Jolabokaflod

Four years ago, I read about Jolabokaflod. An Icelandic tradition of giving books and spending Christmas Eve reading.

We adopted it ourselves, but we do it the evening of the last day of school before Christmas break.

Hot cocoa, new books, a fire in the fireplace, and reading snuggled up in blankets.

Finley wins

No one can convince me this wasn't intentional.

Two days ago, I took Finley for a ride in the car while I ran errands. She used the five minutes I ran into Trader Joes to shred the garbage container in my van, as well as everything in it. When I returned to the car, she was sitting there with plastic hanging off the side of her mouth, looking quite proud of herself.

Then yesterday I'd read a post on my timeline from 8 years ago about how Finley had eaten 4 hours worth of Christmas baking in two minutes while I took one of the twins to the bathroom.

So, last night, I said to Dave, "Finley can be such a jerk. She's 8 1/2 years old, and still destroying things."

This morning, I set these gardening gloves outside to run them to the garden after I got dressed. I let Finley out to go potty, got dressed, and when I went back out I found them laying exactly like this.

Touche, Finley.

I don't always love parenting adolescents

Adolescents and feisty kids are not always a fun match.

Ally did not want to go to horse lessons today. We usually go Fridays, but we had to reschedule because they had ski club She doesn't like to do things on the weekend, so she was angry.

I'd talked to her earlier and explained that we had only gone once this month for various reasons and we couldn't go next week, because it was Christmas Eve, so we had to go even though she preferred to stay home.

She kept pushing me, trying to get me to engage, so I said, "Ally, I love you too much to talk about this anymore." She made a snorting noise, so I continued, "I don't want to damage our relationship."

She glared at me and said, as if possessed by a demon, "Too late. The relationship is already damaged."

Government funded Christian holidays

Ally has drawn some conclusions that must be the result of being eleven years old with a budding understanding of how the world works while still believing in Santa Claus.

Yesterday we were talking about Christmas and the twins wondered if Santa would bring presents for all the animals. Then Ally said, "No, that's Saint Nick's thing, not Santa's." After a moment, she continued, "...because he's government funded."

This reminded me of a comment she'd made when opening her stocking. I hadn't had a chance to revisit it that morning, because things were crazy, and I'd forgotten to circle back. But we had time now. 

"How do you mean?" I asked.

Ally explained, "You know. He gets his money from the government."

Nope, that didn't clear it up. So I waited for her to continue.

"Because he buys things in stores, rather than having elves make them. He brings regular store things. So, it must come from taxpayer's money."

Got it!!!

Suddenly what she said opening her stockings also made sense. She'd commented, "The whole St. Nick thing is really unfair to Jews. They pay taxes, too, but don't benefit from the St. Nick thing."

I worry she is going to be so angry when the whole Santa thing comes to light. It's such a difficult balancing act. I'd had the talk way too early with Kate, not wanting her to feel lied to, but she was so sad to know. So I held off with Anna. Anna figured it out naturally, and she let me know last year that she was only going along with it for my sake. So, I was hoping things would go like that for Ally and Luke, but I also don't want them to be teased at school or feel betrayed that I lied to them.

So, a few weeks ago, I'd asked Ally, "So what do you think about the whole Santa thing?"

She'd responded definitively, "Oh, he's real!" She listed several reasons why, concluding with, "And remember the way the ping pong table was set up a couple years ago. There's no way you and Daddy could have pulled that off."

So, her impression that Dave and I are completely inept solidified the Santa thing for her.

Six-freaking-teen???

I'm not really sure how this happened, but my sweet girl turned 16.

I made her a very sweet cake, chocolate with Nutella frosting. The frosting was about the best thing I ever put in my mouth and I ate about two pounds of it while putting the cake together.

We had a little family celebration on Tuesday, since Dave worked on her actual birthday.

On her birthday, we went to the DMV and she got her official license.

Her friend celebration was on Saturday. We took her four favorite friends out to eat at a fancy restaurant downtown. We had so much fun. Such a wonderful group of young ladies.

We went out for cookies afterwards and then the girls came back here and hung out and crocheted.

Last year after my knee surgery we watched a lot of Gilmore Girls. Right before Kate's birthday, Ally commented, "I can't believe Kate is going to be 16. When Rory was 16, she already had a boyfriend."