On the fifth day of Christmas...

There. I decided to forego the table for now. We'll be eating on it between now and when the guest comes, anyway. So, I ordered children around and washed some dishes. Not that you can tell. There's still a mound on the counter. That's what happens when you do Christmas baking, leave the house for the majority of the time for 48 hours, have no water for the following 24 hours, and still have pesky family members who actually want to eat in the midst of it all.

I realized as I went to tell about this day that I'd forgotten to mention one family present we'd opened the first day: a family membership to the children's museum in the capital from Nanny (my dad's mom). I went looking for a post to link to, thinking that I'd blogged about the museum, but apparently I haven't. I'll try to do that soon (in the meantime, I've included a few pictures). It's an amazing place. When the museum opened, we asked about memberships, but they weren't available. Now they are, so we're going to join. Only we're going to wait until we get back from the States in June so we don't waste three months of our membership while we're gone. We're very grateful to have Christmas money to spend on a treat we might not be able to afford otherwise right now. And we look forward to many, many hours of fun enjoying it. :-) Thank you, Nanny!





Now, for our presents from DeeDah and GranJack (my parents)...



ML had the brilliant idea of getting an easel for ZL this year. You see, he apparently enjoys drawing while standing up over drawing with paper on a flat surface like the dining table. Consequently, the walls of our house have suffered a tad (which is a huge understatement :-/). Fortunately, he's finally submitted to the "gentle persuasion" of his parents and has stopped drawing on the walls, but we still thought an easel would be an excellent gift for him. And he has thoroughly enjoyed it already.


For "The Bigs," DeeDah and GranJack gave magazine subscriptions. We have had success paying a little extra for shipping and actually having children's magazines delivered to our P.O. Box here, so we're hoping it will work with this company, as well. The kids love receiving things in the mail, so this will be a special treat. MA is pictured here with a certificate for Ladybug Magazine. Upon further inspection, we realized that Ladybug was a little too juvenile for her, so we're getting her Spider Magazine, instead.


JW was originally slated to get Spider, but we decided that he would more greatly appreciate Ask Magazine, which is science-related.


And the magazine that started it all: Cricket Magazine for MS. ML and I both enjoyed this magazine as older children, and I'm trying to confirm this, but I'm remembering it's one of the few venues where I've ever actually published writing. Anyway, we showed him several pages of a sample copy on-line, and he's very excited.

Before we opened presents this particular evening, we did have a brief discussion of and vocabulary lesson pertaining to the meaning of "non-immediate gratification." They did well. :-)

Thank you, DeeDah and GranJack!!!