We didn't put up all of our ornaments this year. We went with a "less is more" theme in our Christmas decorating. :)
Josh works for a pretty awesome software company. They have a library of games you can check out. So Josh brought home Family Trivial Pursuit one night, and we all had fun playing it.
This girl won first place!
We thought it would be fun to make gingerbread houses this year! We'd never done it as a family. We made our own royal icing with Meringue Powder and it worked like a charm! We got the bulk candies from WinCo and used one box of WinCo brand crackers to make five houses. The whole project cost us less than $15, which is pretty cheap! Add some Christmas music and cinnamon/orange scent in your oil diffuser and you have a great family memory in the making! ;) We found our mini-house inspiration from this blog post.
Speaking of houses, we're still making this one our own...
This front door area is no longer so bright and clean though. Our kids used the doormat for what it's for, so no blaming them, but they wiped muddy boots all over this new mat. Hah! We're learning that white pavement is not so easy to keep clean here in the country this time of year. Oh well!
Reading time is bliss. I love the peacefulness. And it's always fun to then hear the kids share about what they are reading. Ben is half way through Charlotte's Web and Selah has been reading through the Little House series again. Jude has been reading about "life behind the wheel" (of race car drivers), and about outer space. He's fascinated by black holes, the core of the sun, and things like that. I've been reading about interest based learning, and the benefits of it for children.
Selah still loves listening to Adventures in Odyssey. All of our kids do.
I've always wanted to make ornaments for advent, to follow the Bible stories that all point to Jesus' coming, the birth of the Savior. So this was the year! Selah makes things out of clay quite often, so we thought it would be a fun medium to make our ornaments from. I love how they turned out. We have 25 total. Here's about half...
The kids have been taking turns reading the stories aloud and hanging the ornaments. We're reading Unwrapping the Greatest Gift by Ann Voskamp. It's hard to keep up with every night when we have things going on, so we keep having to "catch up." ;) But we're still enjoying it!
Fort building still happens around here, which I think is fun. My brothers and I did that often when we were kids, too. :)
Dishing up. I don't know why I took this pic. Maybe it's because everyone was looking so cute?
In one of my last posts I mentioned a simplified way of dinner cooking that's working well for us. We choose a meat and then add one of these grains or legumes, and lots of veggies. Often goat cheese and fresh herbs too, or Parmesan, yum! And fruit slices on the side. So in the meal above we did chicken/veggies stir fry with quiona, and sliced cucumbers, bell peppers, apples and oranges. The variety feels endless because there's so many combinations. I personally love mini lentils with brown rice on a bed of super greens, loaded with rosemary roasted squash, chicken and roasted garlic/cabbage.
I was inspired to cook this way after we visited a Mediterranean restaurant in DC, and this was the style of the meals, and our kids ate it all up! We all loved it. So on our flight home I googled "Mediterranean meals" and this book came up as a recommendation, so I read it, and we've enjoyed the mindset and some recipes! We love making the pumpkin waffles from the book. But I've also found a lot of basic, helpful info on Pinterest.
Matt and Gina had us over recently. We baked, frosted and decorated some yummy cookies with our left over gingerbread candy! The kids were thrilled to get to eat some of it!
Matt and Gina also hosted a fun Christmas party at their house with some of our closest church friends. All the kids loved playing together, while we adults had fun chatting, singing Christmas carols while Matt played the keys, and we played a funny game & snacked on lots of finger foods.
As per tradition, we went through the Pastega "Pepsi" lights a few times!
We always love it! Josh recorded the kids singing as we went through this and it's the sweetest little video. It made me think about how brief this season of life is, with young kids. I sure love these days.
Josh and I tackled all of our Christmas shopping in one day, or 99% of it. This was me at the end, "testing out" a kid bean-chair in Target. :)
My Grandpa, who we call Papa, turned 84 this month! Josh purposefully wished him a happy 83rd and he appreciated it. :)
One of my favorite things about my Papa is his smile and laugh. He's always smiling! It reminds me of his father, my Great Grandpa Jude.
We had a great time celebrating his birthday, and my mom asked that we take a pic of Grandma and Papa with all of their great grandchildren.
And while we were there, Evie took a picture of Mom, Wayne & their bunch.
Selah and I had fun on a field trip with our charter school. We got to paint a cardinal in the snow at the Young at Art Studio. There were probably 40 of us there painting, and it was really impressive, how they have it all down to a science. The technique was so simple. We traced the edge of a piece of paper to make our trees, then painted the non-tree areas a light blue. Then we took a thick paint chip sample (almost like a thin formica chip sample) and we put black paint on the edge, and we scraped it inside the white areas, to make the birch trees. Then painted three thin branches. Then painted a teardrop shape for the bird, with a tail, and the beak with black and orange. It took an hour, and we were so happy with the result! Plus it was fun to paint alongside some friends we've met through our distance learning charter school!
Can you tell she had fun? On the way home we went Christmas shopping together so she could get something for daddy and her brothers. Our kids have amazed us this year. They all have wanted to buy their siblings something special with their own hard earned money they've saved throughout the year. It's been sweet to see that they know exactly what they want to buy one another. Warms my heart. And Selah was so cute, because she budgeted a certain amount for each person, and on her own realized she'd need to make gift for her close friends instead of buy them things, because she wanted to keep a certain amount in savings. I just love seeing her mind work this way at such a young age. I'm so proud of her.
I hope you're all having a wonderful holiday season!
I know that Christmas is not always an easy season for everyone. It may bring up past hurts, or painful memories. I have a few friends going through very trying times right now and my heart is so heavy for them. I pray that you can know this season that God sees you, and knows exactly what you're going through. He loves you, and is reaching down to you. He would tell you to not fear, but to look to Him. He would like to trade your burdens for his freedom and friendship. He will walk this life with you and be your closest friend. He knows you. He loves you! You're not alone.
xo
No comments:
Post a Comment