This week’s Monday Mojo (yes I know it’s Wednesday, but you have all week to link up, remember?):

For this week, we would love for you to share a picture of your Christmas Tree (if you celebrate!) Also, let us know what your favourite holiday traditions are! I know I love to hear how other people celebrate. We can’t wait to hear what you do!

I finally decorated our Christmas tree the other night after much nagging from my 5yo. I put it off as long as I could because:

1. I wasn’t in the mood.
2. The boys can’t leave the $&%(% tree alone.
3. The lights on two branches near the bottom of the tree just poofed the other day (see $%*@) tree).

It’s not perfect, but it’s decorated. Next year, I”m going back to our regular tree that I have to string the lights on myself. It fluffs better (real trees make me itch). The bald spots on this tree are really getting to me. I’m glad we didn’t pay any more for it than we did. We’ve gotten our money’s worth, and I think it’s done. (Excuse the crappy cell phone pic. My camera has turned into a princess and will only focus when it wants to. Check out some of our ornaments.

Other traditions that we have include:

• pizza on Christmas Eve
• leaving beer and cookies for Santa (who wants to put toys together sober?)
• Welsh cookies
• pancakes for breakfast Christmas morning, made by my husband (the best part)
• ravioli lasagna for Christmas dinner (I’m the only one who likes turkey, and no one like ham)
• something crafty for when the kids are bored with their Christmas gifts to help maintain our sanity over their break

Before we even got there, we got our parking pass for the day, a letter with detailed instructions, and our name tags in the mail. Score one for logistics! They also answered my questions about peanuts in any of the foods or contamination. In case you’re wondering, just steer clear of the muffins and pancake topping goodies.

We got there at 7:30am. Breakfast with Santa was due to start at 8am. Other people were early like us, and they opened the doors. I was so thankful for this, because man did I have to pee. I don’t recommend having our morning tea or coffee before leaving the house if you’re driving in from outer areas. Anyway, you pay when you get there, which is awesome. We had an illness on Thanksgiving, so I was hoping we wouldn’t have to cancel on our day, but if we did, we weren’t going to be out the money since we hadn’t paid yet.

After you pay, you follow the signs, and an elf directs you to your assigned table (score 2 for logistics!). You are then free to move about and get your breakfast. There were two hot buffets set up on each end of the seating area, with the pancakes and drinks in the middle (3 for logistics). Our table also had a container of cookie ornaments for each child to decorate, a Bingo card, and some Kisses as the centerpiece.

After Santa arrived, and we were done eating, we were free to go see Santa, and take our own pictures, at our leisure (score 1/2 for logistics, I’ll explain later).

After some Bingo, and giving everyone a chance to eat, we lined up to go ride the first ride of the day on the Chocolate Tour ride. This is where things moved a little slower. We had to wait a bit for people, but not too long. I understand we had to do this as a group.

After the ride, we were then treated to the 3D show. This is where it fell apart. Of course we had to wait for everyone for this. Since some people were still seeing Santa, and then got to the ride late, those of us who had gotten to breakfast on time (the letter said 7:45am), had to wait for the scragglers. My opinion is they should’ve been moved along with the group and then they could see Santa after the 3D show. He wasn’t going anywhere.

During the intro to the 3D show, there was information on Milton Hershey and the company. It was a lot of the information we had heard when we took the trolley ride. I’m not sure how many people had been there before, or heard the information before, but there was a group of adults behind us talking loudly that were very rude. I expected the kids to talk some and the wee ones to make noise, but the adults should know better.

The 3D show was really cool. I only made it about halfway through before my sensory issues got me. It’s not something I will do again. The snow got my arm wet when it came out of the ceiling. There were a few times I got a few drops of water on my arm as well. The general 3D part triggered my motion sickness, and I got a headache and nausea. By the time we walked out of there, I was so beyond done, and at that point Chocolate World was open and there was at least one bus load of people there.

Would I do it again? Absolutely. This was a WAY better experiences than our past ones at Wegmans. As long as we live here, and as long as the boys want to do breakfast with Santa, we will go to Chocolate World. Our food was hot, and everything flowed as smoothly as could be expected. They run so many of them leading up to Christmas that the group was kept pretty small. I will just sit out the 3D show from now on, and they’ll go with Dad.

Santa brought Buzz!

Star Wars Legos!

This was the first year we got visible cues from Zach that he enjoyed his gifts. The smile in that picture above – HUGE. Best.Christmas.EVER. Thanks Santa (and teachers, ABA therapist, etc.)

Our 9 year old is much more reserved. I’m sure he gets excited. It usually manifests in acting inappropriately in the days leading up to Christmas. Christmas morning with him is usually a mechanical opening of the gifts and then immediately taking them to his room so s brother can’t play with them. This year was a little different. He stopped to play with some of his stocking toys. That was cool. He was also visibly pleased when unwrapping the rest of his gifts and said, “Thank you,” all on his own. This was the first year ever we didn’t have to ask him, “Did you like your gifts?” We could honestly tell by his nonverbal cues this time. It was the best Christmas gift ever.

-The tree gets put up the weekend closest to my birthday. Since my birthday is 2 weeks before Christmas, this is the perfect time to put the tree up. This year, my birthday fell on the weekend, and we spent it at breakfast with Santa. The tree went up a few days later.

-When we decorate the tree, every ear since we won the creepy clown ornament as a door prize at one of my husband’s company Christmas parties, we open the box, say, “Oh crap, the creepy clown ornament,” and put it back away until next year when we repeat the process. This year we haven’t decorated the tree because the kids can’t stop touching it.

-We leave Santa beer and cookies. My husband stole this idea from his sister. I can’t say as I blame him. When he was deployed, we left wine and cookies. I sure was appreciative of that wine while putting toys together and wrapping. When it gets mentioned outside of our family, people look at us weird, so I just add that we’re Irish (my grandma), and I get that knowing look, and nothing more is said.

-We order pizza for dinner Christmas Eve. Easy clean up since we also wrap that night after the kids go to bed.

-I make everyone wear Christmas pajamas on Christmas morning. Not only is it a fun way to torture my family, but it helps me remember what year that was by what we were wearing.

-When I wrap presents, I cut all the twist ties, and the toys are ready to go out of the box before wrapping so the kids aren’t sitting frustrated waiting for us to wrestle a toy from its packaging while they’re bouncing off the walls.

-My husband makes pancakes for breakfast after we’ve opened presents.

-I make lasagna later in the day for dinner.

-My husband’s family makes Welsh cookies this time of year.

What are your traditions?

-Spent most of the month catching up on doctor appointments and Aaron had a 2nd endoscopy. Merry Christmas, son.

-I had a birthday, but it was spent at breakfast with Santa. Such is the birthdays of moms born in December, I guess.

-Dropped a small fortune at Hershey’s Chocolate World on chocolate. It’s a side effect of a child with a specialist in Hershey. We drive by the entrance to and from the appointments. Besides, the plain Hershey bars are cheaper by the case.

-Christmas shopping is done. Wrapping will be done Christmas Eve. Oh yeah, I need to call the pizza place to see if they’re open Christmas Eve. Mmmmmm……..steak boli.

-Kids are so stimmy I’m surprised I haven’t emptied the bottle of tequila in the kitchen. The stimminess makes me have a love/hate relationship with Santa.

-Beer for Santa – check. Cookies – working on it. Cards- sent on the 22nd. At least they got sent out this year.

The age old question: Are you ready for Christmas?

My attempt at Welsh cookies this year

I read a post on Telling Dad where he mentioned snowball cookies the other day, and it just brought back a flood of Christmas memories. I LOVE those cookies. I’ve been looking for YEARS to try and find a recipe for them. No one in my family made them, but we always had some given to us. We always ended up with an assorted cookie plate, and the snowball cookies were on it. I also babysat for people who made a ton of them. It was their family thing. It was the best part of babysitting for them.

From the snowball cookies, my memories snowballed (pun intended). I got to thinking about my grandma’s “lead cookies.” My grandma made some American bastardized version of Lebkuchen (I’m not sure if her recipe was a family one they brought over or not) that was just absolutely horrific. I’m pretty sure we could’ve thrown the little rectangles like ninja stars if anyone had ever broken into the house and done some damage. Even as bad as they were, they were part of our Christmas. I still helped make them even though I didn’t eat them. It wasn’t about the cookies. It was about the time spent with grandma.

Then I started thinking about all the Christmasses my mother ruined with her toddler like temper tantrums, and I was thankful we don’t see her anymore. I’m sad that she probably now spends her holidays all alone, but she did it to herself. No one wants to be verbally abused, especially during the holidays.

Then back to the happy. When I met my husband, I got the insider scoop on their traditions. Being that three out of four of his grandparents are from Wales, their Welsh cookie recipes came over with them. This is something we only get at Christmastime. This year, I was delighted to find that when I googled Welsh cookies, there are now about as many recipes floating around out there as there are families. I’m on a quest for softer cookie that our kids may like better than our current recipe.

Do you have family food traditions? Favorite memories?

What are you listening too?

-I sat through a presentation on some software Friday to use for ABA therapy. We’re going to be able to record the kids when we hear one squawk, have the software buffer back as far as we want it to, and record the event. This will all be done by remote. I’m excited to be able to actually see who does what when the boys blame each other.

-I’m experimenting with the Welsh cookie recipe this year. We had some really awesome cookies that were soft and moist last year. My quest is to come up with a recipe that’s similar. My in laws might think it’s sacrilegious to mess with the recipe, but I married into the family, and I’m not Welsh, so I feel like I’m allowed. The first test made Welsh cookie biscotti. They were good, but weren’t the right texture. Our brains did not compute.

-OK, so I’m not totally crazy. My bloodwork came back, and my thyroid levels are slightly off. I’ve been having symptoms for months. Obviously, slightly off for my body means that I have symptoms that need addressed. Follow up after some more testing to get a full picture of what’s going on. I figured it was just a matter of time since they found that my thyroid was enlarged about 9 years ago.

-I haven’t heard what services Aaron will be getting yet, but I should be hearing this week since they had a chance to meet last week. His blood work came back OK.

-Again on the Aaron front, we got the results of all his stool testing. we’re repeating one to see if it was a one time thing or if we need to further investigate what he’s not absorbing properly.