2017 — Page 5

The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas – Day 19

Today our special thing was easy but tasted good. We decided to make wassail. I say that loosely as all we really had to do was put apple juice in our crock-pot, and we had a packaged mix to put into it and then heat up for a little while. But, it still counts as doing something special and the kids really liked it. Except Sarah would not even try it.

When I mentioned what we were going to do today for our special thing, Zola tried to tell me that making wassail was an autumn thing and not Christmas. I told her it had to be a Christmas thing as the box of mix had reindeer on it. But, to make sure I looked it up and wassailing was an ancient custom traditionally done on New Year’s Eve and Twelfth Night, but some rich people drank wassail on all of the 12 days of Christmas. So, we made wassail.

The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas – Day 18

We have made it to one week before Christmas. We have really enjoyed thinking of things to do each day. Every single day it seems one of the kids is asking what our next special thing will be. Today we decided our special thing would be to get out the fire pit and use it. Andrew thought of this idea and he did most of the work and enjoyed every minute of it. This was a real hit and the kids had so much fun. We haven’t used our fire pit in months and everyone was shocked when Andrew pulled it out today.

We started getting it ready in the early evening before dusk and had a good fire going pretty quickly. The hardest part was keeping the kids safe as 8 or more kids all slinging around fiery marshmallows on sticks can be quite scary to me — images of burning hair and screaming kids come to my mind. They are certainly not careful. Piper and Tess acted like they were fireproof and this was quite nerve racking for me. But, everyone stayed safe and not a thing caught on fire. They had a blast and all said this was the most fun thing so far. I let them roast marshmallows until it was dark and then had them come in to eat – which they really didn’t care about as they were so full of roasted marshmallows.

This really was a very nice evening and I’m so glad we did this. I am blessed to have these kids that have so much fun doing almost anything. Simple things make them very happy.