Christmas season is underway here at Hansel house. Nikolaus has already visited from Germany, dropping his regular booty of candies and toys in the kids' boots on the night of Dec. 5th.

And, of course, my handmade advent calendar is up. The boys have been enjoying special little presents every day. I kind of thought they were getting too old for this, if only because dollar toys are slightly less exciting to 9 year-olds than they were for 6 year-olds. But hubby said I should keep doing it, so I had to come up with some new ideas. I decided I could swing some bigger gifts if they were divided up into parts: one part one morning, one part the next. Last week, the boys had a three-part chocolate pretzel gift that kept them stumped until the very last day!

the pretzels were delicious!

This week it's a three-part LEGO surprise!

They had no clue on day one, but after day two - this morning - they were on to it. They're looking forward to playing Lava Dragon tomorrow!

Wee is ecstatic over this year's Playmobil advent calendar. She picked out the fairy one, with flowers and magic wands and fairy princesses.

seven days in and it's already so pretty pretty

She loves this thing so much that every afternoon, she'll suddenly look up at me and say, 'is it the next day now so I can open another box on my advent calendar?' Sorry, babe, not yet.

In the meantime, when we are not spreading early Christmas cheer, the kids are busy with their usual things and I'm bogged down with final papers for school. I have begun my three-year quest to become an elementary school teacher by taking a math class and a psych class. Math has been by far the more interesting class. In fact, I find myself doing math with wee all the time now. Here we made a bar graph of the different Hello Kitty noodles wee got in her pasta.

we have more flower noodles than Hello Kitty noodles

A few weeks ago, when wee wanted to eat her dessert before she'd finished her lunch, she suggested a pattern (making and recognizing patterns is a very early pre-algebra skill), so we drew it out and she got to eat her food as follows:

Two nachos, one chocolate ball, one nacho, one chocolate ball, two nachos, one chocolate ball, one nacho, one chocolate ball.... Math is yummy.

Also very very yummy, is this faaaabulous little yarn from Trendsetter, called Cha Cha. It makes the most delightful ruffly scarf ever.

Can you believe that this this is knitted?! I couldn't believe it when I saw a sample being knit up in the store. All I knew is that I loved it! And I loved the rich purple color too. I was slightly less in love after watching the silly video about how to wind the tricky ribbon yarn and knit the first few rows, but once I got past the starting difficulties, I've really enjoyed working with it. Part of my enjoyment is due to the rosewood needles I borrowed from the store while starting the scarf. Mmmmmm, rosewood. I didn't even mind that they were straights. Yes, you heard right, straights!

I may have to sneak some more Cha Cha and some rosewood straights into my own Christmas stocking on the 24th!