I love and hate Pinterest

I had been planning Christmas for awhile. Presents are always bought throughout the year when I see stuff on clearance and thankfully Adam's dad was nice enough to bring them up when he came near Thanksgiving. We had planned to do crafts everyday and baking everyday-since I am split between the apartment and the hospital, this would be 12ish crafts and 12 baking/cooking events. Well, well, well, Pinterest comes along and just blew that out of the water. We still did some of the crafts I had planned but goodness gracious, the ideas posted on Pinterest are SO cute! I mean, who doesn't think they need 50 snowmen made of salt dough after you see those sweet little handprints or 6 (in our case) little reindeer made of clothespins and popsicle sticks? I will try to post picts of some of the ornaments the kids have done. They really did a great job and have been so good with the holiday craziness.

Jingle Bell Breakfast

In trying to keep our traditions the same, we had our yearly Jingle Bell Breakfast where the kids Elf of the Shelf arrives. Typically, we do this on December 1 but we had some delays in getting Shelf's wife a skirt. Shelf is what the kids named their elf a few years ago. The Elf on the Shelf is such a fun little story. Your elf arrives and everynight, he/she flies home to Santa to report on how you have acted throughout the day. Then, he/she comes back and finds a new spot in the house to sit and watch. The kids love this tradition and are very serious about making sure no one touches Shelf because he will lose his magic.

For breakfast, we did breakfast banana splits (thanks Pinterest). I made homemade blueberry and strawberry sauce. We cut bananas in half, used greek yogurt as the ice cream, topped it with the sauces, extra berries, and nuts. I had bought whipped cream and cherries to top them with too but I left those at home (oopsy).

Coordinating 6 young kids to all have breakfast at the hospital takes a lot of patience and lots of planning. Weston is on 6 IV meds that run directly into a line into his heart plus his nitric that he cannot be disconnected from for more than a few seconds. He can't just leave his room. We have to bring his nurse plus a respiratory therapist with us. This gives lots of challenges for the other kids to even get near him without getting tangled in all of the cords. Avery, especially, just LOVES Weston. She squeals with delight as soon as she sees him and wants to go running right up to him. It is so sweet. I am sure she doesn't remember him before he was connected to everything because she was just a little baby when we first came here.

Because we are in 2 different places this year, Shelf had to get a wife. Shelf wrote the kids and note to let them know that he had been in Vegas getting married. The kids named his wife Snowflake. Shelf is going to stay at the hospital and watch Weston and Snowflake is going to be here at the apartment watching the other kids.

We also did all homemade ornaments this year. This is still a work in progress because we are doing one everyday but so far, the kids have loved this. The ornaments have turned out really cute too. Now, if I can just get them to understand that we don't have to take all of the ornaments off the tree constantly to rearrange them.

We decorated Weston's room last week and I will try to post some picts. Everyone always comments on how festive his room looks. My friend, Betsy, is making Weston some things for me to string up along the windows and for his name on the door.

This is going to be the best Christmas ever or I am going to die trying to make it the best. The hospital is not going to ruin it for the kids and even though it is 10 times harder to do everything with kids in 2 places and the hospital, it is going to be GREAT!