3 weeks of school and 35 weeks of baby

I always think things don't work out as I've planned them, but when I look back, they seem to work out despite what I might have planned.  When Allen and I decided to have a fourth child, we wanted to not have another holiday baby, but it might just work out well that Baxter comes over the winter break since Allen doesn't have any more sick days and the kids will have lots of new toys to play with while I feed the baby.  I am holding out hope that we make it all the way to January 1 before we head to the hospital, but there is no way to plan or control that!!
As far as school goes, we have 3 weeks (15 days!) until Winter Break (I'm not calling it Christmas break because so much more than that one day will be happening during that time!).  Ford is going to work on triangles, reviewing his writing, doing activities in a Rudolph book, and making Christmas crafts.  Rachel is going to keep reading, working on subtraction, practicing her handwriting, learning about magnetism and Native Americans, and reading and writing Christmas stories.  Ruby has a Minnie Mouse Christmas activity book that she loves.  She colored all of the pictures in it today already with the peach crayon.  Maybe tomorrow we can try a different color on top of that ?  I'm trying to make a simple craft every day except Wednesdays (we have a craft at story time) to practice cutting and pasting.  Today we made stockings out of red and white construction paper and put them up on the wall.  Ford colored orange stripes on his, Rachel put a flower and polka-dots, and Ruby colored a Christmas tree (at least one person is in the Christmas spirit!).
We had a pretty good morning getting back into the swing of things, but our afternoon was kind of lousy.  No one wanted to listen or make good choices.  I think they were a little wound up about going to the town Christmas parade tonight (candy!!) and because our elf on the shelf, Banjo, is here!  Yesterday all they wanted to do was show Banjo that they are well behaved and how much they've grown since last year.  Today I told them that Banjo just might go on back to the North Pole and stay because he wasn't seeing anything good.  I need to make a better effort to follow up with consequences when they don't listen or we're all going to go insane!!  I think a week of junk food, TV, and beach time totally threw us off kilter, but it's time to buckle down and get back to what our normal life looks like so that we'll all be happier.  Then Baxter will be here and we'll figure out a new normal!