While Mom & Dad Are Away

I'm not a crafty person at all.  Craft challenged.  Well, okay, maybe not.  I mean, I do knit.  If you give me a craft, I can follow simple instructions, but coming up with a craft idea is totally not... my... thing.

I wanted to do something fun for my kids while Jay and I were away in Rome.  It was the first time we had left the kids with a relative for an extended amount of time and I wanted it to be fun, an adventure of sorts.

I went to cheap stores like Dollar General and 5 Below and bought 8 cheap gifts for my kids to share.      Have I mentioned how much I love my 5 Below store?  It's new to us here and I love it!  I had to go cheap with these gifts/prizes because we went away just 2 days after Christmas!  I bought things like theater candy for movie night, spiral art kits, cheap magic sets, dog toys so they could teach the puppy new tricks, moon sand stuff, etc.  Nothing over $5.  I wrapped them up and attached a note card to the outside of the gift wrap with the number which corresponded to the # of days we had been gone, and the date, just in case snooping kids found a gift labeled for a different day.

Sorry, the puppy wouldn't get out of the way
and insisted on being in the picture.

I created a treasure hunt and typed typed up one clue per day we were gone.  The clues gave them a task of the day, totally unrelated to the prize because that would have put me over the edge to coordinate the two!  Fun tasks included things like building a fort in loft, going to the park to play, baking brownies with Grandma (which never happened because apparently Grandma thought we had too many Christmas cookies in the house).

But I digress.

I even included some practical tasks like helping grandma vacuum before we came home, sorting laundry in the laundry room, making sure the house looked clean.  I hid these prizes in places where I know the kids wouldn't generally look or see them out and about.  I used places like my t-shirt drawer, the garage shelf by the fuse box, the linen closet underneath the stack of washcloths, the bottom drawer of Jay's nightstand, etc.  Some of the clue examples are:

Day #1

Saturday

Good morning!  I know we left EARLY today.  Thanks for being such good sports.  Make sure your sister gets a nap today.  She’ll need it!  We’ll be travelling for 13 hours and might not get to call you for a long while.  Know that we’ll miss you and we’ll call you as soon as we can.  Today, make an obstacle course in the loft!   Let your sister play along when you have it built.  Don’t forget to clean it up before bedtime.  Look in my t-shirt drawer for a special surprise that all 3 of you must share!

Day #4

Tuesday

Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve!  Today, plan your party.  Think about any special foods you might want to eat.  Think about decorations.  I have balloons, streamers and stuff in the box in the guest room closet where I keep gift bags and wrapping supplies.  Maybe make some decorations using the roll paper on the easel in the kitchen.  You could make a huge banner and hang it on the wall with blue tape.  Look in the linen closet under the stack of washcloths for today’s surprise.

Day #8

Saturday

We come home at 8:44pm tonight!  I can’t wait to see you!  Take some time today to show Grandma how responsible you are.  Show her how you vacuum.  Stack your dirty laundry into darks and lights in the laundry room.  Make the house look nice.  Your room can be a mess, but go room to room and see if you can work together to make them look really nice, especially if you’ve been sleeping in our room!  Look in the desk in the office and you’ll find your final prize. 

Lastly, I hid the typed clues inside a construction paper chain.  I numbered and dated the chain on the outside so there was no confusion as to which link to open on a given day.  I hung the chain from the garage access door in my living room, high enough so the toddler girl could not destroy it at all.

It wasn't a big paper chain by any means.
We were only gone for 8 days.

The kids had great fun with it even if Grandma didn't allow some of my fun activities.  Seriously?  Each day they tore open a link to the chain, read the clue and then found their prize.  Every day when we FaceTimed, I asked if they found their treasure and if they liked it.  They certainly did.

Again, I'm not crafty at all, but this was great fun for my kids.

What do you do for your kids when you go away?

Ornament #24

Since tomorrow is Christmas Day, I'm reserving that day for my family and I'm choosing to end the Christmas Ornament Story Challenge today.

And I saved the best for last.

This one, lone ornament is the reason why I wanted to start this challenge, because it has a GREAT story!

Can you see what this is?  It's a glitter painted, wooden clothespin, with curling ribbon and clipped to the bottom is money, real money, a $10 bill.

Back when Jay and I were dating and I was still working in youth ministry at Willow Creek, Jay volunteered his Saturday mornings as a coach for one of our junior high teams.  The adult leaders on the team did a gift exchange for Christmas that year.  Someone asked Jay what he wanted and he said, "Money.  I'm saving up to buy a ring.  I need money."

That year, his secret Santa gave him this $10.  We have never, ever spent it, and we never will.  It is too priceless.  My kids know the story, but I want this around for my grandkids to see it.

Of course, from my husband's financial advisor background, we've been stupid not to save it elsewhere rather than a box!  After all, invested and left invested, we could see this $10 become more over the years.  But I won't do it.  It's too cute, too funny, it's the best ornament on our tree.

It tells our story.

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!  Praying that all my readers know the love of Jesus this holiday season.

Ornament #23

I had hoped to post a new ornament today, but I haven't gotten it in the mail yet.  It will probably arrive tonight. 

So, which one to post today?

This one also goes back to our days on staff at Willow Creek.  This is probably the fanciest ornament we have on our tree.  It's large and very fragile and it is stored in it's original box with tons of tissue paper.   It was given to Jay or I as a thank you or serving on the Conference Operations Team when a year of church conferences was over.

Conference week was always crazy!  Thousands of pastors would flock to our campus for training.  We did this multiple times a year.  70-80 hour work weeks were the norm, even more hours for Jay.  It was insane.

I miss that insanity.

No, I don't miss working.  I definitely don't miss ministry.  My life as stay-at-home, homeschooling mom, raising a daughter from a hard place, brings enough insanity for me, thank you very much. 

But I do miss the buzz of Conference Weeks and working with such amazing team members.

I love the memories that this ornament brings to mind.

Tune in tomorrow for the very last installment of the Christmas Ornament Story Challenge!  I have certainly saved the best ornament for last and you won't want to miss it!

Ornament #22

I love that someone at Hallmark or whatever company manufactured this, realized that some families just aren't traditional!

My Secret Santa from my Facebook Adoption Group sent me this the very first year our Quiet Tiger was home for the holiday!

This year, it wasn't in the box with the other ornaments and I panicked because I had absolutely no clue where I would have put it.  For some reason, it was in the box with our formal decorations, which we have never put out in this house.  Phew!  Glad I found it!

Forever Family - Joined at the Heart - 2012

Ornament #21

Today we have a little Nebraska-football-snowman-thing.  That's what I'm calling it.  I'm nearly certain Jay's old assistant Anne gave this to us.

We spent 5 1/2  years living in Lincoln, Nebraska.  While we never became Husker fans, we certainly did leave behind some amazing friends.  We had a great small group at church that actually started as a women's ministry group.  All of us women just clicked and we were invited to a couples group.  We did everything with those friends:  camping, coffee nights, cookouts, Halloween parties, Bible studies, trips to the apple orchard every fall.  They were family to me.

We also had the best neighbors ever!  Super C had many friends on the street and we should have installed revolving doors on our homes as kids came and went.  Steve and Renee had 2 of the cutest kids you've ever met.  I miss those kids.  I miss walking to the bus stop with Renee (that 1 year the kids were bussed to school) and I miss Steve's John Goodman laugh.  He sounds just like him!  I shared many a laugh with my friend Suzette across the street as we lamented over another neighbor who loved to call the cops on us.  She gave me their old lawn mower which I still use today.  I know she shoveled my driveway when we were stuck in California for that awful year.  We sat out on the back patio with Brian and Kellie and Todd and Vanessa while the kids would run between yards.  Brian and his son B mowed our lawn for weeks on end after our friend Jake moved out of the house and away from Lincoln.  Vanessa and I garage-saled (that's a verb, right?) together and Todd made the best Chocolatinis ever and also shared our love of Nerf Gun wars with the kids.  I'll never forget running into him at Target with the biggest Nerf gun in his hands.  Todd also reviewed Quiet Tiger's medical file and came to visit me in the hospital when I was all alone and had my gall bladder removed.

Gosh, I miss those Nebraska friends.  Great, great people!

Nebraska wasn't perfect, no place is, but it really was the good life for a time.

Love you, Nebraska friends!

Ornament #20

Question:  Which bear is best?

Alright, enough of my slipping into The Office right now.  We love that show.

We also love bears.  We used see one or two when we'd go to Hayward, Wisconsin to visit Jay's mom.  We never saw one in Alaska on our honeymoon, but we know one was behind the brush and the voices of tourists kept it from showing it's face.  Jay of course loves his Chicago Bears (even when they have a painful season like this year).  And of course, for Jay's line of work, bears also hold significance.  We've had this guy on our tree for years and we all love him!

Feed the pig.
Ride the bull.
Beware of bear!

Ornament #19

Today we have wedding bells!  Jay and I have a couple of ornaments on our tree given to us by friends on our wedding day.  I wish I could remember who got them for us, but I love them just the same.  This one has our names and our wedding date engraved on it.