Fa, La, La, La...Crafty Craft:)

Yeah! I am friggin' crafty Caroline, cookin' Claudia, glittering Gladys - well, you get the idea:) I have ( and by I, I really mean Matt and I ) got Christmas done - inexpensively and quite beautifully if I may say so. With our limited resources this year we decided to go for the "handmade" gifts. I know, you are thinking badly knitted things and hokey religious mangers out of popsicle sticks - no, no my friends.

Be prepared to be amazed and astounded:

Numero 1, Ze Paper Ornaments :

Made them with the kids using construction paper and basically anything red coloured! We tore up the paper, put it in the

blender with some water, and

formed them into shapes using cookie cutters. Then bake, voila!

Here is the link for the instructions:

http://www.playcreateexplore.com/2010/11/recycled-paper-

christmas-ornaments.html

The next thing we

made were rainbow crayons. I truly love this one. We melted crayon bits in muffin tins mixing gorgeous colours

together and popped them out in a round shape. Awesome for kids, fun for adults to make!

This one we are doing again!:

http://dohdums.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/tutorial-kid-friendly-crayons/

And of course we did the cookie thing, Martha Stuart cookies this year a la cocoa ganache, oh, excuse me:) The kids made the roll cookies with us, they mostly wanted to eat everything. It was really a lot of fun:)

I bought some little things form Target and put it all together with some tissue and love, check it out:

Love it,

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays:)

"In times of stress be bold and valiant" - Horace

Christmas is in full swing, which as most know about me, is fantastic as I love the holidays!

I am trying not to let everything going on both before and after the holidays taint my enthusiasm while Henry has his last eye stent removed on the 21st. It is good to finally be rid of the stents but he needs to be put under, not so good. But he will be all done with the darn eye things after this:)

Eliot's big surgery is looming but Boston Children's Hospital sent us quite a substantial preview and we have a pre-op date that will last hours apparently to discuss all the stuff involved.

I have to admit that I have a bit of a cry every now and then to release all of the internalized worry and stress. Sometimes I just feel as though I need somewhere to put it all and I don't want to worry my own family. Hmmmm, I feel as though this is a bit of a mom thing, no?

I have taken up "Zumba" at our local Ymca and I think that helps, as does the sauna and steam room.

When the chips are down I tend to "circle-the-wagons" and keep my head down, I am trying to juggle - more like balance, all the hard with some of the joy of this time of year. Mostly I try to quiet my mind so that I can relax for a moment and breathe.

When Henry approached me with his plastic pink cup saying, "Coffee? Hot?" this morning it was really, really hard not to just be so happy that I have these two boys in my life - wait three boys, Matt is pretty awesome these days:)

The more things change...surgery date has arrived.

Not what we thought, but still there is some decision that has been made. Dr. B called tonight, prime-time dinner hour which for us is around senior citizen dinner time, five ish. Dr. B said that he talked with his five colleagues and that they had overwhelmingly voted for ureteral re-implantation surgery on the yucky kidney:

http://www.ucsfbenioffchildrens.org/education/ureteral_reimplant_surgery/index.html

So, we are going to try and preserve the last little bits of function that it has instead of just eighty-sixing the whole thing. The weird thing is that we hung up the phone and later on got a call to get the whole thing moving. So, we are on for January 3 and we are thankfully going to have a big preoperative chat with all the people we need to talk with at the hospital.

My first reaction was to cry, the eyes watering, this is all happening kinda leaking crying and Matt hugged me back into okayness. I think this is good, it is nice to be doing something and to feel as though we are working for Eliot now. It is scary, I am terrified, but also feeling good that Eliot may be able to have two kidneys in his lifetime even if the one is a lot less.

On another note, Christmas tree is up, smells great and only one ornament broken. Tree 0, kids 1. The boys are so excited and have been actually saying, "Shhhhhhhanta", I love it.

I will try to keep posted and to tell everyone that I can feel the cyber support, thanks:)

Merry- Merry