Yesterday was a super-great day. “The Best Christmas Ever” Sophie kept calling it. The kids excitedly tore into their presents and posed for the obligatory PJ pictures:
Then after a couple hours of play, we headed off to both of my Grandma’s houses. I am so blessed to still have two Grandmas! Here we are all dressed up:
At my 2nd Grandma’s house, we got to meet up with the Emily & Anna and their families. Emily and I had a giggle that we were dressed just a little too similarly, in Lands’ End of course! Starfish leggings FOR THE WIN!
We had an awesome but exhausting day! I am so thankful for my wonderful extended family. Now, we do round 2 today, as we didn’t get to have Christmas with my immediate family because of the Apukealypse so that’s what we are up for today -Christmas at my mom & dad’s with my brothers & their families.
Hope you all had a sweet, fun day celebrating the birth of Jesus and your families. Leave a comment and let me know how it was!
We are pretty solidly in the middle of winter, and here in Ohio at least, that means one thing – it is really frappin’ cold.
When I head out to work in the morning, I want to be dressed professionally, of course, but I also want to make sure I’ll stay warm throughout the day. Dropping off/picking up two kids in two locations, going back and forth between buildings… I manage to get out in the cold a lot, so keeping myself toasty is a tall order.
We know to turn to Lands’ End for outerwear that is incredibly warm (I love the LE parka I bought a couple of years ago), but it’s also a great place to look for… innerwear? Underwear? Uh, regular clothes that will keep you warm as well.
It’s soft – a combination of cotton and cashmere – and has a very nice fit. The rib-knit trim adds nice detail. It comes in a lot of colors – I personally have the Fern Green Heather pictured above as well as the Deep Amethyst Heather (hey if I find something I love, I like to have multiples!).
It’s nice to have something underneath, though, to add a layer of warmth. The Feminine Silk Camisole is perfect.
It’s light and breathable and holds in body heat while wicking away moisture.
Made from the same material as the cami, these are great to wear under dress pants, like these, for example.
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Lands’ End’s new chinos are, well, perfect. I love them so much. I have a black pair and a steel gray pair (back to that finding something that works thing…). They are extremely comfortable and look great. They’ll even hem them for free.
But back to the outfit at hand!
As I said, I’m in and out a number of times throughout the day, sloughing through snow to get where I’m going. I need snow boots, but I’m not ready to wear my puffy 1980s puffy plastic ones to work. Fortunately, Lands’ End saves the day with Weatherfield Boots.
These boots are perfect – they’re easy to put on (I love the toggles!), water-resistant and warm. They’ve got a 200-gram brushed tricot insulated lining – I don’t know what that is, exactly, but it means they are WARM. The sturdy rubber midsole make them functional as well. Check out the traction on those babies! They’re ideal for women on the go.
Lands’ End will keep you warm – from your cami to your parka!
The other night Sophie and I were reading her book-in-a-bag, the book that comes home from school every night. It’s a different book each time, and we read it together, talk about it, and then write down what we talked about and she takes it back to school. Well, this particular book was about the Underground Railroad, so when Sophie saw that the person in the book was black, this sparked a thought, because she interrupted me and said, “Mommy! The red candle in Kwanzaa is for struggle, and the black candle is for black” {um, not sure she got that right}, “and the green candle stands for HOPES and DREAMS!” (She got really excited about the hopes and dreams!)
And so I learned that Sophie has been paying attention at school to her multicultural holiday education. The next day she came home and excitedly said, “Mommy! Guess what?? Kamri celebrates Kwanzaa because she has BLACK SKIN!” Kamri is one of Sophie’s good buddies, and she does, in fact have black skin. So does one of Sophie’s teachers and another classmate (her class is very racially mixed, with Hispanic and Caucasians tied for majority). So I said, “Do Mr. G and Honest’I celebrate Kwanzaa too?” and she said, “Nope, just Kamri.” It kind of cracked me up, because it didn’t seem to bother her that those two didn’t celebrate Kwanzaa even though they also had “black skin”. Then today, she told me rather longingly that she wished we could also celebrate Kwanzaa. I think she’s just aiming for more presents, though.
Next, her class moved on to Christmas, however the extent of their education on Christmas was Santa coming to visit class and the making of a stocking. This was kind of confusing to Sophie because we’ve never tried to pull the whole Santa thing over on our kids, and we just told them that he is pretend. Only now, she thinks he is real because CLEARLY he came to her school. Hmm. Good thing we have our nativity scene, Advent calendar, and you know, Bible at home. Not too mention the many books we read to try to explain about Jesus’ birth.
Next, her class moved on to Hannukah. “Mom, Hannukah is another holiday. And it has candles TOO! But it’s not right now, but it’s in a few days. And we played a Hanukkah game with pretzels! And we made a dreidel!” That’s all the info I got on Hannukah, though when she came home Wednesday with her dreidel, Kwanzaa mat, and stocking that she had made over the past few weeks, she was rather jazzed about them all.
Learning about others is awesome!
Truth be told, as funny as Sophie’s interpretations of what she is learning about at school are, I am really glad she IS learning about other families’ traditions, and that she thinks it’s all awesome. Obviously, we celebrate Christmas and we believe in Christ, but it’s excellent for her to start to learn and understand about the different people in our very urban part of town.
And it sure is cute to hear her explain all about what she’s learning.
So whatever holiday you celebrate, I hope you have a very happy one! And should you be short one Kwanzaa mat at your holiday table…well, Sophie might let you borrow hers! If there’s a present in it for her.
