Today was a down day as far as our activities go. I had planned on making ornaments with the girls but a migraine had other plans for our day. Instead, the kids just played all day long. They read, ran around outside, built with blocks, basically just had fun being kids!
We read from our Jesse Tree book during the day and tonight with Daddy, we continued on our journey with Jotham. Tomorrow is E.'s turn to light our candle. She's very excited.
Like our paper cups?
I have loved the music at Jen's blog, http://homeschoolblogger.com/jengresak/ , yet couldn't figure out how to get the code onto my blog! She graciously took the time and sent me the code. If you want to listen to the music on my videoshow up above, make sure you scroll down a little to the player on the right sidebar and turn off the music that 's playing there first.
Thank you Jen! You're awesome.
Ok, so it's really Monday, not Saturday but here's my entry nonetheless!
Theme: Light
This is a fire we were sitting at last night at the garden. It was a beautiful mesquite fire. Warm, fragrant and cozy.
We got home too late last night to post so here is Sunday's activities.
Along with our Jesse Tree study we also are reading through Jotham's Journey.
This is our first year to read through this book. Last night we started the journey w/ Jotham as he starts his journey to find his family. We lit our first candle and sang some Christmas carols.
Last night we went to Las Noches de las Luminarias at the Desert Botanical Garden.
The garden paths are lit up w/ 1,000's of hand-lit luminaries and the trees have white christmas lights throughout their branches. It turns the whole garden into a magical place. There are various musical entertainment groups scattered throughout the garden as well. We listened to several of the artists but the favorite was the handbell choir. My oldest is learning Carol of the Bells right now on the piano. She really doesn't like the song, crazy I know. We have told her the song is supposed to imitate the sound of bells. Well, wouldn't you know that the last song we listened to w/ the hand bells was Carol of the Bells. I think she enjoyed the song when it was being performed by a hand bell choir much more than when she's the one performing it!
These were really neat "trees". They had them scattered throughout the garden. What they are are the blooms of an agave or century plant, covered in red foil or paper and then decorated. Very clever and beautiful.
EARS n the courtyard outside where we listened to the hand bell choir.
They had these beautiful snowflake ornaments in a gazebo at the entrance to the gardens. The night was really nice. The temperature was cold enough to feel like we are in December but not so cold we couldn't enjoy walking around. The kids had a really good time and are talking about "When we go next year..."
On the swingset front, we have the crossbeam up connecting the two towers. Now we need to put the supports in all the joints and add the accessories for stability (and fun) and the swingset will be done! Maybe next weekend?
Every year I give the kids a special ornament. This year I had a little trouble finding just the right ornament. When I was out w/ my 7 year old today we popped into a Hallmark store and looked at the ornaments. I was able to find four of them that fit for the four oldest.
For E. She really enjoys The Chronicles of Narnia. A. found this ornament today and thought it was perfect for E.
Lucy Through the Wardrobe
I have several Frosty Friends ornaments from when I was younger that my mother gave me. Every year A. just loves to look at these so this year I got her this:
R. was a little tougher but this ornament caught my eye because I thought it looked a bit like her. She doesn't agree, but maybe through the years it will become a dear ornament to her.
And for my precious S. who loves trucks and tractors so much, this is the ornament for him:
For all of my children's First Christmases I get a Precious Moments "Baby's First Christmas" ornament. So, this is J's.
Here are the kids, minus baby Gill, w/ their new ornaments:
For the past several years we read a Christmas book every night. Right now my Christmas books are buried in the garage behind some bookshelves we removed to redo a bedroom, I'll have to post pictures of that another time E. drew the pictures and E & A painted it. It turned out really good. The theme, of course, was fish! We just haven't put the bookshelves back in, so I can't get to all of my Christmas decorations yet, including our holiday books. But, typically a book or two is left out of the box when I put everything away so we did get to read this book tonight. This was a present from Aunt Laura several years back and is still a favorite. We are big Eric Carle fans and this book just makes me smile every time we read it and press the button.
The kids Christmas present arrived yesterday and we started putting it together today:
With 10 boxes weighing over 600 pounds, we are just at the beginning of assembly of our new swingset! We didn't do too bad. We got both towers assembled today before the sun set. Tomorrow we'll see how much further we get!
Since Missey's passing last March and through one of her more memorable posts (out of many) http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/HeartSchooling/57915/ I had been thinking about how I wanted to spend this December with my children. I purposed early on in this year to take this month to just spend time being a family again. Not full of schedules and to-do lists. Being just a mom again, not Mom and Teacher. Because, truth be told, I spend more time in Teacher mode than I do in Mom mode.
I've compiled a list of things to do with my kids this month. My goal is to attempt to do (at least) one of these activities everyday for the entire month of December.. Some things will be small and others will be big. Either way the goal is to make a memory. I'm going to have a mixture of baking, handiwork, crafts, reading and serving others. I'll try to post a picture of what we've done every day.
As we closed our last book today for the remainder of the year it was with great excitement and anticipation of our month ahead. This will be our first big break since right before the baby was born last February. I think we all are ready to have fun just being a family again.
One of our daily activities will be working through Ann Voskamp's book The Glorious Coming A Jesse Tree Advent Celebration.
You can read more about The Glorious Coming and Ann here at her blog:
http://holyexperience.blogspot.com/2006/11/jesse-tree-devotional.html
We read day 2 tonight and all pondered the consequences of sin entering the perfect world God created. My 5 year old said, in all her youthful wisdom, "I wish satan had never become jealous of God. Then we could be having fun with Jesus in the Garden right now." My 9 year old added, "Yeah, we wouldn't need this book then." Meaning, Jesus wouldn't of had to die for our sins if satan hadn't rebelled. Wouldn't that be a delight? Talking with Jesus in the beautiful Garden God made for us?
Today, well tonight really, we went to Toys R Us to buy gifts for the 5 children we picked off our Salvation Army Christmas Angel Tree at the mall yesterday. We picked 5 children for each of our children. We had fun scurrying around the store looking for just the right gift for our Angel Tree children. I have one gift that is coming in the mail next week. Once that arrives we'll head back to the mall and drop our gifts off. I don't have any pictures of Toys R Us, but I think you all know what they look like on the inside.
I'm looking forward to tomorrow and all the adventures it will hold.
For Sean http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/sean , a six year old boy in NZ w/ cancer. Read his blog and pray for this precious boy and his family.
