Keeping up with the Manssons: Cookie Decorating and Christmas

Merry Christmas

Another Christmas come and gone. It was a crazy lead it with Jillian's birthday being the week before, plus the kids being in school until Friday the 23rd! We were able to get our Christmas Cookies done on Friday. I did Ginger Lemon, Chocolate Chip Butterscotch, and the kids hand made sugar cookies. The best part about the evening is that when we were out delivering the cookies to our neighbors, they were all out delivering their cookies. So we all had an impromptu gathering.

This Christmas the big thing was a Hatchimal. Which is a little creature that hatches out of an egg. When we were at the hotel in New Jersery getting ready for our cruise Jillian saw one commercial and she immediately wanted one. Me, thinking she would forget by the time we got back, didn't pay too much heed. But of course, that is the ONLY thing she consistently asked for this Christmas. So near Thanksgiving, I started looking for them...and they were impossible to find. So, I did some research and, of course, they were the 'must have' item for Christmas. I had given up hope that we would find an actual Hatchimal and started looking for alternative. I found one called Fuzzy Wonderz, which was an egg with a Furby inside. I had a lot of trouble getting it from the manufacture, they claim due to customs holding up their shipment. Which actually worked out for us because on Sunday 12/4, we found out that Toys R Us were releasing a new batch of hatchimals. So, Andrew being the great dad that he is, sat in front of toys R us from 5:30 until 8 AM to get one of these for Jillian. She was THRILLED. And because they had not shipped out my Fuzzy Wonderz, I was able to get a full refund.

Hatchimal

Henry had bigger Santa wishes in the form of a motorized nerf gun...like a drone/robot rover that holds 100+ darts that can be controlled by a remote control. Seeing as he already has a gazillion nerf guns, I vetoed that. He also wanted the full version of Minecraft with the computer modules that you can program, but Andrew wanted him to earn it. Which, is probably a while off because Henry has had a string of behavior issues at school. He is apparently 'bored' at school. Which can be taken as he is not doing his full and best job or it is not challenging enough for him. So I think it is a little bit of both. The first incident happened a week before break. He was bored and finished with his math homework and thought it would be funny to fill up a ziplock bag and place it on the teacher chair...underneath her sweater so she would not see it and sit on it. Needless to say, she appreciated the creativity of the prank...but the wet pants, not so much. The Second insident happened about 10 minutes before break started. There was a scuffle with a girl in a dress (nothing major, she instigated according to the teacher who saw the entire thing) and after they separated he wanted to see the shorts she had on under the dress again and lifted her up. Apparently, because this is sexual harassment it has to go up to the Dean/Principal when they return from break. So that is a TBD story of our life, but this school is SO strict and like a prison that I am a little worried they are going to blow it way out of proportion. So we shall see.

We are now looking forward to a week of being lazy and playing with our new toys and eating all the junk we have in our house. Sounds like a great week to me!