Same Old Shannon : 14 Days of Festivity: Day 4

Merry Christmas Alien

I had big plans for Day 4, but those plans got derailed the moment I woke up.

I walked downstairs to find Leia intently staring at a corner where we keep our shoes. There was only one reason a cat would be staring that intently at shoes: A tasty rodent friend was hiding in there. And, sure enough, moments later a tiny mouse scurried up the stairs and out of our sight.

"MOUSE!" I yelled loudly, waking up the other members of my family and setting a day of unfortunate events in motion.

Now all the creatures were stirring, including a mouse. (That was my attempt to turn this event into something festive.)

Anyway, Bill began throwing items out of closets to try to locate the little rodent. Everything from my closet was thrown on top of my bed.

So I guess the day's new plan was cleaning out the closet.

Cleaning out the closet evokes a certain painful level of emotions that I wasn't prepared for. So many articles of clothing have memories attached: the shirt I wore to get my hair done for my wedding; my old work wardrobe; maternity clothes. And mostly there was just a lot of stuff I don't fit into anymore, and probably never will.

But I turned my sentimentality off and just purged and purged. I ended up with two huge bags of trash, three huge bags to donate to the Salvation Army, and a giant bag of hangers to give back to the dry cleaners.

The cleaning and subsequent trip to the Salvation Army took up most of the day, so we didn't get any of our holiday festivities in. Fortunately, Nathan had a babysitter coming, and the two of them spent some time doing holiday crafts while I cleaned.

The idea for the Christmas Alien came from the fact that, as I was fishing out craft supplies, I could only find 3 googly eyes. I explained that since most creatures on earth have only two eyes, we might have one left over. But no:

The babysitter's name is Danielle. She is awesome.

That's all they made before Nathan got bored and asked to work on his Christmas Super Mega Book of Fun (an activity book I purchased from the $1 bin at JoAnn).

But we did have a couple of other crafts lying around from an event Nathan went to at a local church the previous night, so I thought I'd include photos of those to beef up this post.

This first craft is a sticker nativity scene. Of particular note is that Nathan drew lines between the stars to make a constellation. I guess it goes with the Gingerbread Planetarium. Oh, and remember I mentioned that my grandpa runs a planetarium? Well, he does an annual show about what the stars might have looked like during the first Christmas. No doubt Nathan's depiction is totally accurate: