Family Friday: Santa Cookie Elf Candy Snowman Game
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Need a fun Secret Santa gift or stocking stuffer?
From the makers of Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza, this fun, fast-paced holiday-themed card game will get you into a festive spirit. Basically, players race to slap the pile when a spoken word matches the flipped card — there’s also action cards for unexpected twists. Its simple rules make it easy to learn so both kids and adults can play together.
Santa Cookie Elf Candy Snowman is under $10 on Amazon.
Sales of note for 11/16/25
(See all of the latest workwear sales at Corporette!)
- Ann Taylor – 50% off your purchase with code
- Banana Republic Factory – 50% off everything + extra 20% off
- Eloquii – 50% off 250+ styles + extra 60% off all sale
- J.Crew – Extra 60% off sale styles + up to 40% off cold-weather styles
- J.Crew Factory – 40-70% off everything + extra 70% off clearance
- M.M.LaFleur – Extra 20% off sale with code + try code CORPORETTE15 for 15% off
- Nordstrom – Designer clearance up to 40% off
- Talbots – 30% off your purchase + 50% off T by Talbots + extra 50% off all markdowns
I need help navigating a situation (or just….not…navigating it). My 10 year old and her good friend, B, ride the bus home together. They’ve been good friends for 4+ years.
Yesterday, B’s mom texts me saying B came home upset, did I hear anything, etc. No, I didn’t, everything was totally normal at our house. B’s mom tells me that my kid apparently was putting stickers all over B on the bus and calling her “sticker face” and she was upset.
I got this text and just laughed [to myself, obviously]. Like, these are 10 year old girls that have been friends for years. B should have told my daughter to knock it off and moved to sit somewhere else on the bus. How is this drama? Also, how is it drama enough that her mom got involved? There was no damage to her stuff or anything (I thought maybe she had a bunch of stickers in her hair or whatever), nobody got hurt.
After confirming B wasn’t hurt and didn’t have some sticky substance on her or her things, I said something like, “I talked to my kid and told her to make sure she and B are OK tomorrow and to be sure to apologize if she did anything out of line.” The response was “Ok, well, we’ll see how it goes….”
If these kids were not friends, or they were younger, I totally see needing to intervene. If you were the other mom in this scenario, how would you like me, the mom of the kid that did something wrong, to react? I don’t want to seem like I don’t care because clearly the other mom does. I can’t think of what she possibly wanted me to say in response to this.
I also found out through the text exchange that B comes home and must talk about every little situation where she and my kid bicker. The mom said something like “well this seemed beyond their usual arguments over who sits where on the bus so I wanted to say something.” This is just…way more involvement in a 10 (and a half!) year old’s social life than I personally am but I do recognize that others parent differently and want to make sure I’m giving this the attention it deserves.
A concrete example of the maturity leap between age 3.5 and 4.5: last year, my then-3.5 year succumbed to temptation and opened his entire chocolate Advent calendar by Dec 2 and his construction truck one by Dec 4. (I had a 5-month-old, he was sneaky and took advantage of my attention lapses.)
This year, at 4.5, he has opened just one door per day! Last night he did ask if he could just eat all the chocolate now, but he accepted our reasoning and we’re back on track.
And there are similar huge leaps every year. Take heart!
New house offer declined … but they are going to final offers on Wednesday (Scottish system is wild…). They invited us to come back for the open house this weekend – and to bring our son so he can get a sense of where he might be living. Sending him on a charm offensive :)
There’s another note of interest in but they’ve not made an offer – so hoping it’s just us? Our buyers agent is so confused about their “week before Christmas” sale plan. He seems sceptical anyone else will come see it/offer.
Parents of gifted students: what interventions (camps, classes, clubs, school advocacy, etc.) do you think have had the best impact on your child?
My second-grader has a 50-minute Gifted & Talented pull-out session EVERY OTHER week, and no other supports from the public school district. Nothing in classroom at all, though the did put the 4 gifted kids from her grade in the same classroom. We try to challenge her at home and of course do a wide range of activities with her and her sibling, but I feel like she should be getting more from the school. I’m debating advocating for more, but I want to figure out what to ask for before I request more services.
To add on another fun layer, the school district is dealing with a major budget shortfall and laying off staff right and left. G&T is the absolute last thing that anyone else cares about at the moment so I have to be strategic in the ask from the school/district. I’m trying to figure out if we should try out private school, focus mostly on the out-of-school things we can control, or advocate with the school/district.