Playing Christmas

I have such cute and creative children. While it is unbelievably hard to have them so little and so close together, there are also definite perks of this combination. For instance, I think the greatest perk is that they are all such good friends and playmates. Add that to the fact that we get next to no reception on our television, and I limit the number of movies they can watch in a week--and presto, these kids come up with all sorts of fun things to do together. As Christmas has approached, these "fun things" have inevitably included lots of time "playing Christmas". What does that mean, you might ask? Well these pictures should explain.



In this picture, the kids have set up there very own little Christmas tree in the living room of their very own play house. If you look closely, you can truly come to appreciate the amount of detail they put into this project. For example, not only did they take one of the decorative trees out of Spencer's room and re-decorate it with mini Christmas balls and a pseudo-star, but they also found a little container to act as a tree stand, used a blanket to be the tree skirt, and yep--that's a little train track they set up around the base of the tree with one of Spencer's toy trains running around in a circle on it. Look even more closely and you can see the fire place they constructed on the right hand side of the picture. They have the wood in the bottom and two of Maddi's knee high stockings hanging up on the "mantle". I was so impressed by this display that I had to take a picture and share it.



This second picture captures my kiddos acting out the Christmas story. Maddi is usually the initiator of these sorts of things, and no doubt she helped dress the other two and assigned their roles. She took great care, as well, arranging the baby Jesus in their little manager. He was wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laid upon some yellow hay they made out of some tissue paper. (I wasn't totally thrilled when I realized they had stolen the tissue paper out of a baby gift I had sitting on the kitchen counter, but hey, how could I stay upset for long?) After a little while, I heard Spencer tell Maddi that the animals were going to need a new place for their hay since baby Jesus had taken up the manger. He proceeded to get a play food bowl out and filled it up with pine needles from our Christmas tree upstairs. Leave it to Spencer to make sure even the animals in the nativity are well cared for.