My Letter to Santa - Seventh Day

I'm sending this USPS later today, what do you think? I don't want to be too demanding, but I want to make sure Mr. Kringle knows I mean business.

*****

Dear Santa,

How have you been? As you know, I have been a very good girl this year (despite YOUR COMPLETE FAILURE at fulfilling my ONE and ONLY Christmas to be famous wish from last year.) But as you know I am a very forgiving individual and so instead of my request to be famous turning into the proverbial 'wish for a pony'... I've changed my tune.

This year - make me skinny.

There are many reasons to fulfill my grown up Christmas wish, but here are three key areas that make this a selfless request:

THE ENVIRONMENT
Skinny people are smaller and therefore use less resources. It won't take as much material to clothe me. Plus, I won't eat as much (because from what I can see, skinny people usually don't eat much).

MY SON
No one wants a chubby mommy. I mean sure, I'm great to snuggle up with. But I'm pretty sure Holden wants a mom who is cute and cool and youthful. And no one can be cool that is destined to live life in sweat suits because nothing else fits.

MY MARRIAGE
Really I'm doing it for my husband and in the name of building a better family. If I'm skinny, I'm more likely to 'be in the mood.' And for some reason, that makes my husband really happy.

So are you going to deliver, or what?!?!

Please hurry and make it so, or all these chocolate chip cookies I made for you will be gone before you get here.

Yours truly,
Sabrena

*****

PS. When I started this letter I was typing too fast for my fingers and accidentally wrote 'Dear Satan." Am I supposed to read anything into that?!?!

The Drummer from Def Lepard on my Solstice Tree -OR- 5th Day of Christmas

Since Little Bits loves to get into things, I figured this would be a good year to 'make' some of the decorations for our tree. I tried Gingerbread Men this year (that way, if Holden decides to eat the ornaments it's organic sugar and molasses.)

I think they turned out pretty good....
But there was a casualty:
A bigger spatula could've saved this one...

Rest in peace little man. You died as a martyr -- a very delicious martyr.

This is not a craft blog, but...

I decided that in the spirit of trying to have a more GREEN Christmas, I would re-purpose old magazines (most of which Holden has already ravage through) to wrap gifts.

Holden digs Elmo... or basically anything red. He doesn't watch Sesame Street, but he picked out that Elmo toilet seat AND the Earth's Best crackers with the red Muppet on the box.

So I figured he'd dig this:


Here's a sample of the library books we wrapped. We started a new Mangum Christmas tradition this year: 25 Christmas books in 25 days -- unwrap one each night (or two in one day if we miss a night for some reason or another.) I guess it's our advent calendar of sorts; but the 'gift a night' bit has been kind of like Hanukkah for Mormons. And since we don't have 25 Christmas books, we just borrowed a few from the grandparents and checked some out from the (government run, socialist neighborhood) Library. It's been fun. I even picked up 'The White Nights of Ramadan" to make sure we are appreciating other cultures. Now I just need to add one about Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice, and of course: Hanukkah.

Tis the Season.

Third Day of Christmas - madness ensues

So our family has this tradition that all the babies get put in a wig from my late Grandma Beth. (Cicely, I want the link the Faye's picture...)

We tried it on Holden.. he was not amused.


Along with Grandma Beth's wig, in Saint George I also discovered my BLUE HAIR from my past life when I wanted to live out an alternate reality in SG as an Indie Riot Grrrrrl. Ahhh, Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney and the female revolution... too bad I was working for the man at the time.

But as far as the blue hair goes, I think it looks great on Holden too:



Yeah, he actually didn't enjoy that one either.
So I just put on my punk rocker hair for Danny and let him fantasize he wasn't married to a domesticated Mormon mom that cans applesauce, makes organic baby food and bakes apple pie....

Oi to the World!

12 Days of Christmas - Day Deux

For your Holiday enjoyment (drum roll please.....) More Christmas Sweater Pics!!!!

Would you ever guess that this:

Came after this?

Or this?
Or this?!?!

Poor Danny... Holden decided he wanted to be down crawling (or somewhere else) every other time we tried to get pictures of the two of them together.

Favorite Holden moment of today:
Watching him rock-out to Sissel and the MoTab's Christmas Album.

Favorite Danny moment of the day:
Coming home from a church Messiah performance/fireside finding my husband had already parented Holden down for the night AND was making chocolate chip cookies with our nephew.


Life is Beautiful. . .

And to all a good night.