A Little More Party Fun

What happened around the dessert table...

 Meemaw Judy gave Brandon a handful of whipped cream...

 Then as he lifted it to his mouth for a nice big bite of sugary cream, she "helped" him a bit...

 Then this little guy decided a handful of whipped cream sounded good...

 So he got a bit of "help" too ;)

And STILL they perused the dessert table! 

The Beginning of Our Christmas Celebrations

Last Saturday, Todd's family had their family Christmas party! It's always a good time with a fun group of people that we don't see nearly enough. Food and Family! Oh, and presents! What a good combination, right?

Earlier this year, Russ and Judy had their porch enclosed. It's become the perfect hangout for family gatherings!

 We all gathered in the living room, though, for our gift exchange game.

 Everyone's eyeing a newly opened gift....

 because in this game, you can steal!

 These two came late, but don't worry, there was plenty of food! ;)

 This little (big?) guy made his way in the frame of my camera many times that evening :) Love that cutie!

 And there was a new little guy at the party this year! Aunt Carol and Uncle Wayne are great-grandparents! It was weird that someone else had the toddler and the party. For once, it wasn't us!

As always, it was a wonderful evening!

Starting Our Day

Nicholas has a new passion....geology. Over summer break, Brandon did quite a bit of reading on this subject and shared it with Nick. They spent so much time looking up gems found in Ohio and learning about the different rocks and minerals in our area. This is what sparked the little trip we took to go gem mining earlier in the fall. It was one of the best family field trips ever! Since then, Nicholas has nearly become obsessed in his new-found love of rocks and all things related! He almost always has a rock of some sort with him or one he's trying to identify. He loves discovering something about a rock and then telling whoever happens to be around what great new fact he found out!

A few weeks ago, on a trip to the library, Brandon found a book on geology for Nicholas. Brandon hangs out in the science section of the library attempting to fuel his own chemistry obsession ;) but he happened to see a book about rocks and minerals and grabbed it for his brother. So sweet! I love it when they do things like that! Not that it happens all that often...

So yesterday, we were getting ready to head to the grocery store and Nicholas asks if we can also go to the library. Why? He wanted to see what other geology books they have. How could I say no to that?!? :)

He spent all evening with the books he found and was even reading through them in bed last night. There was an experiment in one of them that he could hardly wait to do...rock candy :) He was awake shortly after me this morning, so we got started early:

 As soon as we got that sugar water all mixed up, he was back to the books.

One of my favorite parts about homeschooling: doing science experiments before the sun comes up, then watching my kids curl up with a book about rocks :)

Craft Stick Ornaments

Thanks to Pinterest and the Crafty Crow, I have so many cute Christmas ornaments and DIY decorations to do with our kids, we'll be busy all month long! And it's been fun for me to look for and pin cute, easy things complete with tutorials. Love that part!

Here's one I found on Whatever. (that link goes to all her Christmas crafts posts from Christmases past) I just love Meg. She is so creative and funny! And also a great photographer :)

 I quickly hot glued some craft sticks together while the kids were playing.

 After they dried, Megan got to work decorating them.

 I asked her if she wanted to paint them first, but she just wanted to embellish :)

 I think they turned out great!

I noticed this year, our tree we have with only homemade ornaments has a lot of undecorated space. We'll be changing that ;)

Party for Two

Yesterday was the day we've been waiting for all month...our friends, the Miller's, annual Christmas party. This seems to come early enough that it sort of kicks off a nice long string of Christmas festivities for us and we look forward to it every year.

This year was a bit different though. Nicholas has a cold. This complicated things as we do not take sick kids anywhere they might easily pass those cold germs to others. We basically avoid close contact places like church, co-op, and friends' houses. Another complication is that Todd is out of town right now so I've been on my own this weekend making splitting up to take the kids who are not sick to their party while leaving the sick one home impossible. I waited until Saturday morning, hoping and praying that Nick would wake up better, but he didn't. He was coughing just as much as he had been. UGH. I had to tell the kids we weren't going. This was not a popular decision and I totally understood Megan's and Brandon's frustration.

Lucky for them, we've known the Miller's forever! I sent Margot a text explaining the situation and asking if Brandon and Megan could come parentless. I never would have done this is any other circumstance (and I did tell her if she thought it might cause her stress to have kids there unsupervised to tell me and I would totally understand! This party is HUGE and I didn't want to add to the stress of hosting such an event), but like I said, we've spent so much time with the Miller's and Margot has spent so much time with our kids that we all seemed comfortable with this arrangement. So after threatening lecturing our kids on what I expected of them, I took them to their party and left them with their friends and mine. I'm so glad I did! They had a great time! I can't wait to see pictures from their afternoon.

As for the sick one, he had the opportunity to have some time with Mom :) He wanted to get his Christmas shopping done so that's exactly what we did...after a quick stop at DQ for a milkshake ;)

This is my only picture of our afternoon. Can you see how sick he looks? And that little raw place under his nose where he blew his nose all week? This little guy is really under the weather. But he was a trooper! He didn't complain about not being allowed to go to the party, not one bit! I'm so proud of him for that! He was completely worn out by the time we picked up Brandon and Megan, and still, no complaining! That means the rest of the evening was video game time ;)

Hopefully, he is on the mend and no one else gets this thing! We're ready for our fun!

What I Found Under the Tree This Morning

Is there any sweeter gift?

Our Christmas Count Down

We are doing a few things to count down the days to Christmas this year. One thing is our new Advent calender! I picked this beauty up a couple of years ago at a yard sale for a steal but we've never used it.

All the ways I'd read about included either putting a treat or small gift inside each drawer for each kid....daily. That's so not going to happen here! We don't make it a point to have treats daily nor do I want to give the a small gift each day in December. To me, that kind of takes away a bit from the actual Christmas Day but also I feel Advent is about more.

Finally, I found something more along the lines of what I wanted! This Advent calender was what started the whole thing! Along with her gorgeous calender, she posted a list of things she puts inside. That was all I needed to get the wheels turning in my own mind of things I could put inside!

Some are treats:

But there are also crafts to do, books to read, places to go..the list of things you can include are endless! I worried for a bit about keeping up with it. What if I put something in there that wouldn't end up being a good idea for that day? For example; planning an outside activity on a day that is extra cold or rainy? My solution was to make a "master list" in my personal notebook that way I always know what's coming up so I can shuffle things if needed. Or make sure I have all the supplies ;) It's working out great!

Another thing that has been fun this year is something I ran across on Pinterest:

So each day one of the kids gets to open the drawer in the advent calender and also snip another line off Santa's beard! Kristen asked me why I didn't start the numbers at the bottom with 25 that way the number on the beard would represent the number of days left. Brilliant! In my defense, I followed the directions ;) but I think I'll be giving Santa a new beard soon!

Bettering a Family Tradition

A couple of years ago, we decided all our kids were big enough to shop for a gift for each of their brothers and sisters. It was a success! They LOVE picking out gifts for each other! Last year, we slowed Christmas morning down a bit by having each of them in turn get the gifts they bought and wrapped from under the tree and give it directly to the person who was to receive it. They had gone to so much trouble picking out gifts for each other, I didn't want them all to be lost in a big unwrapping frenzy and no one ever would know who got them what.

The order on our Christmas morning is this: Santa's gifts first (Santa gives them each one present, plus there's a "family basket" filled with family oriented fun like books and games, then he also stuffs their stockings full of treasures. Santa doesn't wrap their gifts so they come first by default ;)), then each child, in turn, gets the gifts they bought and wrapped and starts handing them out (the kids really look forward to this part!), then the gifts from Todd and me. After all gifts from under the tree are opened, we open stockings. We come down the stairs and they go crazy over their Santa gifts, rummage through the basket pulling out things they can't wait to read or play, then they all want to go in handing out their gifts. I love that they get to experience one of the best parts of Christmas: giving .

This year, I was thinking about their gift-buying and decided to make it a fun afternoon with Mom too :) So yesterday, when I was heading out to run a few errands, I decided at the last minute to take Megan with me to get her shopping done. Best decision ever! Yes, my errands would have gone alot faster if it had been only me, but spending the afternoon with our youngest was way better than running errands efficiently.

First stop was Target where she chose wonderfully for her sister and brothers :) Then a treat for her:

 Her first Starbucks ;) Actually, I went back and forth about getting her a hot chocolate. We still had a few stops and I wasn't sure it'd cool down enough for her. I was in for a big surprise: not only does Starbucks have child size cups (YAY for less sugar!!), but they also have CHILD TEMPERATURE hot chocolate!!! SCORE!

Next up: the library where I had reserves waiting (Christmas books!) and she wanted to choose a couple of books as well:

 Happily reading her choices on our way to our next stop which was a quick grocery trip.

I loved my afternoon with this sweet girl! And I love taking this special little family tradition we've started and making it a bit more special :)

Trimming the Tree

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, the stars aligned so that we were all here to put up our Christmas tree! (Actually, I went around with my calendar for several days earlier in the month in an effort to pin down ONE AFTERNOON OR EVENING that we'd all be together ;)) It was a wonderful evening spent with mugs of hot chocolate, digging out ornaments from Christmas' past, and reminiscing.

Last year, I picked up a wonderful idea from another blogger:

I used whatever boxes I had and put each of our kids' ornaments in their own box! I had forgotten I had done that so when I opened the first box of decorations and saw this, it was like getting my first gift of the season :) I handed out the boxes and the party began:

 After they hung all the ornaments, they decided to sing a few Christmas carols:

Another gift to me!