What Do You Do When Your Kids Love Science?

You roll with it!

We are a very science-centered family. Maybe it's in our genes?? I mean, when the dad in the family is a doctor, there's a ton of biology floating around in many of our conversations! On top of that, he's been studying for his diplomates in chiropractic neurology and clinical nutrition. Biology, chemistry, bio-chem...makes for very interesting conversations! And he isn't the only one...

Brandon's obsession is chemistry. He reads books about it. He watches chemistry videos. He just can't seem to get enough of it to satisfy his curiosity! So it was only fitting that he was gifted chemistry related goodies for Christmas :) Here are a few of his goodies; hopefully the links work!

and from Kristen:

And other fun things:

The Element's Vault is a book with the most beautiful pictures of the elements. And it has 5 elements included inside! This was a selling point for me because Brandon has been working on collecting as many elements as possible for his own table of elements:

He drew that himself and has been working on collecting elements bit by bit. And his favorite so far:

That's pure gold which came with that book :)

 He and Todd have spent some quality time together working on that thing! They're so close!

And the chemistry sets look like this:

 in our basement/chem lab ;)

And our kids have pretty much looked like this:

since Christmas ;)

Our New Year's Eve

Wow, I can't believe it was over two weeks ago and I'm just now getting around to posting about it!

New Year's Eve has never been my favorite. I can't tell you how many I've slept through only to wake up the next day and it was a new year even though I didn't stay awake to greet it. But...

it's important to all the other people in my house!


So a few years ago, I set out to make a bigger deal of it than I had been...which was nothing at all ;)

And you know what? It's become a favorite night for all of us! We start the evening with Todd's family recipe of paella. It was/is the meal his parents serve every New Year's Eve and he wanted to continue the tradition which is a win-win for me since I LOVE paella and I also LOVE when someone else cooks dinner! (The recipe I linked is not the one he uses but it's the closest I found. The nice thing about paella is you can toss in whatever meat you wish so our meat choices are different than the ones in this recipe).

Saffron is the key! It makes it that nice yellow color and tastes amazing!

After we eat, we play some board games. Santa added several new games to our stash this year and we couldn't wait to play them! Uno Attack and Scene It Harry Potter were the games of the evening and they were tons of fun!

Brandon kept getting the attack card that says you can't talk. He got it so often it was almost like a running joke!

Our desert for the evening is fondue. That has now become a tradition as well :) This year, because we are gluten-free, we made our own homemade angel food cake to serve with our chocolate. I was worried about how it would turn out using gluten-free flour but it was perfect!

Doesn't it look yummy?? It was perfect angel food cake! This is the recipe I used and just substituted my gluten-free flour blend in place of regular flour. We love Alton Brown! If you don't watch his cooking shows, you should :)


Fondue yumminess:

Kristen goes to a party thrown by a family we know well. I hate the thought of her out on New Year's Eve but it isn't far and she doesn't have to go on any main roads to get there so it works out nicely. They have a theme every year for fun and this year was "Bling in the New Year":

Doesn't she look blingy? Jon added his bling later...

I'm so proud of my gansta daughter and her gansta boyfriend! ;) Wait, that arm looks awfully bare...maybe I'll get her a tattoo for her birthday! ;) hehe They had a really good time :)

Meanwhile, here at home, everyone made it to ring in the New Year!

Megan could not take her eyes off the screen. She was watching that ball drop for the first time in her life and was so afraid she'd miss it! I love that I caught that moment.

It was great fun and a great way to start a brand new year!

A Favorite

This year, we made a Christmas "to-do" list in the form of our Advent calendar. It was really a great way to be more intentional with our month! Now that I've gotten my feet wet with it, next year, I'll be ready with even more fun things!

One of the favorites this year was sleeping under the tree. Kristen really wanted in on this one so I scheduled it for a night when she didn't have plans. The kids were surprised when they opened the Advent calender that morning! They looked forward to it all day long! Once night finally came:

Kristen grabbed her laptop and put in "A Charlie Brown Christmas". Then they all went to sleep. It was so sweet to hear all the whispering and giggling. Good, sweet memories :)

The Rest of the Day

The gifting did not end on Christmas morning. There was more fun to be had! Russ and Judy come to our house on Christmas Day to have lunch with us and exchange gifts. I love that our Christmas Days are so laid back and relaxing. We usually need the rest!

To "get" these pictures, I have to give you a bit of background. Recently, during a visit with Russ and Judy, the conversation turned to food. It went from there to food we ate as kids that we absolutely HATED! Just for full disclosure, mine was/is oatmeal. I will not eat it and I think I may have sat at the table for quite a long time as a child because of my aversion ;) I have issues with food textures.

Anyway, Todd's "special" food was/is canned mixed vegetables. He hated it when that was served for dinner, so guess what his Christmas gift was?

 I love the look on his face in that first picture!

 Punk'd!

We all got a huge laugh out of it! That was, of course, just a prank and not his actual gift :) 

We all really enjoyed our time together.

 No, Kristen did not get a stuffed dog...she's just a good big sister helping Megan get that cutie out of it's packaging (what's the deal with packaging?!?) Kristen's gift was smaller! Mine was too! And we had so much fun spending them ;)

Russ and Judy, thanks for coming to our house and gifting us with your presence as well as presents :)

Christmas Day

Twas the night before Christmas...

Santa stuffs their stockings and brings each of our children one gift in addition to a basket (or two!) of "family" gifts; things like books, movies, and board games...things we all use or do together as a family. The kids are always very excited to see what gift Santa chose for them and they LOVE looking through the family baskets.

 Then each child takes a turn passing out the gifts they chose for their siblings and for Todd and me.

 There are so many hugs!

 Then the rest of the gifts are passed out and the gifting frenzy begins! Nick asked everyone he knew for the new Skylander Spiro game. I think he was a bit excited ;) Truly I think if that was all he got, he would have been just as happy!

 When Megan saw Nick's excitement, she was not to be outdone so the next gift she opened..a fuzzy blanket...got this response...

That kid cracks me up! Actually, the more authentic excitement happened over this:

And it's still her favorite a week and a half later!

Number one on Brandon's list was a chemistry set. He actually got two!

 Lucky guy :)

Kristen's favorite was an Express gift card. She's had a great time this week shopping with all her various gift cards! Yay for after Christmas sales!

After the opening frenzy, the kids started busting their new things out of the packaging:

I had whipped up a breakfast casserole the night before so as soon as the kids were awake I headed downstairs before they were allowed, put the casserole in the oven, poured two mugs of steaming coffee, and grabbed my camera. The casserole was finished just about the time all the gifts were opened making our morning very relaxing and low-key....just the way I like it!

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve is spent every year at my mom's house. We have a nice dinner, then head to the Christmas Eve service at our church, then back to Mom's to exchange gifts. It's a fun evening!

I had all kinds of trouble getting our Christmas card picture this year (to all my friends and family that visit here, thank you for your cards! I loved them and I'm sorry I didn't reciprocate. I already have a plan for next year so that doesn't happen again!) but right before we left for Mom's house, I snapped the perfect picture:

Now why didn't any of my earlier attempts turn out that good! Oh well, I'm glad I have that one :)

The evening was a flurry of fun:

 Brandon loves this game book! Great challenges!

 Megan's favorite of the night:

 She had that on her wish list and I new it would be the perfect gift to come from Grandma ;)

And here's another perfect gift! ;)

 More gifting...Sour Apples to Apples! Have you played that? It's awesome!

 Nick's favorite...can you tell?!

 This little robot thingy (which is named Willa, so appropriate since that is my late aunt's name and it's kind of crazy just like she was!) was a big hit!

 Apparently there's a learning curve figuring out how close you need to be for it to hear your voice ;)

It was a very fun evening and the perfect prelude to the main event of Christmas morning!