Sledding and Snow Angels with Gramma

Can we open it now?

Baby's First Christmas

He liked the paper and the boxes best!

Under the Tree

Christmas Breakfast

Crab quiche, spinach quiche, breakfast rolls with orange frosting, fruit salad and cranberry juice, yum!

Daddy read our Advent Stories

while breakfast was being finished. For several years we have read _Jotham's Journey_, _Tabitha's Travels_, and _Bartholomew's Passage_ during Advent. I think they are out of print, but oh so good!

Reading the Christmas Account from Luke

Christmas Morning

The children brought their stockings and woke us at 7 am. They had been awake since around 5:30 am. That was pretty good considering they had cousins wake up at 2:40 am and 3:45am.

Merry Christmas!

Don't look too carefully at the footwear. Big Brother needs some dress socks, Big Sister is wearing her riding boots, and Little Sister is wearing crocs, but she kept them on all evening! Before we went to church, we listened to "Twas the Night Before Christmas" read by my Grampa Pete. and to all a "Good Night".

My first candycane.

And for dessert. . .

icecream novelties shaped like Christmas trees and snowmen. Yum.

Christmas Eve Dinner

Spinach salad, cresent rolls, beef brisket, garden peas with onions, garlic mashed pototoes, gravy and sparkling cranberry juice.

Cruising Everywhere

"Hey Mom, this stability ball is not really stable." Baby is cruising everywhere, standing without holding onto anything and taking up to four steps at a time.

Table Tennis

Daddy and Grampa have been enjoying playing some ping-pong.

League of Pirates

The boys received this game as a birthday gift from Aunt. After a learning curve they are having lots of fun playing their new game.

"Is it real?" Big Sister wanted to know.

"Did it grow with sparkles on it?" Little sister asked. Yes, it is real and the sparkles were sprayed on. We enjoyed Tomie DePaola's book _The Legend of the Poinsettia_ and we are enjoying this gift from Daddy's parents.

Christmas Ornaments

Gramma brought some Christmas ornaments for the children to make. Crafting kept them busy for a few minutes. . .

Storytime

Cleaning up the Grove

We had a still, cold day last week. A perfect day for starting to burn the trash piles in the grove. Big Brother and Daddy had too much fun driving the tractor.

Making Fudge

When we talked about the menu for Christmas Eve Dinner and Christmas Dinner fudge was mentioned by all! Gramma was going to make it at home in NC, then she realized that would be heavy to carry, as would buying and bringing the ingredients. So, she bought the ingredients here and the girls got to help make it. and sample it!

Christmas Caroling

Our homeschool group went to an assisted living and nursing home today to share some Christmas joy. I think the grandfriends enjoyed seeing the children even more than hearing them sing.

What happens when fog freezes?

Everything had a thin coat of ice this morning and when the sun came up it was beautiful.

Grumpy Old Men?

Between hockey games we drove out to the town lake to see if they were ice fishing, sure enough there were some "fish houses" on the lake. The ice has to be 8 inches thick to drive a vehicle on it. Not that I'm going for a drive on the lake anytime soon!

A Spot of Tea

Aunt sent Little Sister this paint your own tea set for a birthday present. What fun the sisters had painting and then pretending to serve and drink tea.

"Puzzle" ing

Happy Birthday Boys!

The boys celebrated their 14th and 11th birthdays this weekend. We had cake and ice cream, packages, pheasant hunting and hockey games.

Boys at the rink

Little Brother made his first goal on Sunday, his team won 12-0. Their record is 7-0-1. Big Brother's team record is 3-1-1. They have made so much progress on the ice! It is fun to watch.

Gingerbread Houses

We have made gingerbread houses for years. I first made them at MOPS about 10 years ago. It was a Christmas craft for the moms! While the children were happily playing in their Moppet classrooms, the moms chatted, decorated and ate candy. After awhile MOPS didn't fit into my schedule, but these gingerbread houses made with grahm crackers and royal frosting did! We've made these houses every Christmas season. The last several years we've made the houses with our family friends. They moved to Kansas and we moved to MN. While we have plans to get together this winter we needed to make houses now! We decided to invite our homeschool group over to decorate houses. We made 23 houses-6 grownups and 17 children. The two babies just grazed on dropped candy : ) I think decorating houses with our homeschool group will be a new tradition. Remember, in my home if you do it once, it is a tradition. We have heard that our family friends will also be decorating gingerbread houses with their homeschool group.

I went to a rummage sale this morning

looking for doors. The sale advertised doors, so we measured and I took along my tape measure. They were beautiful, the right era, and too big. Someone, at some point in time, took the old, wide woodwork out of this house, and they took out the solid wood, paneled doors. They replaced the woodwork with narrow woodwork and the doors with hollow core doors. We have found lots of woodwork and a few doors around the property. The woodwork may be salvagable, the doors, sadly, were cut up and in used in various places for various purposes. It is a long term goal to replace the doors and woodwork with ones that "fit" the period of the house. While measuring doors at the sale I saw this candelabra. It reminded me of one my mom had(has?). I bought it and now need some thin white candles. . .Mom do you still have yours? Does it say "Made in Sweden" on the bottom? Where did you get yours?

And the stockings were hung. . .

on the landing in the mudroom. The main part of this house is 100 years old. The addition much younger, and there is an odd set of stairs and a landing in the mudroom that lead into the old part of the house. The railing made an excellent place to hang stockings, because while we have a chimney(or two) we have no fireplace or mantle. Gramma is bringing Baby's stocking with her when she comes. She made all the children's stockings. After we fill the stockings on Christmas Eve we will place them on each child's bed(except for the baby). This is a British custom, Gramma is from Canada, her Gramma from Britain. Daddy did this growing up and we like it! The children can open and play with their stockings on their beds until the time when they are allowed to wake up Mommy and Daddy.

Kitchen

I had this little pitcher and these little glasses(from my gramma's home) on the windowsill in my kitchen. Then cold weather arrived and we sealed the windows with plastic, bye bye windowsills. I was going to put them away until spring but I found just the right shelf at another favorite thrift store. Now, I don't have to put my favorite little things away.

I just remembered I am supposed to give you weather updates. . .it was -2 F at 8:00 am, after 28F yesterday, it seems really cold. It is overcast with the sun peeking through. No wind to speak of.

Trimming the Tree

Everyone enjoys hanging ornaments on the tree. They all look for the ornaments that they've been given in the past. One of my favorite traditions is to buy an ornament that represents something important in the child's life that year. The children also get an ornament from their gramma and grampa, and we make a homemade ornament each year. By the time they have their own tree they'll have a nice collection of special ornaments.

Ceramic Christmas Tree

I love Christmas, Christmas decorations and decorating for Christmas. When I was growing up my mom and my gramma always had a ceramic Christmas tree, you know the ones, they stand about a foot high, they have a lightbulb inside so that light shines out of the plastic bulbs on the end of each branch. . .My mom still decorates with hers, my younger sister has our gramma's and my youngest sister has one her mother- in- law made. My mom, my sisters and I have been on the lookout for one~ freecycle, ebay, yardsales, thrift stores~ I walked into a favorite thrift store and there one was, $4. All Christmas items half off. I got my ceramic Christmas tree for $2.

Sledding

While not very big, the hill behind our barn proved fun for sledding. Mom even went down!

What is that green stuff?

Guess who likes guacamole! and everything else he sees. In fact when he sees food he starts to smack his lips, and if he has a pacifier in his mouth he spits it out!

Mail Call

Gramma and Grampa A frequently send fun packages for no reason. They always send packages for birthdays and holidays, too. The "just because" packages are a real surprise, though. They might send an interesting article from the newspaper, a great pic, a new to us book, or something they found while shopping. Thanks for the recent package, Grampa and Gramma! Look how nicely the dresses fit. The girls decided to keep the red and green dresses for Christmas.

Locks of Love

Little Sister decided she was ready for a haircut. She wanted her hair short,"near my chin, like when I was little." She had 10 inches to give away. She is very glad that her ponytail and 9 more will help someone who has lost their hair get some new hair, "but it won't grow." When Big Sister was about her age, she and I(Mommy) gave away our hair.