Christmas 2010

Opening presents

Experiencing firsts

Trashing the living room

Being girly

New toys

White Christmas

Snowballs

and snowmen

White day-after-Christmas

snowflake catching

Snow angels

More firsts

And Baby Makes 7

Introducing...

Annika Lise

Born December 22, 2010

at 4:37 pm

6lbs 14 oz

19 inches

All settled at home now, details later...

The Escape Artist

I am sure most people know that goats are known for their escape tactics. They can be hard to contain sometimes. We have a chain-link fence around 3 sides of their yard which contains them just fine, but on the fourth side we have a barely 4ft tall wire fence separating the goats from the dogs and chickens. And Bella likes to jump.

It started with running as fast as possible and running on all 4 legs sideways up the fence. Then she pushed really hard and bent the wire somewhat and half jumps, half climbs. She's very proficient now.

Yesterday Rylan came into my room and said 'There is a goat in the kitchen" and there has been twice so far today too. How is she breaking in to the house?


She watched the dogs come in and out while eating the bushes next to the deck...

Merry Christmas!

Since the little one is refusing to budge (now 5 days overdue) I had to go ahead and order this year's Christmas cards without her....

Midnight Snowflakes Christmas 5x7 folded card

Turn your photos into personalized Christmas cards.

View the entire collection of cards.

The boys were less than cooperative- or maybe during the after dinner witching hour wasn't the best photo opp- but I managed a couple good shots. So....

Merry Christmas

from

It's a Boy's Life!

Christmas Cards Are Coming

Every year I order photo cards to send out for Christmas. It's the easiest way to send a recent picture of the boys while sending out our holiday greetings.

So each year, once we set up our tree, we get the boys together and force them to pose. I snap a zillion pictures and hope to get one that is worthy of the honor of being on our yearly photo card.

Once the picture is chosen I head on over to Shutterfly to choose which Christmas card I want to use for that year. They have a great selection of Christmas Photo Cards. Anyone could find one that suits their needs- and now you can search for more than just a design. You can search by color, size, paper type, how many pictures on the card, etc.

This year I will be running a little late on ordering my cards. I want our new addition to be present in the card....so we have to wait till she makes her appearance before taking our yearly picture. Not to mention the birth announcement photo card I always send out, so this year's cards will be double stuffed. Shutterfly has a nice selection of birth announcements too and I've never shopped on the pink side of the site :)

And if you are looking for other holiday gift ideas....my mother-in-law carries her Shutterfly Photo Book around with her just so she can show off her grandsons. And their calendars are a way to make memories last even longer.

...and to any other bloggers out there, if you hurry you can get in on Shutterfly's Holiday Card promotion and you can get 50 free holiday cards for yourself!

Christmas Crafts

We had a crafting get together this week. We set up stations with 4 different crafts for the kids to rotate through.

Beaded egg ornaments:

We make these every year at our house. Usually we paint them but due to time restraints this time we decorated either with Sharpies or decoupaged paper.

Once decorated they applied Mod Podge to help strengthen the shells to prevent cracking.

Yarn wrapped bottles:


Surprisingly the younger kids found this project easier than a lot of the bigger kids. They don't have as much perfectionism running trough them just yet.

Beaded candy cane and wreath ornaments:


This was a popular one. Most of the kids went back to make a second or third once they were done with all the others.


Paper Circle Ornaments:


Simple, but they look great when they are done...I think Cale made at least 3 of them


and look great in a bunch on the tree....

Greek Day

Last week we got together with some friends to do some activities on Ancient Greece.

We started off with Metric Olympics. With activities like the straw javelin...


and the right hand marble grab

and the left hand (or in this case 2 hand) sponge squeeze


They made an estimate on how far they could throw, how many grams of marbles and how many mL they could squeeze and then measured the actual. This used lots of team work!


Once we were done with the Olympics we took a break for lunch- stuffed pitas and Greek honey cake- then the kids drew and wrote on "wax tablets" (aka vegetable shortening)

And made batik paintings.


We finished the day with paper mosaics: