Fun Christmas pillows

This is a fun little Christmas project we did this morning. I got some felt and some string and we made some cute Christmas pillows. I did the ornament. Sarah did the big tree, Kaitlyn and William took turns making the little tree. It was just simple sewing around the edge, and then we hot glued on the decorations. It was a good project for busy hands.

A sweet gift to give

A few years ago we received a neat Christmas gift from a friend in our ward. Instead of the usual plate of Christmas cookies and goodies, she gave us a candy house. She told us that when she was little her family would cover a new wooden bird house with candy, and they would eat from it throughout the Christmas season. They could use the house again the following year. So, her gift to us was just that- a candy house- that we've been able to reuse each year.

This year, we decided to do the same thing for our friends who have 8 children in their family. I bought a bird house from Michaels, made some royal icing, and covered it with candy. They loved it!

Ginger bread Houses

Kaitlyn went to a Ginger bread event at the local library sponsored by the Georgia Cyber Academy (her home school program). Everyone who went brought a gingerbread house they decorated.
We built her ginger bread house around a gold fish box that we cut to make it the right size. After we cut the gold fish box, we measured the sides and top, then made a paper pattern for the walls and roof. Then we rolled out the ginger bread, and put the pattern on the rolled dough and cut out the peices. Then we baked them in the oven, and let them cool. While they were baking and cooling, we made Royal Icing out of egg whites and powdered sugar. Once the peices of the house were cooled, we got to work.
Alan and Sarah also wanted to make a ginger bread house even though they couldn't go the home school event. So after they got home from school, they made their houses too.

Alan's house: Sarah's house:

They're now on display in our house. (Except for Kaitlyn's which we designated as the one we could eat. :)

Primary Nativity Pageant

The Relief Society asked the primary to reenact the Nativity for the ward Christmas party.
I thought I'd post a few of the photos of the exciting event.
Our primary has mainly 4 -6 year olds, so I needed to set it up in the easiest possible way. I had all the girls be angels, and all the boys be shepherds except for the main parts. I made 3 little "scenes". The stable was on the stage, the shepherds were in the right corner of the gym next to the stage, and King Herod's palace with the wisemen were in the left corner of the gym next to the stage. I stacked up some old room dividers to make the scenes for the wisemen and the shepherds.

Alan and Sarah were Mary and Joseph. They waited at the back of the gym while the Narrator -(an 8-yr-old in our primary with a very expressive reading voice)- began to read in Luke 2. Mary and Joseph walked from door to door in the gym looking for room. They finally came to the door in the right front corner of the gym where the innkeeper was waiting. He shook his head when they came to the door, but then pointed to the stage on the stable indicating there was room there. Here they are looking for room: Here they are in the stable on the stage. You can see the Narrator next to the piano, and I'm sitting at the piano. Then, "nearby" in the fields, the shepherds were keeping watch over their flocks by night, when the angel of the Lord appeared to them. No one had a speaking part except for the angel. She was a girl in our senior primary who is going to be 12 in a few weeks, so she said that she could memorize the angel's part. She did a great job.
Then, suddenly, there was with the angel, a multitude of heavenly hosts praising God and singing. All the girls in primary were angels, and they sang the chorus to "Far, Far Away on Judea's plains". Kaitlyn is first angel on the left.This next picture is of the shepherds visiting the stable. The star is a Christmas tree star I put on the top of some PVC pipe. Our primary Secretary is an artist, she put make up on the shepherds faces to make them look like they had beards. I also got some large plastic candy canes for the shepherds to use as shepherds crooks.
On the left side of the stage on the floor was King Herod's palace. After the shepherds came to the stable, the Narrator read in Matthew 2 where the wisemen came to King Herod asking where the "King of the Jews" was born. Here's King Herod pointing at the star and telling them to follow it.

Santa? Did you come to the park?

We went to the park on Monday and had a nice lunch, and then walked around and discovered all sorts of fun things. Kaitlyn is at the stage where she's putting sounds together and starting to read. So, as we were walking around, I'd write the words of some of the things we were finding in the dirt. She loved discovering the words and reading them. At one point we decided to walk along a dried up stream bed. As we were walking, we saw some animal footprints. We thought they were dog prints at first, but then when we looked closer, we saw that they were deer prints.

Kaitlyn immediately thought they were Santa's reindeer prints, and we had to follow them to see if we could find him. We didn't find Santa, or his reindeer, but we had alot of fun.

William's 3rd Birthday

William's Birthday was on a Sunday this year, and he and I were both sick with pretty bad colds. So, we had a nice little family birthday. We had meatloaf for dinner (one of his favorites), and after dinner we opened presents. He got a toy helicopter and a fire truck. He loves them.
For his cake, I decided that I would let him decorate it himself. He loves to "help" me cook, so I thought he'd really enjoy doing his own cake. He helped me make up the cake batter, and got to put the food coloring in the frosting. Then, when it was time to decorate it, he was ready. He had fun pouring on the sprinkles-mainly all in the same place, but it was so much fun for him to do it with out anyone correcting him or telling him how to do it.

Here he is happy with his masterpeice:Daddy helped him cut the cake.

Here's a video of our goofy boy blowing out his candles:

Stuffing

I have memories of making old-fashioned sage dressing/stuffing with my family the night before Thanksgiving. We'd get out the celery, the bread, the butter, the onion, the sage, and all work together to put it together. My mom would get out the large stainless steel bowl to fill it with stuffing, and large frying pan, then we'd get to work. This is a tradition that I like to continue especially since we've never had Thanksgiving with my mom in the 13 years since we've been married.

Here's what we do:

First, we'd put two cubes of butter in the frying pan:

Then we tear a whole loaf of bread into peices. William and Kaitlyn had this job, mostly. Then we'd chop up an entire bunch of celery and one large onion. Sarah chopped the celery with my help, and Alan chopped up the onion with Tom's help.

Then we'd sautee the onion and celery in the butter until the onion was clear and the celery was soft. Then we add 2-3 TBspns of sage and some salt and pepper to the pan and mix it with the onion, celery and butter. Then we pour the frying pan mixture into the large bowl of torn bread and mix it all together. You put it in the refridgerator until ready to stuff the bird.

I know it may not be the most exciting recipe, but it's tradition, and being so far from home, I'm very thankful for family traditions.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving Family Home Evening

For FHE tonight we learned about the first Thanksgiving. We sang Hymn number 93 "Prayer of Thanksgiving" and then we watched "William Bradford: The first Thanksgiving" from the animated Hero Classics. (You can click on the picture and it will take you to the listing for it on Amazon.com for $10.50)

After that we made "pear turkeys" and "plymouth rocks".

Here's our "Plymouth Rocks" made from nuts, marshmallows and melted chocolate:

Once there was a snowman?

This morning Kaitlyn was playing "monster" with William, and pretending that there was a scary monster in the Family Room. I didn't like her scaring him, so I told them that instead of a monster in the family room, there was a snowman. They liked that idea and began to build a snowman out of the pillows from the couches. Soon Alan and Sarah came in and helped to build the snow man...er um... the "couch" man. So here he is:
Here's couch man with a white blanket on him to make it look more like snow. He's also decked out in a lei, backpack, and Sarah is fixing his "tu tu" :

Alan decided if the snowman was going to have a tu tu, then he needed to have a light saber too. It's a little hard to see, but it's on the left :

The boys at bedtime

Everynight at bedtime after family prayer, William races to Alan's room to play before I can get him and put him into bed. I took this video back in June or July, but they still like to do this before bed. It's very cute.

October 30th Halloween

The city of Columbus designated Saturday the 30th from 6:00-8:00pm as the official "trick or treating" time. I find this fascinating that the city would actually dictate a day and time to go Trick or Treating, but I guess it's because we live in a small city in the South. Well, for whatever reason, it was nice because we wouldn't have gone out on Sunday. Tom and I actually thought people wouldn't be "trick or treating" last night because it wasn't the actual day of Halloween. We told our kids that if no one else is trick or treating then we won't go either, but as soon as 6:00pm hit, our neighborhood was swarming with costumed kids!! It was crazy!

So here's some pics of the night:

Here's our ghost lights on the bushes.

We spray painted Sarah's hair black and I let her put make up on.

And the biggest suprise is.... Alan was another Star Wars Character!!

Kaitlyn the dragon slayer from "How to train your Dragon"

Riding the wagon as we go trick or treating. William loved being Buzz light year. He wore a costume I made for Alan several years ago.

Here he is trick or treating

William and the Worm

Ok... call me crazy, but....

...I got a little tired of sending Kaitlyn to a kindergarten where they had no recesses, no free time (unless you call turning on cartoons and making them watch free time), no self-directed learning, just 6 1/2 hours of worksheets and discipline. She was so stressed out that she was getting really bad stomach aches everyday, and playing "school" in an intense feverish manner whenever she came home, and crying all the time.....



So, I talked to her teacher. She said that she'd love to be able to slow down and do more developmentally appropriate practices, but the things they're forced to do make it nearly impossible to do kindergarten the way she'd like to. HUH?


Unfortunately this is not the only school in Columbus that is like this. We left another school years ago because of the very same problems. ...


It's like I stepped into a parallel universe where it's ok for children to be yelled at, and ordered around and humiliated, and where all tried and true developmentally appropriate practices for teaching children are completely thrown out the window.


....So (and here's the part where you'll probably call me crazy), I brought her home to do Independent Study through Georgia Cyber Academy-AKA-Home school. It was the hardest decision I've really ever had to make, and over General Conference weekend, Tom and I were fasting and praying a lot. We got the answer that she should come home.
Since she's been home with me she's made lots of progress, she's learing things that she just couldn't get before, and she's so much happier. So for now, she's home, ... and some times, I call myself crazy.

Finally! We can go out doors!!

Well now that summer is over we can go outside without melting our faces off. So, we've been taking advantage of the cool 80 something degree weather we've had this weekend. Here's Alan reading a starwars book that Grandpa Rose got him. Grandpa Rose has been visiting this week. It's been nice.

Here's Kaitlyn and William watching "Shelly" our snapping turtle enjoy the great outdoors.