It is Tuesday, 12:48 p.m. The reality? I just finished breakfast, which included gingerbread men snitched from my girls' 7.99 Costco all-ingredients-included (YES!!!) gingerbread house. The gingerbread isn't really top quality, but that didn't stop me!

I felt like I got ran over by a truck this morning, so after dropping off the girls at school, I lay down in front of the heater to sleep some more. Three hours later.....here I am, much more alive. Yesterday, I went to the mall TWICE and did some intense planning and shopping for Christmas. The night before that, I had stayed up till 3:00 a.m. watching too many of my favorite shows on TLC--"What Not to Wear." Zach's doing math, and he is working on finishing up an Alexander the Great book. The girls have a half day tomorrow, and then everybody's off school for awhile! I think I can be done with Christmas shopping tomorrow, if I'm lucky. Anybody out there done? If so, good job! My little fantasy, when I planned this week off, was to bake cookies with the kiddos all week and enjoy the Christmas music, take it easy, etc. Yeah, right!

Anybody watch that relatively new kids show about Lazytown, with the hero in the blue spandex or whatever who tries to get kids moving and eating more fruits and veggies? I read a review about how well the show was doing and how it does affect kids positively. That made me wake up a bit. In winter, kids can happily watch TV all afternoon and evening if they are not stopped. And it seems like a parent has to infuse some of their own precious energy to come up with different indoor active ideas. Since I didn't have to work last night, I took the time to look up "indoor active games for kids" on the internet, and found some neat ideas which kept the girls busy for the rest of the evening! (Zach was at a friends house playing with and wishing for his friend's new rabbit). First, we tried playing variations on tag outside. But William was puzzled and stood at the front door and howled at us. He didn't want to put his shoes on and join us. I also felt kinda silly running around the house outside in public, although the exercise was great while it lasted, and it was exhilarating. So we came in and played "zombie tag." The person who is "it" has to be the zombie--they close their eyes, put their hands out in front of them and groan while they look for their prey. And whenever they groan, the others have to groan back (kinda like Marco Polo). Then it was a treasure hunt. The website (Wizardkids.org or something--no it is not a witchcraft site) had printable clues in pirate language that rhymed. So I hid these clues inside and outside, and they led to a treasure at the end, which happened to be gold candy coins the first time--hid in the cookie jar! My Mom had sent over some stocking stuffer candy, and I ended up using some of that; now I'll just have to replace it. They had SO much fun! After a few times, they took over writing clues to do their own games. But they did need help hiding them, cuz, for example, Zoe would put the clue saying, "Look on the piano" on the piano.