Fun Christmas stuff

 Long ago I grew tired of the kids digging through the gifts under the tree bragging about who got the biggest, or the most, or crying if they didn't fall into one of those categories.  So I started putting their names in code.  They would get hints as Christmas day grew closer and instead of dwelling on the size and number of the gifts they were working to crack to the code. 
I wrapped and coded last night, sure they wouldn't break it and feeling somewhat proud of myself for my ingenious code making skills.
They cracked it with one hint and by 9:30 this morning.
This is Harrison's gift by the way.
I posted a poem last year about how our gift giving works now:

Something you want
Something you need
Something unique and
Something to read

The 'need' gift is PJs, they open that on Christmas Eve, the 'unique' gift is an ornament to add to their collection so when they move away they'll have ornaments for their tree. Of course the 'read' gift is a book.  We spend the most time and money on this one.  And this year the 'want' gift is being taken care of by the sibling gift draw.  It really doesn't seem like much, but I still wrapped 18 presents last night and it took over an hour and a half! 
I save all the wonderful Christmas cards we get and use them as gift tags, a fun way to recycle.

I wanted to do something special for my yoga class last night, so I made these ginger bread men in lotus position. 

I told the class that there was some Christmas magic in them because Enoch said the word 'cookie' for the first time!  Then he figured out that we were so enamoured by his great new words skills we would give him some cookie every time he said it.  While I was icing these he was standing behind me on the chair saying, "cookie! cookie! cookie!" and bumping my arm, so the icing was a little shaky.  But they were still yummy!