New Year's Eve Entertainment

One of the things we did to pass the time this evening was to hold our own Nerf wars. I was the photojournalist who occasionally found herself in the line of fire.









Happy New Year!

The Day After

Today was a do-nothing day, which was a perfect agenda for the day after Christmas!

Tyler spent most of the day doing experiments with his snap circuit set. It has instructions for 300 experiments, plus he was trying to create his own. He caught on to the concept pretty quickly and did a really good job with it. (Don't tell him this is educational, too!) His last experiment of the evening was creating a light activated burglar alarm, which he thought was pretty cool.

Danielle played with her new doll most of the day. She played with a lot of her craft things today, too, and even tried to cut out some felt dresses for her Barbies. Since she only cut out one side of the dress, though, she thought maybe she could tape the dresses on. It was cute.

Ron and Tyler also rebuilt the chaos tower to a horizontal configuration. There's just something about the balls moving and the noise of it all that's mesmerizing.


It was another great day.

Merry Christmas!

Once again we had a wonderful Christmas day. Tyler snuck into our room at 5:13 this morning and excitedly whispered to me that Santa had come. He also told me that he could see that some of the reindeer food on the back steps had been eaten, but he couldn't tell about the milk and cookies. Of course all that info was followed by, "Can we open presents now?!!" We managed to hold him off until 8, but I'm not sure how much sleep he actually got in those 3 hours.

The kids are allowed to open their stockings before breakfast. We also let them exchange gifts with each other & us. Santa's gifts get opened after breakfast.

The kids bought each other pencils (without knowing what the other picked out).

Tyler bought Ron a tape measure key chain. Danielle got him 2 pins (a football helmet & a red, white, and blue ribbon). Tyler gave me a pretty bookmark. Danielle gave me a butterfly pin, a bookmark, and a blue beaded necklace. They were so proud of the gifts they picked out for us.

I put together a basket of art & craft supplies for both kids. We got the credit for these gifts, the rest were from Santa.


Santa found an angel costume 75% off after Halloween and thought it would be great for dressing up. Danielle loved it.


Tyler's snap circuit set.

Danielle made the sand art bottles that were in her craft basket.

Her #1 request this year was for a special 23" doll in a very specific Christmas dress.

Tyler's #1 request this year was for a Chaos Tower. It's won several awards and is also approved for use in homeschooling physics curriculums, I believe. Don't tell Tyler it's educational, though. He and Ron spent at least 4 hours building it today. They followed the instructions this time, but there are so many different ways this could go together. Tyler has plans to rebuild it horizontally tomorrow.

Merry Christmas to All!

And may you find more than socks under your tree Christmas morning!

:)

Christmas Break

Ron took this week and next week off, so we are all home for Christmas break until after New Year's. Yesterday we took the kids to see the movie Bolt, which was really good. Today we stopped to visit Ron's grandma and then took the kids to see a Lego exhibit. The Lego exhibit was really cool. It was so detailed. Here are some pictures, but they really don't do it justice.

The taller, red building was designed to look like the building that was housing the Lego exhibit. It took 12000 Lego bricks and cost $1000 just for that one building! A team of 25 people from a local Lego club assembled the exhibit.

There were a couple tables of Legos for the kids to play with. They were encouraged to design their own sculpture and display it. Tyler made a giraffe. There was also a scavenger type list of items to find within the display. It was a perfect exhibit for our kids.

After dinner tonight we made dangling snowman decorations, which we hung in our family room windows. I got the original design from the Family Fun website, but I changed it some.

Tomorrow we start our Christmas celebration by exchanging gifts with my mom, stepdad, and brother.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Our Good Citizen

Tyler was recognized at school today for being a good citizen. Every month the teachers select a boy and a girl from their classrooms who, as Tyler said, "look for trash under the tables in the lunch room and show respect to everyone". His name was announced during announcements to the school this morning, he got to wear a big green sticker stating he was chosen for the citizenship award, he got a "special" blue pencil, and he got excused from class for awhile to enjoy a special treat with the principal and the other "citizens" this afternoon. He also got a very nice certificate. This was an honor that he has wanted since he heard about it in kindergarten last year. (Last year the kindergarten classes weren't included.) We are really proud of him for working hard to achieve his goal!

Danielle's Night

Tonight was Danielle's night to shine. She had her Christmas program tonight. Earlier in the day her teacher notified us that Danielle's drawing had been picked to be the cover for the evening's program. She was so proud! Here is a picture of the program:


The animals to the left of the stable are a bull and a camel (with a little man on top). The ones to the right are sheep. They had some of the older classes color her picture, so some of the programs were in color, which was kind of neat. Of course, we grabbed several to keep.

She looked beautiful and did a wonderful job. I think she had fun, too. For the grandparents that couldn't make it (and anyone else who wants to watch), here are the videos of her singing.



Searching for the King


If I Were a Camel


Mary and the Angel


In a Little Stable (all the preschool & kindergarten classes)

Christmas Cookies

I made Christmas cookies with the kids today. They took turns cutting out the cookies (and eating the dough) this afternoon. After dinner this evening they decorated a dozen of them. Fortunately I didn't let them decorate all the cookies. As you can see, theirs turned out a little crunchy.

This picture is for Mamaw. (I didn't think you'd know how to open an email attachment.) :) Doesn't she look pretty?!

Our Gingerbread House

We built a gingerbread house today. We didn't have anything else to do, and it was too cold to spend any time outdoors - seemed like a perfect 12-days-before-Christmas activity.