the doctor would tell me it was teeth or just a cold he had. But no. Double ear infection. Are you kidding me?!? 

And then it was 9:30 and I was done for the day. 

Happy St. Nicholas Day!

This past Thursday, the boys woke up to find their shoes filled with new toy cars! St. Nicholas had come that night and left them some new toys. 

Unfortunately, Ben had trouble following directions and not touching his brother's shoe, so Ben didn't get to keep his cars very long that day. With good behavior at Sharon's they were returned before bed that evening. 

Parent of the Year Award, Right Here

Ben picked up and played with every single toy gun he could find at Bass Pro Shop. Every. Single. One. He wanted to go straight up stairs when we go there so he could play the shooting game.  

But then there were even more in the Santa room! Including a Wii game (which was kind of fun, I will admit)

And then the piece de resistance - a bow and arrow. Ben has been pretending to by Hawk from the Avengers this week and shoots arrows with a toy he pretends is a bow. 

At home, it's a different story. Any toys used as a gun gets thrown away now. He's lost a few good toys to the guns in the garbage initiative. But I think BPS may have killed any progress we had made this week. I have the feeling Ben is going to get in a lot of trouble at Sharon's tomorrow for pretend gun play (which is against the rules at Sharon's). 

Poor Santa

Poor Santa. He just can't get any love from the Wolny's. I don't know why we thought this year would be any different than years past, but we did it anyways. We took the boys to see Santa. Ben even got in line and everything. But, alas, it came to be our turn and out came the boa constrictor. I did get a few pictures of Nick with Santa before he realized he was supposed to be petrified. But then he screamed while Ben clung to Adam. I guess Santa is just that scary. 

A gem.

Though, this is the closest we have gotten Ben to Santa since he was 11 months old, so we are making progress. At this rate of progress, we might be able to get him to make eye contact by the time he's eight. I think Santa should give the candy canes first, sweeten the deal a bit. 

Three minutes later all was right in the world again and Nick was happy and Ben was shooting arrows.

Waiting for Santa

Tonight Adam and I took the boys over to Bass Pro shop to see Santa. Ahh, what silly people we are. We had about 30 minutes to kill before we could get in line so we walked around the store. The boys looked at the fish before going over to the Santa area and played.

Had either of them actually spoken to Santa, one of these might have been on their wish list. They hung out in the atv's for the majority of the wait.

Nick colored a picture or two. He even shared the pencils with the other kids.