Merry Christmas from All of Us!

The Jesse Tree I made.
This was one of my favorite Christmas gifts this year. It was just for fun, but I took snowball makers/totes and filled them with sock snowballs. :)Our favorite piece of mail in The Jolly Christmas Postman.Xav MonkeyThis Amazon package cracked me up! There was nothing else in the box except some brown paper!Freakishly flexible like his dad.

Lego Advent

Some pics of the Lego Advent toys. This really helped the littles understand how much longer before Santa arrived. And I was really impressed with Mal's memory. Each night, he would tell us which number was next and who's turn it was to open a box.

This kid was spoiled rotten. Toys galore. We lost his helmet inside the box and couldn't retrieve it until Christmas.

The daughter got a keyboard for Christmas.

Welcome home hubby.

Creation Camouflage Week in Review

...eighteen...nineteen...twenty. Ready or not here I come. Remember playing hide and seek? Let's face it, if you are the mom of some littles, you probably played it pretty recently. I always laugh at my boys. They hide in the same old places; under blankets, under the bed, under the table. Not terribly imaginative. This week, we spent some time learning about animals that use camouflage to hide in plain sight.

cam·ou·flage
Pronunciation: kam--fläzh, -fläj
Function: noun
1 : the hiding or disguising of something by covering it up or changing the way it looks
2 : the material (as paint or leaves and branches) used for camouflage

We really enjoyed the Creation Camouflage unit study from Download N Go. The littles are *huge* fans of I SPY type books. It really was challenging to find some of the animals in the pictures and videos we looked at each day.

Day 1: Hiding in Plain Sight
Day 2: Getting to Know the Rain Forest
Day 3: What Is in the Desert?
Day 4: Hiding in the Ocean
Day 5: Cool Things About the Tundra

These were a couple of my favorite pictures.

Boreal owl
{Photo removed.}

Owl butterfly
{Photo removed.}

We also chose this week to watch the Curious George episode when George loses a chameleon.

Download N Go is a lapbooking/notebooking unit study series created by Amanda Bennett and The Old Schoolhouse. Intended for grades K-4, my 3.5 year old loves them as well! DNGs are formatted for a five day study, but with suggested reading and your family's favorite rabbit trails, it could easily expand well beyond that. They are bright and colorful and chock full of information. One thing I really like is the special DNG video page that youtube videos open up in. DNG units each have five daily objectives with components for a smart little lapbook, clickable links to videos and websites, vocabulary, history, geography and more.

I just spend an hour or so reading the introduction and searching our library's online catalog for some books. I print some sheets, depending on our needs for the week and do some cutting. The rest is done for me!

Creation Camouflage is normally priced at $7.95, but is on sale for $5.95 until December 18.

Still not convinced you *need* Creation Camouflage? Check out the blog hop here.

***I was provided a free copy of Creation Camouflage to use with my littles and write my honest review.***

Growing Big and Strong

"It's fun to wear my Dad's shoes. They make me big and strong." (Excuse the blur, he was dancing.)Here, Mal wrote TrAIN all by himself.

December Bounty

So, I headed out to the garden the other day to get us some carrots to go with my roast. Yummy. First, I trudged through about a foot of snow (that's what the three feet we got had compacted down to). I had to shovel the snow in front of the garden gate. Then shoveled the snow off the raised carrot bed. Then I realized I needed a real shovel for the soil. So I shoveled in front of the barn door so I could get a "real shovel". Trekking back to the garden, I almost absent-mindedly walked between the downed maple tree and the fence. That would have been wet. The hole is surprisingly deep and had filled immediately with water. Whew! Made it back to the carrot bed. Broke up the soil a bit with the "real shovel". The dirt was surprisingly not frozen. It was, however, incredibly cold. So with icy, painful fingers, I received this bounty from the Lord. There are still plenty more out there. As long as temps are reasonable and there is snow to insulate those root veggies, I should be able to go out several more times.

December Centerpiece

So it's time to put away my autumn centerpiece and put one together for Christmas. I ended up finding a cute grapevine tree and a Believe sign at The Christmas Tree Shop. I placed them on a gold charger and put that on a burgandy placemat. There you go. My second attempt at table decor.

When Lego Snowmen Go Wrong

Every morning after Thanksgiving, Xav would ask if Santa had been here yet. I needed something to help the littles understand it wasn't Christmas yet. So we are using the Lego advent calendar this year. It's working like a charm.

What will happen to our intrepid hero?

O R E O!

OK. I admit. I like double stuffed oreos. That's right. I like my transfats multiplied. Actually, I like my double stuffed oreos doubled. So, you know, I have to open two oreos and put them together. Well, what is a girl to do when there are *three* oreos left in the pack? Seriously. I couldn't leave one lonely oreo in the pack. I made the ultimate sacrifice. I tripled my double stuf. Yum.

December Storms

You got a glimpse of our Wind storm in this post. We actually lost power from around noon on Wednesday to 5PM on Friday. We also didn't have any phone until Tuesday.

I was pretty nervous about the trees by the house, though thankfully they all fell away from our home. I called Micah at work after the first few trees fell, just to give him a heads up and let him know we'd be in the basement with candles and the woodstove. I was on my cell phone with Colleen when the broken tree fell over. That was frightening and the boys and I skedaddled ourselves to the basement.The neighbors had some trouble too.
We don't get very good cell service in the house, but I found I could text if I held the phone to the window. My only connection to the outside world. We ended up losing many more trees (even a maple).We were barely up and running after that when we got the snow storm. Over two days or so, about 3 feet fell. The littles loved the light, fluffy stuff until Mal realized it wasn't good for sledding when it's that deep. Things are back to normal around here for now. At least as normal as they get. :)

Catching up November

Gratitude tree.We had lots of company.Thanksgiving dinner.Playing in the snow.

WINDSday

Unofficial count, 11 pines and one maple down.