You Know It's Christmas When....

...Kellogg's comes out with the Holiday Rice Krispies edition. Red and green krispies everywhere, and it was high time to introduce Kevin the wonderful Canadian delight called, Rice Krispy ...em...shapes. Our box had the "house" mold in it. It causes me much shame to admit that it took me two tries to make these little nuggets but I blame it on the marshmallows. I had a few left from campfire days....and just for your benefit, a tip: don't try to melt large ones and small ones at the same time. The melting point is different. Let's just leave it at that, and see for yourself that our second attempt was successful. Good thing, because we are out of marshmallows. A bowl of dry krispies just isn't the same without the gooey stuff, then it's called brekkie.

I am so excited to say that I made some Christmas cards today. I decided up until now that I wasn't going to make any. No pressure... ...but today I got an idea and had some time. I don't always have those two items at the same time these days. Some of you out there will be so pleased!! You know exactly who you are!!!

We put our Christmas tree up this morning after breakfast. I thought it might be onteresting to find out from Kevin what they do in Korea. Well, they have an artficial tree, just like we do, hang lights and garland on it, just like we do, and hang ornaments in it, just like we do. We did find out that his family has a conservatory type room where they have all kinds of plants, which came out of the comment that some people in Canada and other countries, have real evergreen trees in their homes at Christmas time. They open their presents on Christmas eve, which is what our family does too sometimes, depending on where the holiday falls in the week. We haven't really decided on that little detail yet. He is very excitedly expecting a parcel from his mom and dad, which is due to arrive on Monday, we'll have to see how expedient international parcel delivery is. I don't sense a lot of homesickness in that lad. He really likes it here in Canada. He likes the food. He enjoys school and playing with his friends. He is challenging himself in the reading program at school. THe kids take quizes on the classroom computer to test their reading comprehension and there are books at every reading level. He saw that his friend was reading at a higher grade level than he was so he took one of the books out on Library day and lo and behold, he got 10 out of 10! He was so pleased. You earn rewards as you advance in readinglevel and that is JUST his cup of tea. You also receive award certificates at the awards assemblies as you advance.

Today we outfitted him for hockey equipment. He skates fairly well so we decided to enroll him in hockey practise with the school team. Anyone in Grade 5-8 may come out to practise on TUesdays at 7am, starting in the new year. He is soooooooooooooo excited. Not too excited about dressing and undressing in the dressing room, and not even mentioning that EVERYONE is in their underwear would change his feelings on that subject. So....we said he could wear his long johns, and that seemed to make him feel better. For some reason we still have some TINY equipment laying around, as you may have seen, his stature is quite small. (See the picture beside Craig in the next post.) We are only missing a few pieces and there might be some in the school equipment room. Good thing we never got rid of that stuff!!!!

As for my secret project. No...I can't tell anyone about it here. Such a shame:):) It turned out really well. But it feels nice to be finished. I wasn't allowing myself the fun of making Christmas cards until that was all done. The time will come when I can tell all, just not yet.