Santa Almost Got Coal Instead Of Cookies

I'm going to try and play this off as an adventure in parenting, but it is a little heartbreaking.

The final Cubscout Pack Meeting (the monthly meeting with all the scouts from 1st -5th grade) of the year was Friday. The plan was to go caroling around the neighborhood and then come back to the school for hot chocolate. Come one! Come all! Bring your families!

After the delusion of caroling (one woman, living in a house gloriously festooned with Christmas lights, I-kid-you-not opened her door, slammed it in our singing faces, and walked as far from her door as she could, probably to call the cops...some of whom were with us.) we came back to the cafeteria for cocoa when who should come in but...Santa Claus.

Several of the younger children (you know, the ones who still really believe) ran over to him with eager faces because he's more famous to them than the Wiggles, Thomas the Train and Barack Obama and he told them:

"Sorry guys! I only have presents for Cub Scouts!"

And at least three of these little guys burst into tears. My Vish dejectedly walked back to me and told me he hated Santa.

He hated Santa.

I almost burst into tears with him.

In a flash of parental wisdom I pulled him aside, away from all the shrieks of the older kids who were getting their gifts, and told him that this was not the real Santa. He was an Imposter pretend Santa and the real Santa was far too busy to drink watery hot chocolate and give out pinewood derby kits.

After the meeting, the Packmaster personally apologized to me and, for me, the whole thing has blown over.

But I wonder if it was one of those moments that Vish will remember forever.

Pinecone Derby

Among the other Christmas niceties like buying gift cards, discovering people don't like Starbucks (I know, right?!), buying other gift cards and watching the first season of Tru Blood while wrapping presents and knitting, I found this pinecone ornament tutorial.

And I realized that despite my Christmas tree having 427 natural pinecones (actually 419 because the very top of our tree broke off while we were trying to tie it to the car--the children learned some new words that day) I must make these.

Attempt number one, which was the one I made while baking cookies, shopping online, cleaning the house and watching Sookie Stackhouse devasating her natural supply of vitamin B12 (okay I was only doing one of those), was by far the worst looking one of the lot.

For starters, the egg is upside down:



I also didn't like so much color contrast and the "organic" feel of the scale layout. So I let the nerdy, mathy side of me take over and produced more:







I fear I can't stop. Except I must stop so I can knit (more) slippers.

The Stockings are Hung

I decided everyone is getting socks for Christmas.

Next year.

This year my sock selection committee narrowed it down to three contendors:

Vish's teacher. Who is a knitter but is scared of socks.



Someone who occasionally reads this blog, So shall remain nameless (it's not you)(maybe next year).


(Yes they're that vivid)

Enlarged to show texture:



Someone who never wears socks, but has entirely too much sock yarn in her stash. She also likes green, has requested hair elastics from Santa, and hasn't blogged for over a month. She's also happy she decided to shave her legs this morning before an impromptu photo shoot.





What?

Basic sock pattern. Plymouth Yarn Sockotta; wool, cotton, nylon.
Ripple Weave Socks by Charlene Schurch. Brown Sheep Nature Spun Fingering; wool.
Lace Socks by Star Athena. Knit Picks Rissata, Cotton, wool, elastic.

I wish I Could Have A Winter Break

Sorry about the hiatus. Between class parties, birthdays, holidays, vacations, and that mom gig I took on over six years ago, I have had very little time for the computer. In fact I have so little time, I'm forcing my tushie back into the gym so I can utilize that energy boost exercise gives you.

Except I'm in the you-have-to-take-a-nap-because-I-have-to-take-a-nap-argument-with-my-3yo phase of exercise.

I haven't even knit anything noteworthy.

I'll be back when I'm back.

The Menehune Were Here

I'm back!


Muddy Mountain Mama's muddy arse doing muddy yoga in muddy hiking boots on the beach (which was not muddy)

True to form we only took about eleven pictures, and we aren't even in half of them.

These pics are from the cave at the Hanakapi'ai Beach off the Kalalau Trail along the Na Pali Coast.

We knew we had been reading too many Hawaiian words when we looked at a bar menu and wondered what AH-lay was. Spelled A - L - E.

We figured it out.

Over the next week or so, I'll be sharing stories about bad snorkeling, worse weather, Nazi Yoga, and the dead body we almost found (thank goodness we postponed our drive by three minutes for coffee--a local made the discovery instead of us). But overall...

...It was a great trip. It's just that the best parts of it are rather boring to write about.

The Iron Man Trimester

The last time I was in Hawaii, I was on the Big Island. It was a business trip for the Businessman and I was 7 1/2 months pregnant with Vicious.

On the plane, I noticed that there were a lot of bald men with shaved legs but I was more concerned about my getting up to pee every 30 minutes and wishing I could have a Mai Tai. When we got off the plane, there were about 50 bicycles in baggage claim. Still nothing clicked. When we boarded our shuttle the driver asked me the following question:

Are you here for the Iron Man?

Great. I'm surrounded by lean, stringy triathletes and I look like I've swallowed a whale and have ankles the size of Pacific Northwest tree stumps.

The day before the race, I went to a shave ice stand and got shave ice over ice cream. A lady glanced at my order, did a double take and asked me if I knew the carb-to-protein ratio of my snack. Because she wanted one but didn't want it to affect her race.

Needless to say, I didn't care about the carb-to-protein ratio. I was making up for my Mai Tai deficit.

And eating for two.

Adventures in Basketweaving

Once upon a time we took my nine month old son and his Oma, Mountain Mama's Mama, to Kauai.

And one night we decided to have an adventure.

I had fallen in love with the baskets woven out of palm fronds and I had just bought a book with instructions for said endeavor. My fingers were itching to give it a go. The only major problem we could see, was that we were staying in a well manicured area and all palm trees were on hotel property and in plain sight. Ergo, we needed to go into stealth mode to obtain a palm frond.

During our stealth maneuver we discovered a few things:

• Most promising palm trees in highly manicured areas are well lit even at night
• Palm fronds are remarkably tough. We had to go back to our condo for a knife.
• Palm fronds can be over 15 feet long, which is a little obvious when you're walking down the highway.
• Hiding behind palm fronds is not great camouflage if your mother-in-law bursts into laughter every time she looks at you.

But perhaps the saddest thing we learned:

• Palm fronds from the south side of the island are not ideal for basket weaving.

We ended up going to the north side and buying a basket. The weaver pretended to be impressed by my lopsided attempt...

...But he was truly impressed that the Businessman was able to harvest a palm frond from the Sheridan Poipu.

Hawaii Honeymoon

The first time I went to Hawaii I was on my horneymoon. It was as wonderful as any first vacation as a married couple should be. We were on Kauai where we rode in boats, helicopters, and a convertible. We chased geckos around our hotel (did you know they squeak like mice?). We ate in cheap local dives and snorkeled hours at a time. We did everything as a couple.

There was this one hike though...

Kauai is home to Waiamea Canyon, a grand canyon of sorts. The Businessman wanted to hike what he told me would be a quick little trek into the highest swamp in the world and then we could go back to the ocean. After driving all the way up the mountain to the trail head, we parked the car and started out.

We were halfway through our two year stint in Minneapolis so I wasn't yet conditioned to like rain. It was drizzling. I was dressed in a cotton jersey dress, which soaked through quickly, and flip flops. It was slimy and muddy, I kept slipping and I was getting more and more frustrated. TBM decided to run up ahead to see "if the clouds cleared up" and I waited by a tree for a few minutes. I got bored and started slogging my way up the trail and eventually found my new husband's shirt, jacket and our camera heaped in a pile by the tree. Fed up with the whole thing I grabbed his clothing and the camera and trudged my way back to the car. Whereupon I remembered he still had the keys.

I sat on the hood of the car for over an hour.

When he finally turned up, he was covered in mud from head to toe except for his teeth, which were quite prominent since he was wearing such a big smile.

"Oh, I'm glad you turned back. You wouldn't have made it. Did you grab my shirt?"

He kept telling me how amazing it was. So beautiful and he especially enjoyed sitting at the top of the mountain and watching the clouds form. It took the long drive down the canyon to calm me down enough to explain why he was such a jerk, abandoning me on our honeymoon. But I got over it.

When we flew back into Colorado, which was where the wedding was, we had a small luncheon at my parent's home where we unwrapped and cataloged wedding gifts. His mom, during the ritual debriefing I have since learned follows all travel, asked us what our favorite part of the trip was.*

I, being a newlywed, blushed. He said:

"Waiamea Canyon!"

I almost threw a blender at him.

His favorite part of Hawaii, his favorite part of our honeymoon, his favorite part of the trip that would start our marriage...

...The two hours he wasn't with me.

I'm back in Kauai now. I have no intention of climbing Waiamea Canyon.

*A word of advice: Never ask your children (or your parents) what their favorite part of the honeymoon, romantic weekend, or liaison was.