Christmas Highlights

We had so much fun on our three week vacation north to Oregon and Washington.  We headed out December 23, quite early in the morning.  Before getting to Oregon we stopped in Sacramento for a quick tour of the capital and to let the kids burn some energy.

 They thought the huge Christmas tree was pretty neat! 

We made it to Redding that first night and in the morning we stopped at the Sundial Bridge.  We weren't in too big of a hurry that day so we walked the bridge and also walked the surrounding areas.

We made it to John's folk's house Christmas Eve - just in time for a yummy dinner!  Although we were pretty tired from traveling, we attended their Christmas Eve candle service. 

The pictures I have of Christmas morning are a bit sketchy...I'm sure my sister in law has more of them...but these are the ones we took.  Thankfully the kids slept in that morning (I had to wake Abby!) so we were able to catch up on some needed sleep. 

Here's William checking out his gifts from Santa.  As I learned last year, Santa doesn't wrap gifts.  I guess because he simply doesn't have time to. 

Abby checking out one of her fun gifts from Santa.

 The colorful bags are their stockings.  They were loaded with all sorts of fun things.

My niece Amanda was able to get some time off of her schooling to spend the holidays with us!  The kids really enjoyed spending time with her - she helped put their race track together, the hot wheels track together - pretty much just showered attention on them!  Aunt Gina and Uncle Andy flew in from TN.  It was nice to have almost the whole family together!

In the evening we all headed over to Aunt Joanie's house where she made a delicious prime rib dinner!
 

After yet again stuffing ourselves, the kids played Hungry Hippo with Aunt Gina - one of Aunt Gina's Christmas gifts. 

 I had to throw this picture in simply because I thought it was SO cute! 

 Here's Abby getting a Christmas pedicure from Aunt Gina.

Later on in the week a group put together a gingerbread train.  It was literally a group effort to get the thing together!

 We hit the Air Museum up one day. 

It was a busy day so Grandpa and William found a first class seat and took a nap!

Another day John and I took the kids to a Children's Museum.  I thought this milking cow was pretty neat!  It sprayed water everywhere!

I have more pictures of our trip, as these are only highlights of the first week.  The second week we were gone we went to Washington - spent several days in Seattle, went up the Space Needle, toured Microsoft and Safeco Park, drove through the Hoh Rain Forest, spent the night in Astoria and Crescent City.  I'll see about posting some pictures of that later. 

A little bun

I know I've been absent from blogging for awhile, but for good reason.  We are expecting baby #3 in July!  We've been keeping this pregnancy a secret simply because we've lost a few pregnancies and it's just easier to keep things quiet until the second trimester, when the risk of miscarriage drops significantly.  So...I'm 14 weeks along and so far everything looks great!  I took the kids to my doctor appointment this past Tuesday and we all heard the heartbeat!  The kids were also unaware of anything, so when the doctor said to them, "That's mommy's baby's heartbeat" they were in a bit of shock.  Wide-eyed, William says, "I think....(long pause)....I think we aught to tell Daddy about this."  Ahahahaha!  That might have been the cutest thing I've heard in a long time! 

We would appreciate your prayers for this little babe, and for me, as I'm still a bit of a wreck.  Worrying about this baby seems to be a full-time job for me. 

And I promise to do better in the post updates!  I have some Christmas pictures and stories to share, but they will have to wait.  I am simply in survival mode over here since the morning sickness and fatigue just won't go away. 

Fa la la la la!

Wow...I can't believe that Christmas is right around the corner!

The kids got an early Christmas package from Aunt Nell last week.  I told my sister not to get them anything, but...she's an Auntie, what can I expect?!  I love the look on William's face.  Once he opened the package and saw what was inside...he couldn't believe it.  He had specifically asked for a flashlight for Christmas.  And lo and behold...a flashlight comes in the mail!

Along with stickers, their absolute favorite!  (Yes, I know Abby's bow doesn't match her outfit, but it doesn't matter.  It's her current fav, the "Christmas tree bow", from her friend Zoe.  Thanks Kim!) 

We decorated Christmas cookies.  This was Abby's first time indulging in the colored frosting and sprinkles and I think she enjoyed every second of it! 

I did need to tell William that he didn't have to be so stingy with his application of frosting.  No frosting means very little stickage of sprinkles. 

 Making sure everything tastes alright. I didn't need to tell her to go heavier on the frosting!

 We also made a "gingerbread" house.  Aunt Joanie got me this cake pan a couple of years ago (or last year?) that has made gingerbread house-making much easier!  I made a spice cake (which unfortunately cracked like crazy!) and the kids decorated it. 

I asked John to run to the store for me to pick up gumdrops for the house, and he came back with literally every kind of candy Stater Bros. had to offer.  The kids were seriously impressed with all the candy.  I did have to put my foot down about not putting the Jr. Mints on the house.  Seriously?  Waste good Jr. Mints on a fake gingerbread house?  I think not. 

This pictures just cracks me up!  We put our tree up the day after Thanksgiving, but I only recently picked up candy canes.  I gave the box to the kids and told them to place the canes all over.  I love how they lined the entire bottom portion of the tree with them!

Last year I was given a cardboard Christmas tree (this year we got a huge house) and now finally this year we are getting around to decorating it. 

I know these next pictures aren't really "fa la la-ish" but I have to show them.  For Thanksgiving we headed south to spend the day with family.  John's sister Deb made the most incredible dinner (must get her stuffing recipe!) and hand-painted turkey cookies for the kids.  The next day when they asked to eat them I almost told them no! 

Our feast!  It was so nice to take the day off from cooking and simply enjoy the day.  Much thanks to the many hands that prepared our wonderful dinner!

 

I think if they had decided to simply serve only black olives Abby would have been completely fine with that!  She's my olive eater for sure!  William will eat them, too, but Abby is fierce competition!

So Proud

I have so much to blog about...hopefully I'll get around to it soon.  This is just a busy time right now for me.  However, today was a special day for my boy that I must post some pictures! 

Every Thursday he goes to a gymnastics class.  It cuts right into nap that I almost didn't sign him up, but Abby seems to have no problem falling asleep a bit later than normal, so we have continued to go.  I actually love going.  It's a homeschool gym class, and the gym has professional equipment, which I love.  He's not really allowed to use much of it yet, since he's only in the preschool class, but the older kids are doing some amazing things on the uneven bars and balancing beams. 

Since the picture is so blurry I should mention that my boy is the one in the orange.  There are only five, sometimes six kids in his class.  With such a small class they get a lot of 1:1 time with the coach. 

Today was special since it is the last class before Christmas break.  All the kids received a gold medal for participating, along with a few precious seconds on the podium so they could take a bow.

I didn't tell William ahead of time that he was going to be getting a medal, so this came as a complete surprise to him.  I wasn't sure if he would even get up there, with so many kids and parents watching, but yup!  When his name was called he immediately sprang to his feet and got right up on that podium!

And he had no problem giving his salute, either!  I'll probably mention that next time he should leave his socks with me.

The kid was so excited to get this small token!  Before going in his room for quiet time he put it around the stair railing "to keep it safe until Daddy comes home."

We couldn't leave until Abby was able to take her turn on the blue square thing.  She loves watching William "do gym", but can't wait until she turns three, when she'll be able to be in the preschool class! 

I am an Artist

I can't really say that we did a whole lot with this book, although I did have great plans for it.  I plan on getting to the activities soon, but since these pictures will soon be outdated, I thought I'd post what we've done so far.  The book is about seeing art in nature. 

The star in an apple.  This was from a page in the book.  (And I promise you we don't live in a perpetually dark house.  There just isn't enough lighting to make these pictures bright enough.  Augh!)

We went on a nature walk.  We grabbed the red wagon, a bin from the house, and went out to see what kinds of "art" we could find. 

We walked all around our neighborhood, with William frequently asking if "this was nature" and "Can I put it in the nature bin?"   

When we got home we went to the backyard and took everything out of the bin and examined the items closer.  We talked about texture, size, color, etc. 

In the book there was "art" in the clouds.  I thought it would be fun to paint with cotton balls.  Again, this was one of those "good in theory" ideas, bad in practice.  The cotton ball fell apart in the paint and left behind cotton pieces. 

So we eventually gave up on that idea and switched to brushes and painting our clouds on black paper.  Worked like a charm! 

We'll be doing more with this book and the ideas soon. 

The House

The kids love playing House.  They meticulously set the table, complete with napkins and saucers, then they serve hotdogs and mac 'n cheese - straight from the grill, of course.  smile  I've been wanting to get them a play house for the patio for some time now, but that just hasn't happened.  So when I was contacted by Cascades about receiving a playhouse, I jumped all over it!  Last year they sent me a Christmas tree made out of recycled cardboard, which has been a ton of fun to decorate (we are decorating it more this year!) so I was familiar with the company and their products.  The Christmas tree is very sturdy, so I was excited to get the playhouse.  Well, Cascades delivered on their promise of a playhouse, and the kids are SO enjoying it. 

John put it together in no time at all.  It has since been affectionately dubbed "The Gingerbread House".  I love it!

William was too busy setting things up to even look out the window for a picture.  But I really love this thing.  It has a front door AND a back door, and comes complete with mailbox and skylights (great for extra ventilation, if you know what I mean!).  We haven't decorated the house yet probably because they don't realize that that is even an option.  I plan to keep it that way for awhile.  So if you're looking for a fun house for your kids stop by to Cascades and pick one up!

Ask Mr. Bear

It's been awhile, I know.  We've been doing a lot of reading, but our activities have been focused on fall and Thanksgiving rather than doing a ton of activities relating to Before Five in a Row.  However last week we did row Ask Mr. Bear.  

 

 

The book is about Danny, who asks the farm animals for ideas on what to give his mom for her birthday.  He ultimately asks Mr. Bear, who gives him the perfect idea!  William had to sequence the book with the story strips.  If you look closely you'll see his little tongue sticking out!  Too cute!
 

He's working on his letter writing.  He's got a long way to go, but as you can see, he's mastered his name!  Yah!

 He sorted words out according to their ending sounds.

 This classification activity was easy but fun.  Really, anytime glue can be brought out and used is an occasion for smiling.

These sheets were fun to incorporate this week.  I'm not sure why I never thought to use the Scrabble tiles before, but they worked perfectly for building the vocabulary words.  I did not have him to the "write" portion of the sheet.

Here he had to circle the correct beginning sound of the picture.  This is too easy for him, but he loves doing them anyway.

We are almost finished with all the books in the Before Five in a Row curriculum.  We will be doing I Am An Artist this week and maybe next, and then we are finished.  I did just place my order for all the books in the Five in a Row series, so I'm excited to get started on those.