Holiday Sugar and Sparkles

First of all, thank you so so much for your helpful comments and emails and messages about ADHD.

This is very new and the 27-page evaluation results packet brings as many hard sought answers as it does questions on what to do with the answers we now have. It's further complicated by Claire having only one semester left in middle school, a still-fresh move that means both of us are without our support systems, James and I realizing how very much academic and social struggle has been happening behind a seemingly placid surface, and just generally being thirteen which is hard without any help. But we have information and resources and lists and love. Thanks for yours.

On to holiday magic!

I mentioned last year that as the kids get older and busier I've had to stake claim to a weekend in December for all our Christmas traditions. And this year, Forced Fike Family Festive Fun Time was the past weekend, delicately forced between two different 2-day swim meets, household chores, and too many trips to Target.

But it DID happen and there was enough sugar and sparkles to carry us through the rest of the month for sure.

Despite the weekend already being fairly busy, it was the only one before Christams where no one had any evening commitments. Both Landon and Cora's meets did not have finals, so everyone would be home from about 3 pm on. So depending on who was swimming where, James and I split up cheering in the stands duty (both our swimmers did great!), and then James was to focus on getting the outdoor Christmas lights up while I forced kids to clean out closets (a lesser celebrated pre-Christmas tradition) and prepped baking.

I've learned to spread out the sugar cookie labor, making the dough on Friday night so it can chill in the fridge and then doing the rolling and baking on Saturday. We were supposed to do the tree Saturday night and decorate the cookies on Sunday, but after being surrounded by cookies for many hours all I wanted to do was eat 7 of them, so we switched the agenda and dove right into the sugary goodness of icing and sprinkles.

Per my recent personal health initiative I have not had a sugar infusion like that in quite some time and let me say, those cookies and all the extra frosting I ate off my decorating plate were truly worth the wait. Keep your sugar special, I now say, this was NOT just a Tuesday.

As always, the decorating reflected the personalities of the decorators. Cora spent 37 minutes per cookie, completing all of 4. This one is a precise replica of our Fort Worth house.

Landon, who has foregone dessert and deliciousness for the last two years due to his dedication to swimming (a dedication James and I have both made clear can include sugar, but teenagers know best), deigned to decorate approximately six, all with brown frosting and all with various sprinkle-created physical deformities and backstories that had the girls rolling.

James did maybe a dozen? which is a big improvement from years' past, and Claire and I did the remaining 100+, focusing more on quantity than quality (and I ensured every cookie I made had at least 10 red hots snuggled into the sugar frosting).

Milo did not help even a little and slept through it all.

On Sunday, we had Cora's meet, James had to go to Fort Worth for a swim school lunch, and I made Landon clean out his closet and drawers only to make him do it again once I got home again because he removed one single item on his own, but when I went through I magically found at least 15 things to give away, including four "boys size large" items he hasn't been able to fit into since well before our move, meaning these items were selected to be packed, moved, unpacked in the rental, and then packed and unpacked again in our forever house and just HOWWHYWHAT. I can't believe I let him go without oversight for that long.

After an early dinner we turned on the Raffi Christmas album and got down to decorating.

Everyone wore their matching pajamas, including Maggie, and it was cozy and sparkly, with a side of all the sugar we'd worked so hard on the day before.

We watched a family movie and then James and I watched the first episode of Slow Horses Season 3 (that show is SO GOOD, if you are not watching yet I'm jealous you get to start fresh).

On Monday morning I got up early to get my walk along the lake in before work and I just love seeing our tree in the early morning light. Or any light really.

And while I'd rather stay home and in pajamas for the month of December, watching movies and making lists of things to bake (up this weekend: cinnamon rolls, cinnamon spice candied pecans, chex mix (I sub cheez-its for peanuts and the world is better for it), and the best scones I've ever had), if I must be a real grownup and go to work, I'm glad I get to come home to my people and pets, the sparkles on my tree, and the sugar cookies in my pantry.

Happiest holidays to all.