Games

It seems that around here we always seem to have a little more time to play games with the family around the holidays. We played The Family Fun game by Cranium with the kids a few days before christmas and that is a really fun game. A few times we just laughed and laughed.
Last night I played Mall Madness the Hannah Montana edition with Bethany and Felicia.
I lost, Felicia won when she finished all of her purchases first and was the first to get to the ice cream shop! That game takes more time to set up than any game I've ever played!
I also played The Mexican Train dominoes game with Sam. I have played this game before with friends and it was so much fun! With only two people, not as much, so we will save this when we have company!
Some of our favorite all time games that get played over and over have been Apples to Apples,ImagineIff, Scattergories and Life.
Right now, Ellie loves The Pretty Pretty Princess game and Candy Land.
Sam likes Connect Four and War (the card game) but his favoite for years was Battleship.
Felicia likes Mastermind and Uno a lot in addition to Life and Apples to Apples.
Bethany enjoys whatever we all play together.

Favorites from my childhood were Chutes and Ladders, Perfection, Payday and good old fashioned Charades! I never liked Mousetrap--too much stuff to set up!

One game I purchased last year was Family Dinner Games. It comes in a little tin box with little cards in it. The idea is that you pick a new card every time you eat dinner and do what ever game is on the card. They are easy, but fun. The kids love these. I purchased it on Amazon.
If your family likes to do a game night, one thing I've done to ensure that the choosing of the game doesn't take longer than the playing is to put a special coin or other object underneath a dinner plate. When everyone sits down to dinner, whoever has the plate with something underneath gets to choose the game that evening.
Whatever new games have come into your house this season, I hope you enjoy them and pass along your recommendations for your favorites!

Merry Christmas!

We want to wish all of our friends near and far a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
These past few days have been full of visits with friends and holiday activities. the other night we bundled up and got in the car to go look at Christmas lights. In our area, the newspaper lists all the addresses of the houses with the most lights, known as The Tacky Light Tour. we set out to look at a few of those and had a great time, rating each one we saw.
Christmas Eve started early as our children's church service is at 3pm. Ellie sang with the preschool choir at the beginning of the service. After church, we had birthday cake for Jesus at home and the kids each opened the gifts they had gotten for each other. Then we decided to go to the movies to see The Tale of Despereaux. Wow, we were one of only 4 families in the whole theater for the 5:10 showing. It was great! After the movie, we came home to have a Ham dinner, read the Christmas story, take some pictures in our pj's and set out cookies for Santa.
Christmas Morning began at 7am, with the kids all very eager to see what Santa brought!!! The unwrapping only took about an hour, everything opened by 8:15. They all really enjoyed what they received. Ellie, though, wins the prize for being most content all day. She has played and played with her toys all day long without even being aware of anything around her. At one point (1pm),, she looked out the window to see her brother and sisters in the back yard with their friends and she said, "oh, are we getting clothes on today?" So funny! Well, it's now 5:30pm and she is still in her pj's so she is all ready for bed already!
We have my Dad's famous Christmas Stew in the oven and our waiting to dive into that soon. It just isn't Christmas without the stew!
Everyone's favorite gifts
Bethany- pink digital camera
Sam- Ipod
Felicia- Sansa Fuze MP3 player
Ellie- stuffed unicorn in a pet bed from Build-a-Bear

school party, skate night

On Thursday, the 18th, Felicia had her school holiday party, which I helped out at. All the 4th grade classes (there are 5 at her school) rotated classrooms to do different activities. they had a book exchange activity, a craft, games, snack etc.
I was in the snack room where we handed out to every class a brownie and juice box. When each class came in, they lined up to also make their own trail mix, which consisted of skittles, chex cereal, pretzels and m&m's. They could also get some powdered sugar in their baggie to shake it all up in. Now, the kids loved this, of course, but it just made me want to gag!

Later that evening, it was the school's monthly skate night fundraiser at the local skate rink. I promised Felicia we could go because she missed all of the fall ones due to cheerleading practices. We went with her two best friends, Brooke and Taylor. Even I skated and let me tell you, it has been a while since my feet were in rollerskates! But, like riding a bike, you don't really forget, and soon Felicia and I were racing each other around the rink. It was a fun day and I was exhausted when we got home!

Make It Take It

On the last day before holiday break at Ellie's preschool every year, they have a Make It Take It day where the parents come with their kids to make Christmas ornaments together, then eat and socialize. It is a really neat little event and we usually make about 6 ornaments to hang on the tree. Everyone brings food to share and we get to talk with the other parents and our child's teacher.Ellie was so excited to go to this, she talked about it for days.

Good Morning

What are mornings like at your house? Mornings at our house start at 5:30 when I am the first one to get up and I get to enjoy the peace and quiet of the house while everyone is still asleep. This is when I am usually found on the computer. Sam is the next to wake up between 6:30 and 7am. He is a quick riser, getting dressed before he even comes downstairs. I have to wake Bethany at 7 because the middle school bus comes at 7:45. She stays in her room to get ready and doesn't usually emerge until 7:30. She is quiet in the morning, but always gives me a hug and kiss before she walks out the door. Ellie wakes up happy and buubly and can usually be heard from her room singing or playing between 7 and 7:30. She likes to eat breakfast right away. Her favorite is a waffle with syrup or cereal. Felicia is the last to wake up. I have to wake her up on school mornings by 8am at the latest. Her bus doesn't come until 8:55, so she gets to sleep later. Her friend comes most mornings at 7:30, though , when her Mom goes to work, so I try to wake her before Brooke arrives. Felicia is slow to wake up and doesn't even eat breakfast very often. Steve gets up around 7:30, comes down for coffee and goes back up to get ready for work. Once everyone is awake, it's of course the usual eat , make lunches, pack your backpack, get dressed, brush teeth and hair etc. that happens at everyones house.

School Projects

Remember the days when a book report meant you read the book, then wrote a summary about it on lined paper and maybe had to give an oral report in front of the class?

These days, a book report is always a unique experience. Felicia is turning one in today that was a Postcard book report where she had to write out a full page-sized postcard to a friend talking about the book, create a stamp for it and draw a picture from the book on the back side. We've had cereal box book reports which involved completely covering the box and doing something different on each side of the box per the instructions from the teachers. Sam is doing a BINGO book report right now in which there is a Bingo card with several different activities and he has to choose one row of activities to complete.

Other school projects we've worked on just this month have been Bethany's edible cell project, where we had to make a cell and label with all the parts of a cell and it all had to be edible and Sam's atom project which he chose to construct an atom out of Legos.

Some of our past favorite projects have been our school's Parade of States (5th graders do this every year). Each child is assigned a state, they build a representation of that state that has to be put on wheels (skateboard, wagon etc.). The kids parade them around the bus loop for the whole school and it is fun to see the creativity of different projects.

Also, the third graders every year have a History Lives project where each child becomes a historical figure for a day, dresses up in costume and memorizes a paragraph about that person .

The gym gets set up as a "museum" and the kids all stand or sit in different spots. the parents and other students in the school come to the "museum" and if you push the "button" on a particular child's hand, the y have to say their memorized speech about who they are and what made them important in History. Last year Felicia was Helen Keller.

Great Idea!

My friend Susan always has these great ideas and this is one for Christmas. If you have young kids and lots of Christmas books (we do), take each story book and wrap them individually and put them under the tree. When it's time for a story before bed, each child gets to take a book and unwrap it ! They never know what book they're going to get and you'll have all of the books read by the end of the season instead of reading the same one over and over!
Thanks, susan, I'll have to adopt this idea next year!

Trimming the tree

The other night we got our tree. Yes, we still get a real one, I love the scent of a real tree.

I also thought it might be a good opportunity to get a photo for the Christmas cards I hadn't ordered yet. I took about 2 dozen photos of the kids, but didn't love them, so when you receive your card this year, it won't be any of these photos!

Steve brought the box of ornaments in from the garage and I organized each child's ornaments into individual piles while they waited so they could each hang their own. They started hanging while I was still pulling things out of the box and by the time I looked up, the tree was nearly done!! They are quick!!!

The Last Egg

Like Christmas Letters, I am always posting the fun and cheery stuff in our lives, but we all know that real life is full of moments we'd like to forget.

This past Saturday, we had almost a full day of free time and I thought it would be fun to bake Christmas cookies. The kids are always begging to make the cut out kind, so I set out to make the dough and Felicia wanted to help. Now, I had already been grumpy because the kids had been testing my patience earlier, but I was trying to snap out of it with this new activity. I was getting out the ingredients to start the dough and asked Felicia to get out the egg and hold on to it for a minute. She was so eager to crack that egg, that she didn't listen, let go of the egg, which rolled off the counter and onto the floor. And lo and behold, it was THE LAST EGG! Needless to say, we didn't get cookies baked that day and I remained grumpy a while longer!

So , even though things don't always go according to plan, we can at least look back at these moments and laugh. Bethany was already bringing up this incident later that night!

Santa and SNOW

This weekend I took Ellie to see Santa. At 4, she is no longer scared of the big Jolly man and already she is fairly intuitive. After sitting on his lap, she came to me and said "That was not the real Santa, his beard can come off". I was pretty surprised she could tell Santa was wearing a fake beard, but she still enjoyed the experience and she still knows that the REAL Santa is busy up in the North Pole right now getting ready for his big ride on Christmas Eve.

On Saturday night, here in Richmond, we had SNOW falling for a few hours. Now, to fill you in on how exciting this is, we haven't had much snow fall here for a long time. Every year we get a dusting or two, which is what this was, but we haven't a decent snow in 3-4 years. In fact, 3 years ago, I bought my kids a tobaggan sled at costco that three kids could fit on at one time. It still sits in the garage with the tags still on it!!

So, while Saturday night's snow was only a dusting, it held the promise of maybe more to come soon! The kids had a blast throwing snowballs, eating the snow and building a (tiny) snowman!!!

Decorating--REdecorating

Well, our whole house seems to be going under a transformation. The Christmas boxes came in from the garage two days after Thanksgiving and I spent two days decorating the house for the Holiday, with some help from the kids, who want to pull out everything faster than I am ready for. For the first year in probably 15 years, we are not putting the candle lights in the windows!
I wanted lights on two trees outside that we had never lit before and Steve made a deal with me that he would light those if we lost the candles. He thinks they are a pain to turn on and off every evening. We agreed to get the ones with sensors on next year! Anyway, the house looks great and near the end of that mess, the kids begged us to switch their rooms around. Now, let me back up here for a second...
We had promised the kids after finding out that we were not moving that we would let them move rooms AFTER Christmas. Well, they wore us down from all of their excitement and willingness to pitch in, that we relented under the condition that they understood there was not going to be painting going on yet or new bedding purchased!!
Every child moved to a different room, and I now have an "office" for my scrapbooking in Bethany's old room! Bethany wanted Ellie's room, because it has a walk-in closet, Sam wanted Felicia's because it is up on the third floor and he has his own bathroom, Felicia wanted Sam's because she didn't like being on the third floor, and Ellie got the larger room over the garage because she has all the big toys (kitchen set, Barbie house, Dollhouse etc.). So, now it is done and everyone is happy.
I haven't taken any pictures yet, will post when I do.

Thankful

It's been a while since I've updated. We've been so busy since Steve came home a few days before Thanksgiving. We are so thankful he is home with us and even though our plan didn't work out with the new job and selling the house, we understand and accept that God has other plans in store for us right here in Richmond.
Through the month of November, I tried to take pictures and write down daily something I was thankful for. Some were obvious (friends,family), some were humorous (Gymboree Circle of Friends sale, price of gas as it kept going down, that my kids all listened to their music with earbuds in!) and others were things I needed to stop and really be grateful for, such as having heat to make my house warm, a great hobby like scrapbooking to create lasting memories for my family, supportive and helpful neighbors. It was a neat exercise and I hope to do it every year.