Loving Life

Yesterday's advent box activity was Christmas cookie making.  We all had fun decorating the cookies we made.  I made a small batch so we wouldn't have to eat them all.  We each had a plateful to decorate and keep as our own.  I've learned that I usually don't want to eat the children's cookies that they decorate as they are either heavily laden with sprinkles or been handled with fingers that are licked every three seconds. Here are some pictures from our cookie decorating night.  Everyone is hard at work. Even Aaron got in on the decoration fun. Today is Aaron's birthday, so we took him a raspberry cheesecake today at work to help him celebrate.  His boss' family was very excited about the cheesecake.  I sure do like my husband a lot.  He's awesome.  We had an interesting experience this morning before leaving to go see Aaron.  David was huddled over the vent this morning as is his custom every day in the winter when he ...

Yesterday was finally the day to set up our Christmas tree. I struggle with wanting to have our tree up every year since we really don't have space in our house for it. But, it wouldn't feel like Christmas without a tree. When I got this tree, I didn't realize how huge it would look in our house and just how much space it would take up. I guess a huge store environment is much different than a small home. Here are some fun pictures from the day's decorating. Abby: Here is David very serious in his decorating endeavors. Ana took delight in all ornaments. Ana, the human fly. And the finished product.  I did not help much with decorating.  David could mostly reach everything and they wanted to do it all themselves. Today is Christmas cookie day!  Yum!  Tomorrow is Aaron's birthday.  So I will make some treats for him to share at work tomorrow.  We might even take them in for him so we can see him during the day on his birthday. 

We made some "Christmas Playdough" yesterday.  What is Christmas playdough?  We made some regular homemade playdough, added green and red food coloring to each half, added glitter, and also some peppermint oil to make it smell yummy.  They kids liked it.  Here they are being their normal goofball selves with it. Later in the day, I found David reading a book to his sisters.  What a great brother he is.  They look very intense.  Notice Abby's crown and sequined shirt?  I think she was a king at this point in the day. I had to make treats for the community-wide youth group Aaron is helping with.  I decided to make cookies for the 25-30 kids who would be there.  But I couldn't decide which of my most favorite four kinds to make.  So, in a flash of brilliance, I decided to make all four kinds.  Each makes a small (2 - 2 1/2 dozen) batch, so I "only" made about 9 1/2 dozen cookies yesterday.  A fair amount got eaten by the yo...

Here are a few pictures I took while we were home before and after our trip.  These are activities from the advent box .  The first day was a tea party with Grandma.  Since it was lunch time, we went all out with a high tea, complete with little sandwiches.  It was fun.  The kids enjoyed themselves greatly at their tea party. Yesterday, we made easy "gingerbread" houses with graham crackers.  I got this idea from another homeschooling mom/friend of mine.  She did this a couple of years ago with our homeschooling group and my kids LOVED it!  So, here are the engineers busy at work constructing the home of their dreams. And once the house is built, comes the fun part!  Decorating!  They spent several hours on this project, very happy and content as they built and decorated their houses.  Ana's finished product: David's "hotel" complete with a rooftop garden: Grandma helped with the design and Abby did all the decorating work he...

Yeah!  I got my picture issue resolved!  So here are some random pictures of my life the last week or two.  Abby has grown out of her shoes, so we went shoe shopping last week.  Despite my desires to stay strong against commercial hype, I have such a weak spot for Abby and her princess stuff.  Buying into the whole commericialism of various products has always irritated me and I've never done it (possibly a reason why I wasn't considered super cool in school - not that I wanted to be super cool, I could care less if I had all the stuff), until now.  So Abby saw these shoes and immediately fell in love with them.  I decided to indulge her shoe love after seeing the look of infatuation on her face with them.  Only once I got them home, did I realize mistake number two.  They light up.  Can I just say now how much I despise light up shoes?  This fact made these shoes all the more glorious in Abby's sight.  I must admit that s...