Christmas preparations

We spent a bit of time getting ready for the holidays.  Buddy Boy helped with the lights, all five strings of them.

 

He proceeded to put on the Christmas stockings.

This wasn't the first time.

2008

 

One evening while Buddy Boy and Dad were watching the Empire Strikes Back, My Girl insisted on making graham cracker houses.  We had some frosting left from the Birthday celebrations and had a collection of sprinkles, marshmallows, and a few candy canes.  This is what we did.

 

We had a little party at church.  After dinner there was a fun program.  It started with Five Strummers Strumming.  The two on the right introduced the kids to Rawhide years ago at a summer pioneer program.  They still sing it.

 

Then the kids did a Nativity play.  It started with the younger kids singing as the stars.  Then the familiar story.

 

We had several mischievous shepherds and a flock of hungry sheep.  The oldest girls all wanted to be the sheep.  My favorites were the angels.  Such a cast of characters.

Painting Privas

Awhile ago I asked my Father-in-law for a photo of France that I could paint.  I think that this is one of his favorites.

 

This is what I did with it.  I cropped it a bit and eliminated the graffiti even though that gives it a lot of personality.  I think the idea of English graffiti in France is a little funny.  I straightened the vertical lines to correct the distortion of the lens.  This photo isn't all that accurate, but it is the best I could do.  The lighting is a little different, but you get the general idea.

This painting was a present for my Mother-in-law for Christmas.  I included this little card with it. 

In January, I won't be able to paint as much.  I'll be teaching on the morning of my painting class.  I'll go back when I can and keep it up between now and then as much as I can.  I also have other artsy crafty projects to work on.  I hope I can get to them.

Live Nativity

For years I've heard of friends visiting the live nativity sponsored by a local church, but we had never been, until this year.

The kids got to sign the census and pay "taxes".  Camels don't come cheap.

 

There was a metal worker, a pottery station, a jewelry station, and booths for food, wine making (plastic grapes, thankfully), wood working, perfume, spinning wool, and others I'm forgetting.

 

The first wise man rode a real camel.  Quite an impressive beast, but even outside you can sure smell them.  Every half hour the story starts again as the wise men, Mary and Joseph make their way to different parts of the city and finally to the stable.

The kids and I had a great time.  It earned an enthusiastic thumbs up.  It is already on the calendar for next year.

 

Merry Christmas!

Happy Birthday

We had a little birthday party for My Girl.  We colored and did mazes.  We played "snow" games with cotton balls, decorated snowy treats, made jewelry, and had a great time.

We started off with some snow coloring pages, mazes, and decorating goodie bags.  I love that for little girls coloring is a fun party activity.  I also love to hear them talk.  Their conversations are hilarious.

We played pass the present.  In this game little treasures are wrapped in layers of a present, one in each layer.  The kids pass the present while the music plays.  When the music stops you get to unwrap a layer and claim a prize.  We had hair clips and bands and snowman notebooks and pencils.

Then it was back to the kitchen for sugar cone Christmas trees and marshmallow snowmen.  It's like decorating gingerbread houses, but much simpler.  There are now marshmallows in three sizes.  The biggest one is huge.  Wilton makes food markers that we used for the faces.  I originally bought the orange and black for Halloween, but I've used them more for snowmen than I have for Halloween.

We kept it pretty simple with M&M decorations and fruit roll up scarves.  By the way, did you know that M&Ms are available in a new very girly set of colors?  Pink, red, blue, turquoise, and purple.  I had some big star sprinkles that we used to top the trees.  They turned out great.

After the frosting we played snow blower.  We taped a square in the middle of a blue blanket and used straws to blow cotton balls into the center.  After a few rounds of that they were ready for jewelry making.  I just let them loose with pipe cleaners and beads.  We got bracelets, necklaces, and tiaras in all sorts of shapes and colors.  It was fun.

You can't have a birthday party without cake, or in this case, snowflake cupcakes.

 

And with that we called it a day.  Happy Birthday!

Art and reading

You just never know what's going to strike the interest of the kids.  Buddy Boy has been reading the Origami Yoda series.  It isn't great literature, but the names are clever.  There's Origami Yoda, Darth Paper, the Fortune Wookie, Jabba the Puppet, Princess Labelmaker, and Han Foldo.  This series and a book on origami from the library have fueled a paper folding craze around here.  Each book includes some instructions for origami Star Wars characters.  Here are Buddy Boys efforts.  I think they turned out great.  I think Ewoks are next.

 

Buddy Boy also read Jedi Academy, another Star Wars take off.  He's really enjoyed these books, but hadn't seen the movies.  We solved that problem over the Thanksgiving break.  Hooray for the library that has the trilogy.  We watched Star Wars and made it through half of Empire Strikes Back.  My Girl doesn't like them and Dad wants to watch them with Buddy Boy, so that is slowing us down a bit.  Don't worry.  We'll get through.  In the mean time Buddy Boy is perfecting his Yoda and Ewok impersonations.

My Girl's reading the Rainbow Magic fairy books.  If you have a girl about this age I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.  It is a series of books about a couple of friends who help the fairies out of trouble, usually caused by Jack Frost and his goblins.  There are over 150 books in the series.  It feels like we've read at least that many and more keep coming home from the library.  She loves them and Buddy Boy likes them too.  At night we take turns reading.  I like to hear him read to her at bedtime.  He is great.  He even does different voices for the characters.

'Tis the season...

...for Minecraft pigs to drive sleighs through the sky above the snow covered roofs of the town.

By Buddy Boy

Mini Thanksgiving Baker

My Girl helped with the baking for Thanksgiving this year.  It's the first year she's been able to do a lot of things on her own.  It was great to be able to work together.  We baked rolls and an apple pie to go with the roasted Brussels sprouts and creamed onions we prepared as well.  Thank goodness we had the apple corer/slicer/peeler thingy to help out.  It would have been a lot less fun without it. 

She slaved away, wiping the sweat from her furrowed brow...

 ...or not.

 

The peels did not go to waste.  What didn't get nibbled on by the kids we fed to our neighbor's African tortoise, Lucy.  She really likes grape leaves as well.

My Girl also topped the dinner rolls with butter and cinnamon sugar.  With a topping like that there weren't many that actually made it until dinner time.

Thanksgiving dinner was a lot of fun.  We got together with family.  There was plenty of cousin wrestling for Jack.  We had a mini-concert of Scottish fiddle tunes.  For dessert we had the apple pie, pumpkin cake, and pumpkin pie.  No shortage of deliciousness.  The oldest cousin did an impromptu Santa impersonation for My Girl.  She played along and it was quite the conversation.  We missed Grammie, who was out of town helping her sister, but had a great time together.  Of all the things I'm thankful for, I am the most grateful for my family.

Overheard

My Girl to Buddy Boy:  When we grow up you should be a doctor and I will be your nurse.
Buddy Boy:  No, I want to be an Alchemist.

Turkey advertisements

Buddy Boy is learning about persuasive writing.  This is what they did in class last week.  You are a turkey.  Try to convince the butcher why your partner is a better choice for Thanksgiving dinner.

 

Why I am a bad choice:
I am high in cholesterol and I am very thin and sour and have a lot of feathers.

Why my partner is a good choice:
He is very fat and juicy and sweet and has little feathers and comes with a free bag of gravy.

For some reason this made me laugh, especially the bit about the free bad of gravy.

Central Drug Store

This is a photo I took on our honeymoon of the Central Drug Store in Belize City.  The town is a bit of a dump.  So was the store, but it always makes me smile.  The sign above the door says, "licensed to sell drugs and poisons."  Hmm...  Better look carefully at what you put in your bag.

 

This photo isn't great.  In fact it is pretty bad.  The sun was just setting over the roof of the store and it threw the lighting off.  It is also a bit busy.  Too many people.  I like the table selling orange juice on the left side and the boys leaning on the window on the right.  I like the unnatural minty green color of the building and the bright red in the Coca Cola sign and the shirts.  So I cropped it and painted my version.

 

 

First a little sketch.

 

Here is the finished painting.  It is a lot brighter than the photo, but more true to life.  I like the little curl of orange peel hanging off the edge of the table and the colorful Christmas lights. 

We were there at the end of November and the holiday stuff was in the stores and Christmas carols were playing.  We bought our favorite Christmas CD in a little shop across the street from here, Reggae Christmas.  It has a great Rudolph the Red Rose Reindeer (no that's not a typo) and two versions of Little Drummer Boy. 

I changed a couple of things.  I lowered the window and had the woman with the bag face the other direction.  She was walking out of the picture before.  This is better. 

Did I mention I'm having a lot of fun in my painting class?

Alley redo

Here is a second attempt at a picture I originally did for on online watercolor class a couple of years ago.  I gave a sneak peak a couple weeks ago here.  You can find the first version here.  In this one the colors are much warmer and more true to life.  I like them both for different reasons.  I am trying to paint loosely and colorfully, but not necessarily realistically,  maybe a little impressionistic or even a little expressionistic.  You don't see much of either of those here.  Not a bad painting, but it feels pretty stiff.  Still a lot to learn.

Costumes, carnivals, and more Halloween

We are finally to the end of the Halloween season.  It is a holiday that seems to last for weeks, between the costume planning and construction, then the school carnival and the ward trunk-or-treat days before the actual day.  It get to be a bit much for me, but the kids have a good time.

 

Buddy Boy has known for months what he wanted for a costume.  He wanted to be an Enderman.  In case you don't know what that is, you probably haven't spent much time with the 8 year old male set.  You can read about it here.  In short it's a Mob that lives in the End, from Minecraft, of course.

 

 

 

My Girl in her typically indecisive style didn't decide until we were at the store getting supplies for the Enderman.  It was the sparkly antennae that sealed the deal.  I bought the antennae and lady bug leg warmers and made the shell from an extra large t-shirts, cardboard, and Styrofoam.  She loved it.

 

My Girl and I went to the school carnival.  Buddy Boy decided to attend the Cub Scout campfire instead.  I can't blame him.  He had the lead role in the Cub Scout skit.  He had been practicing his lines for days.  I wish I could have seen it.  I hear he did a great job. The skit was the one about the scientist who invents an enlarging machine.  It went something like this one.

At the school carnival the ladybug practiced her flying...

played with her friends...

My Girl and her kindergarten friends have been adopted by a group of the fifth grade girls.  It is so nice to see.  They are reading buddies and often have lunch together and play together at recess.  My Girl is already sad that these older girls won't be at the school next year. 

went pumpkin bowling...

and ate cotton candy.

It was a great evening. 

Days of anticipation later we finally got to THE DAY.  It started off with the costume parade at school.  Buddy boy got to show off his best Enderman.  I love this photo because you can see his cute happy face showing through.  He is wearing a bike helmet that is zip tied to the upper box, which is zip tied to the lower box.  The arms have yard sticks in the lower portion that he can manage through slits in the sides.  He was quite happy with it.  We even made a Minecraft chest for trick-or-treating purposes later that day.  It was fun to see the positive reaction from the other kids at school and while out in the neighborhood.  Most adults didn't recognize his character, but the kids did.  Even the 20-something guys who live across the street knew exactly who he was.

 

After school we traipsed around town trying to find a place that still had a couple of pumpkins to sell.  Third time was the charm.  We ended up painting the faces, much to My Girl's disappointment.  I had procrastinated and there just wasn't time for the full scale carving.

 

That night we went trick-or-treating with friends.  On our street there are very few kids and not much activity, but one street over is where the party is.  So we made our way up to the park and back and called it a night.

 

As we were leaving we couldn't help noticing the light coming from across the street...

Now that's the way to light a Jack O' lantern.

(It's a kerosene soaked roll of toilet paper, just in case you want to recreate this stunning effect on your own.  Just keep a fire extinguisher handy.)

So there you have it.  The End(erman).