a little Christmas

I hope "you all" had a Merry Christmas! Here's a little glimpse into our Christmas this year ... These first two pix are from a few days before Christmas ... December 19 ... which had been a busy day. A "relative" Christmas party and a few errands at the mall. So here we are at Panera ... recovering from the insanity of the mall. The place was almost empty ... so it was nice and calm :) Christmas Eve ... I didn't send out Christmas cards this year ... but this would have been a good picture for it! Just pretend I did ;) Not an easy task to get all four kids ~ mostly because one is a baby ~ looking the same direction and trying to smile!

My mother by her feast ... I tease her that she calls everything swedish ... swedish meatballs, swedish sausage, swedish tea cakes, swedish kringle, swedish coffee ... swedish buns, swedish potatoes, swedish vegetables ;)
Christmas Day ... this feast was at my in-laws ... prime rib this year

Father and Son ...

Father and Son and ... legos!

Dessert ... my mother-in-law always has a heaping platter of berries ... a beautiful sight in the winter :)

And this here is a photo of my largest cross-stitch project to date ... it took me nine hours! I haven't really cross-stitched other than a little bit as a child ... but I have a tradition ~ which might not go on forever ... I'm running out of ideas ~ of giving my mother-in-law a handmade gift. She collects birds ... so this was my idea for the handmade portion of her gift this year. Actually, this picture is before it was finished. My mother helped with sewing a back and a loop on it ... which made it a little ornament or knob decoration :)

a little snowboarding

Halo is on Buddy's first snowboard (from last Christmas) ... and having a grand time!
Buddy is on a new one that we picked up yesterday. He was ready for a more challenging snowboard ... with boot straps and without a hand rope. (The sledder is Foofie. She tries to snowboard too ... but it scares me a bit.)

a little ambitious

My two oldest kids are a bit ahead (of government standards) in their schoolwork ... and this doesn't always thrill them. So ... I sometimes have to tell them that it's actually a good thing. They, however, think that since they're ahead ... that perhaps they can take a year off at some point to do important stuff ... like raise ducks and build a shed (which would be their police station). I have explained to my children a few times that it doesn't really matter what "grade" they are in ... or what "grade" is on the front of their textbook ... or if they go through one math book during the school year ... or two. It only matters that they are being challenged and that they are doing their best. So one day ... I was telling the kids that if they continue to be ahead grade-wise ... they could probably start college early (like many other homeschoolers).

Halo and Buddy both responded to this by saying, "I don't want to go to college."

"Okay, that's fine," I said ... "But ... you might change your mind."

Four year-old Foofie was listening in ... and interjected, "I can't wait to go to college!"

She wasn't kidding ...

Yesterday, she was pestering me to get her a cursive book or else print off some cursive sheets online. (As you will see ... her penmanship still needs a little improvement though.) And the day before? She was copying a list of Halo's fifth grade spelling words! An eager student is a joy to her teacher :)

One of the spelling words was breathtaking ... I explained to her that it a word for something amazing ... like a breathtaking view. "No," she disagreed, "that's what they do at the doctor's office. They take your breath."

a little reader

Here is Foofie on lesson 52 of this wonderful reading book ... Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. This is the third child we've used it for and it still works :) Teaching your child to read really can be fun!

a little parable parody

None of you know this ... but I'm a budding songwriter ;) My secret's out! Actually, "budding" is pushing it ... because I never hope to bloom or sprout or the like. Some of my titles include ... A Peck and a Peck, Hungry Girl in the Backseat, Lullaby, I will sing to the LORD, That's My Name, and O~B~E~Y. The songs just sort-of happen ... they're not planned ... which might be obvious given the titles :)

Anyway, thirteen days ago ... it was Sunday and I was at church. During the sermon, the pastor said, "ninety-nine sheep came home" ... and a song immediately began to germinate in my head. By the way, the rest of the song was developed that afternoon and evening ... I did hear the remainder of the sermon ;) You see, about a month before, Jeff and I were listening to some old eighties songs on youtube. One of these flashback songs was Ninety-Nine Red Balloons by Nena ... and it had kind-of been stuck in my head ever since that night. So ... when Pastor King said ninety-nine sheep came home ~ which you'll notice has three syllables like red balloons ~ inspiration struck ;)




ninety-nine sheep went home
one got lost where did she go?
the shepherd searched all over town
a looking for that hundredth one

he searched for her ... all night long
calling her with his sheep song
in the meadow, near the wheat
ninety-nine fluffy sheep went bleat ...

ninety-nine sheep went on home
one got lost where did she go?
he hurried and scurried all around
until at last his sheep was found

he put it on his shoulders

joyfully he traveled home
he called his friends "REJOICE with me!"
and ninety-nine fluffy sheep went bleat ...
bleat. bleat.
bleat. bleat. bleat. bleat.

{The full story can be found in Luke 15:3-7}

And here's one from my older camera ... I think it's brighter???

a little backgammon

A couple weeks ago, Jeff and I were thinking of doing something fun ... shocking, I know ;) Anyway, we don't really watch TV ... tennis wasn't an option ... and scrabble ~ I hate to say this ~ but it has lost some of its appeal since I began playing online scrabble. So ... what we were to do??? Dishes and laundry??? Then I remembered ... BACKGAMMON!!! Jeff taught me how to play when we were in Florida last winter and it was pretty fun. Being that it was late at night ... we couldn't run out and buy a backgammon board ... but I figured there would be a printable board online. I googled "printable backgammon board" and came up empty ... perhaps there are copyright restrictions? So ... I decided to make my own. How hard could it be???

I started with a ruler and lots of measuring and then hand-coloring the triangles (to be accurate, they are called points). After coloring about six points, I decided that cutting the triangles from colored paper and pasting them on cardstock would be quicker ... so I cut out twenty-four triangles with my paper cutter. It was faster! Next, I glued them on the cardstock ... but it was curling a bit at the edges. So ... I made it a tad smaller to fit in our copy machine. Then, I made a color copy of the board and finished it off by tucking it in a document laminating page. Ta~da! Lots of fun is in our future now ;)

a little processing

"Does it hurt when you have a baby?" Foofie asked.

"Yes."

"Do you cry?"

"It's actually more like screaming."

"I think I'm going to stay small ... I'll tell Jesus I need to stay small," Foofie stated.

"When your tummy gets huge again and you're going to have another baby ... it will be a girl because we just had a boy. But maybe it will be a boy. We could name him East. Or we could name him West. If he was East, we could call him Easter. Do you like East or West, Mamma?"

"Of those two, I'd pick West."