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.