Boxing Day

I forgot to mention, before going on holiday break, Z came home from school with this drawing. He also came home with one of a Christmas tree, and what I think were intended to be plus-sign stars -- but the way he makes plus signs really looks like crosses; much hilarity ensued when Meh mentioned this on Facebook, with a few folks getting perhaps a bit up in arms about keeping religious holidays out of the schools.

With the influx of new toys and the general clutter of the holiday season wrapping up, Meh has taken the opportunity to do some excellent reorganizing, clearing out a few drawers, optimizing our phone 'charging station', and grabbing a few new plastic boxes to house the boys' growing collection of legos and train pieces. And speaking of boxes, one of the boys favorite Chanukah presents was a fabulous kid-sized cardboard house from mima and papa! Here they are enjoying it with mommy:

I think it's actually intended for coloring or painting, but since we don't want to be planting suggestions that crayoning walls is a Good Thing, they were completely happy with climbing around in it, and eventually transferring a menagerie of stuffed animals into it. At some point O decided he needed to enter through the window, so one wall is a bit more of a suggestion than a contiguous piece of cardboard at this point -- but a huge success with the boys!
We got to celebrate many nights of Chanukah with mima and papa; they made us dinner (twice!) and we had them over for candelighting and present playing several times as well. The night before last, we all enjoyed the boys' new Lego (sorry, Mega Bloks) playground set. It's been fabulous to see O playing make believe:

And Z ran through a few verses of one of his favorite songs: