Mom and Dad were kind enough to take the kids for a sleepover so David and I could get some Christmas decorating done without help from the little elves. This is what Dad wrote about the weekend.
We didn't have time to talk on the kid-transfer, but I wanted to let you know that Archer and Shelly done you proud. Saturday we went to the craft fair at Whitnall High School. There were hundreds of vendors selling all kinds of baubles, trinkets, candies and other assorted junk; all of it within easy reach of a child. We walked for 30-40 minutes through this mass of people and vendors and the kids just followed peacefully along never once reaching for, or grabbing anything! Archer peacefully was singing jingle bells most of this time. We did buy them a popcorn as a treat for being so good.(which grandma had the sense to get a second bag so they wouldn't argue over who should hold the bag.)
In the evening we went to the Hales Corners tree lighting at 6 p.m. It was freezing outside and the kids hung in there through 2 full songs by the band before Archer (because he had no snow pants) said that he was getting cold. Both Shelly's boots had fallen off, so we went inside where there were quite a few parents and grandparents who had brought their kids in. We had to wait half an hour for the program to move inside, then they sat through another half hour of story time, then they peacefully stood in line to see Santa for another half hour. (We had taken a bell with us and the reader asked Archer to ring his bell when we got to the right spot in the story of The Polar Express) No problems at all. All of this with tables piled with cookies within easy reach. We allowed them one cookie when they were first brought out and they never said another word about getting another one! All that waiting and temptation and they just stood quietly, nice job Mom & Dad.
Archer said this was his first visit with Santa. You should know that he asked for a fire truck. Shelly allowed Grandma to move close to Santa, but she wouldn't go to him, she asked for a dolly. (someone forgot their camera in the scramble to get hats, mittens, coats, boots, etc. all loaded and off to the library, sorry) Archer told me when we got home that he knew that wasn't the real Santa. I asked him if he thinks this Santa will call the real one and tell him what all the kids asked for. He said yes, he thought he would. They were so good we let them have a second cookie on the way out.
I won't go into all our activities here at home but some of the other highlights included landing paper airplanes in the Christmas tree, kung fu panda jumping in piles of pillows, crash bandicoot with boxes in the basement, grandpa giving a ticket to Archer for making the Christmas lights blink too fast and putting tape all over grandpa while grandma was wrapping presents. I woke up with 3 pieces of tape still on my sweatshirt this morning. ummmm.... Life is good. Hope you had a nice weekend, we sure did.
Love
Grandpa
1 comment:
Mom & Dad,
Thanks for taking the kids overnight, David and I were able to get a lot of decorating done without interference from helpers. And thanks for letting us know how the sleepover went. Parenting feels like a lot of struggling without much progress sometimes (Archer and I just discussed the definition of "struggle" recently...) and its nice to hear from an outside source that the kids were well-behaved and fun to be with. It sounds like you guys had a great time. And even though you didn't take pictures, I can imagine how it all went, I can picture Archer talking Santa's ear off, and Shelly holding on tight to Grandma, I can picture Archer and Shelly getting a kick out of putting tape on you and jumping in the pillows and everything. So thanks for sharing.
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