And they proved their point by going to roost early in the day. They straggled in over the next three days of near zero weather. The last one had frostbite feet and headpiece. He recovered in the next day or so. They'll stay in the coop or yard until spring. 
Big Brother celebrates his 15th birthday and a day later Little Brother celebrates his 12th. They always choose to celebrate together. Tonight the candles were on a pan of brownies, when Gramma and Grampa get here they've requested a chocolate cheesecake. Where is Friend when you need her, oh yes, Kansas. Google search: EASY chocolate cheesecake. 
A nearby town does a nativity pageant every year, outdoors, in December, in Minnesota! This year it was about 32 degrees and calm, a good year to go. It was very well done, there was narration, singing, live animals and community actors. Little Sister asked throughout the show if it was a real baby. Afterwards we got to meet the actors, and yes it was a real baby, well bundled and fast asleep. Oh, yes there were two live camels in MINNESOTA.
We went with another local homeschool group to the planetarium at a college campus. Before the star show we enjoyed the natural science museum. We learned how to locate the constellations in the winter sky at this latitude.
We weren't sure if the falls would be frozen yet because it was early December. But, sure enough they were frozen. There was still a trickle of water going over the falls and the stream out of the bottom was not yet solid. We plan to go back in the middle of winter to see if everything is frozen solid. 
In our home Chocolate Crinkle Cookies are only made at Christmas time, much to the dismay of my family who wish we could have them year round. Everynight Daddy checks the jar to see if cookies grew during the day. 
We had another gingerbread house decorating day since Big Sister had a friend who she wanted to invite and Big Brother had already left for his tournament when we decorated the first day. 
Gramma and Grampa usually help my sister assemble her gingerbread houses before her party, but this year they were here. Little did they know that I would recruit them to help assemble houses before our party. And when they got back to NC they STILL helped my sister assemble houses. We told them they needed to do a better job planning their vacation next year, around our gingerbread parties. We hosted our homeschool group for gingerbread house decorating, we decorated 31 houses! We had great fun and I was amazed at the creativity of our children and our moms. 
