Monsters Under the Tree

First, you must see the monster June made. In art at school, they were experimenting with the clay medium. June came home with this little devil. (Well, maybe he is more of a fish...lizard...alien...type thingy.) Oh, wait. He is a monster. That is exactly what he is. Three eyes, a poisonous tail, and a huge mouth. (But don't worry, he doesn't have any teeth to bite you. Just watch out for the tail.)

Plus, I think he only eats fish.

It just so happened that June had her friends over that day, so her monster had friends to play with. (Lucky monster. Not all monsters make friends so easily.)

Speaking of friends, I have mentioned before that June is very close with the kids in her class since they have been together for untold years. (Okay, I'll tell you...4 years.) This year they started up night games. It was slow catching on, but now even the boys attend. We have hosted a few times. On this particular evening, I made dozens of cookies for the kids to decorate before I threw them outside in the cold. (I didn't take a lot of pictures, I just want to document that I give in to the crazy because I love my children.)

Maybe not the same evening, but in the same picture folder, I stumbled across June's puffball art. We have a whole bunch of puffballs from various projects and June was making recognizable Christmas objects. Can you identify each item?

The hardest one in probably the orange, yellow, and white mass. It took me a minute, but I figured out it was baby Jesus in the manger.

One night during December we let the kids sleep under the tree. They get really excited. So excited, in fact, that some of them forget they are wearing jammies that aren't all that modest. Don't worry, I gave June some festive holiday pajamas.

I read stories and lulled the kids to sleep. (Hardly.)

They sure are cute when they are all bundled up by the tree.

I hope they have good memories of our Christmas traditions.