Ho Ho Ho!

We went to visit Santa today.  I was worried Mati would be scared of him but it was just the opposite; she lit up and smiled, loving every minute of sitting on his lap!

Here we are riding the train out to Santa's cottage.

(Did you know Santa had a cottage in Michigan?)

Here's Santa on his front porch greeting us.

Here's Mati visiting with Santa.

And finally, Mati checking out Santa's sleigh.

My Favorite Turkey Craft

I love the kids' crafts that encorporate tracing hands and feet to mark their size over time; this one is by far my favorite.  You need 4 pieces of paper (brown, red, yellow, orange), glue, a pencil, scissors, and googly eyes or white paper circles with a black dot drawn in the center to look like eyes.

Next you need to trace each of your child's hand on one of the red, yellow, or orange pieces of paper.  I then lay the other colors on top and cut out all three colors at once.  These will be the turkey's feathers.

Repeat the same tracing process with the feet.  Trace each foot on brown paper; these will be the turkey's body.

You will then have all of your cut out hands and feet which should look like this:

You will also need to cut out legs (I use orange paper), beak (more orange paper) and a snood (the red thing that hangs off the beak.)  I just freehand those shapes.  You could probably be more anatomically correct and make the wattle which hangs off the neck but I like this turkey without a wattle.  You need to overlap the feet at the heel to look like the body then place the hands (feathers) in alternating colors around the turkey.  I like to put the left hands on the left and the right hands on the right.  When everything is assembled it should look like this, TA DA!

I labeled it with Mati's name and age, and "Thanksgiving 2009."  I let Mati hold it for a split second before I taped it to the fridge.

Mac-n-Cheese Please

Mati does a great job eating a variety of foods.  She's just as happy with peas as pizza.  Today however she was really enthusiastic about her mac-n-cheese.  Here she is enjoying her dinner...

And here she is REALLY enjoying her dinner...

And the result, a pocket of mac-n-cheese...