Christmas/Winter Crafts-Days 1-5

I have a goal to do a Christmas craft/activity with the kids every single day of December up until Christmas.  So far we've done it, and it's been fun.  I am letting them take turns deciding what type of craft we're going to do. Their first turns, Neely chose Rudolph, Cason chose a yeti, and Paige chose a Christmas tree.  The very first day of December though, I had them do handprint wreaths.   

 Paige's:

Cason's:

Neely's:

She insisted on having the pink showing through.  :)

Tuesday we didn't do a craft, but decorated cookies.  We did them with the Cassons in the morning, and again with the Austins, after the big kids came home from school.  I found a great sugar cookie recipe, finally! 

 

On Wednesday we did Cason's choice-the Yeti.  From left to right, Cason's, Neely's, mine, and Paige's.

Thursday was Neely's choice-Rudolph.

Paige decided hers was Clarice from the movie.  She didn't want to do the handprint antlers because Clarice doesn't have any-even though Cason and I told her the movie is wrong and with reindeer the females have antlers too.  Ha.  Her Clarice is quite cute without them, anyway.

On Friday we made Paige's Christmas trees.

Of course we're watching lots of Christmas movies and having Christmas themed lunches too.  :)

Decorating Day

We decorated for Christmas the Saturday after Thanksgiving.  We didn't see any lots set up to sell Christmas trees, but we didn't want to wait so we settled for Home Depot.  When we got there we were surprised to find that it was the workshop day, so the kids got to build a piggy bank.  "Santa" walked up and said hello, and our kids were not that excited.  They just said "hi" and went back to their work.  Ha!  Cason said he wasn't even the real Santa, his beard was fake.  :)

 

 Reed was getting bored watching...

 ...so eventually I took him with me to check out the Christmas decorations.  We had fun on the way there.

 While we were looking, an employee was stocking shelves and glanced up at Reed.  She said "Well hi there, cutie.  How are you?"  Reed looked at her for a few seconds, and then grinned and blew her the hugest, most dramatic, showy kiss of all time.  She loved it.  Then he proceeded to blow kisses to every shopper we passed.  Most didn't even see it.  He's a good boy.  He kisses, cuddles, and blows kisses constantly lately.  

However, I've even had him blow me angry kisses when he's mad at me.  It's pretty funny.

Anyway, soon we picked a tree and headed home to decorate.  As usual, we watched Rudolph while decorating.  It inspired Neely to draw some reindeer.

 

 Neely  was very pleased to be the one to put the star on the tree this year.

I mostly hung out watching, and unwrapping/handing out ornaments.

 

I came across this gem from the childhood of Jess-and he'd wrapped him EXTRA carefully in his own really big box with a bunch of bubble wrap stuff.  Apparently he's waited a year to see me laugh when I opened the huge box to find a tiny bear.  

He also says it's not Christmas until bear has taken his place at the top of the tree.  I'm sorry, "his RIGHTFUL place."

 Anyway, aside from a BIT of anger when a certain girl wasn't allowed to tear into the box of ornaments and was forced to wait for me to hand them out, we had fun.

 (side note-Paige has lost both top teeth recently)

The kids mostly decorated the tree themselves this year, except the lights, a few special breakable ornaments I put up top, and of course Bear.

We finished our night with the traditional eggnog and viewing of It's a Wonderful Life.  I'm always kind of surprised at how well our kids pay attention to a black and white movie that you wouldn't think kids would find that interesting.

Most of the kids paid attention, anyway.

 

A Boy and His Dog

I've said many times that Gia is the best dog ever.  She really truly is though.  I've known a lot of good dogs, but this one takes the cake.  She is so good with all the kids, but she and Cason have developed an extra cute relationship.  I hadn't noticed, but Jess mentioned a few weeks ago how she always finds him at night and sleeps near him.  I realized it was true.  Not many nights later, we had our movie night and when I was ready for bed I checked on the kids first.  Gia had cuddled up close to Cason and was pretty much spooning him.  Haha!

It's mutual too.  They're quiet about their love, but it's the little things.  Ha.  Like this morning I noticed Gia's collar was off.  Cason came home from school and casually mentioned "I took Gia's collar off to give her a break from it."  :)

Neely's First Book

I mentioned in my last post that Neely had written her first story.  It was not long before Halloween.  I wrote down the words for her as she dictated them to me, and after that I reread each page for her as she illustrated.  (I tried to keep up and write it word for word, occasionally spelling certain words to account for her cute pronunciation-like "Ghostez" for example)  

I sewed the pages together when she finished, and took a picture of each page to post here.

It's called"Ghostez and Bats Going on a Picnic With Neely and Mama"(FYI-I spelled "Ghosts" normally for a lot of the book because I was hurrying to keep up, but keep in mind, it is always definitely "ghostez")

 Page 1-"one day, there was some ghostez and bats.  And there were some girls and one boy.  There was a boy named Cason, and the big girl was mama, and the girl who was 7 was Paige, and the little girl was Neely and she was 3."

 Page 2-Then the ghosts asked 'Hey!  Do you want to go to a picnic?'  

Us:  "Sure." (She had a change of mind here) "Sorry, we can't, my mama has to clean.  But we sure could come to the park."

Ghost:  "That's where our picnic is!  At the park!"

 Page 3-"The bat got to the picnic as fast as he could and then said 'I got to the picnic as fast as I could.'  Cason said 'Me and mama and Neely got to here as fast as we could, too.'"

 

Page 4-"So the back of the bells were very far away..." (no idea what she was talking about here to be honest) "...and we said 'we have to go home now.  Bye.'"

 

Page 5-"Then Cason and Neely said 'Yay, we're home now' and Reed said that too.  Then the ghosts came too and the bat named 'Charlie Cha Cha' said 'You wanna have a sleepover?' and the ghosts said 'of COURSE we want to have a sleepover!'"

THE END