The Pom-Pom Snowball Fight (and other Children's Museum Adventures)

Do everyone's Christmas traditions look weird when written down, or just ours? For example:

• over-the-top synchronized-to-music Christmas lights display
• Christmas train ride around the park
• cherry bread, cranberry salad, and deviled eggs
• Santa walking on the roof and scaring the kids half to death
• homemade mix tape of bad Christmas music
• the whitetail deer Christmas sweater

Of course, we do have some normal traditions. We cut down our tree at the tree farm every year (the day after an ice storm this year, and the van got stuck on a patch of ice on the dirt road, and I had to drag all the floormats out to give the wheels some traction). We make gingerbread houses from scratch. We eat too much fudge. And we go see Santa, this year at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis, which also may have my newest, most favorite, weirdest Christmas tradition of all traditions:

Yeah, it's a pom-pom snowball fight.

Syd took one look at this snowball fight made of chaos, and popped her reindeer ears of "Do not throw pom-pom snowballs at my head":

Will, however, was holy freakin' cow all OVER this game! She plays to win, too, as I can well attest after having several pom-pom snowballs thrown at my face in the kids vs. parents round:

Seriously, I don't think she looked as happy on Christmas day itself as she did while contentedly throwing pom-pom snowballs at children's heads. 

Syd much preferred the scavenger hunt, although the answer that she gave at the ice fishing station totally bummed her elf handler out:

No matter. They spread the love for animal rights, and they won their elf ears, anyway:

 I don't know if you can tell, but I explicitly instructed Will in the wearing of her elf ears to make her resemble as much as possible a Tolkien-esque woodland elf. In a few years, this kid and I are doing cos-play at Gen Con!

 And later, they were utterly baffled as to why they were earning a big, fat F in catenary arch building:

Don't worry, they eventually figured it out, and only one of them threw a fit.

Later, in the gift shop, I took each girl aside separately and told her that if she picked out a Christmas gift for her sister and sneaked it to me, I would buy it for her to give. I then had the pleasure of watching each kid become very invested in figuring out what the other would like best for Christmas, asking pointed questions like, "Ooh, what lovely stuffed animals! Which do you like best!" and "I just love Hot Wheels, don't you? Which Hot Wheel is YOUR favorite?" Will immediately figured out that I had just as secretly told Syd the same thing that I'd secretly told her, and cracked up at Syd's machinations, but my Syd, who NEVER suspects an agenda, just as happily and innocently answered all of Will's questions about which she liked better, the gold panning kit or the color-by-number book, as if she wasn't asking Will the same types of questions for her own secret purpose.

In the end, Syd chose a hydra-like three-headed dragon for Will (who collects dragons, did you know?), and Will chose for Syd the remote-controlled snake that gives me nightmares.

Just this morning, as I put my feet up at the breakfast table and again insisted to Syd that I did NOT want her to drive the remote-controlled snake into my feet ANYMORE because it CREEPED. ME. OUT!!!, Syd held up the snake and said, "Come on, Momma! It doesn't even look real at all! Real snakes don't have glowing red eyes!"

Yeah, thanks, Will.