In addition to Little Bit getting some more 18" dolls for Christmas, Lexie let her move her (Lexie's) dolls, and some of the furniture under Lina's loft. One night when I went up to tell the girls goodnight, I couldn't resist snapping a picture of all FIVE dolls sleeping in Samantha's and Kit's beds :) If you look closely you'll also see there are at least two dogs sleeping at the foot of the beds :)We have had very little snow this winter, much to the girls' disappointment. I was kind of concerned, when I saw predictions of a colder than usual, wetter than usual, December and January, that it would mean LOTS of snow, but somehow the stars aligned so that the really cold days were dry and the (numerous) wet days were mostly at above freezing temperatures.
We did get a couple light snows, and I snapped a picture of two of one of them. Isn't it pretty (the oddly placed lights are just a reflection of our kitchen lights in the window. Though the on on the far right side of the picture kind of makes it look like there's a Narnia-esque lamp post in the woods doesn't it? :)
Silly Moccasin insists he wants outside in all kinds of weather and then almost instantly comes and sits by the door to come back in. This time I made him wait a few extra seconds while I took his picture :)One of Lexie's current
But look at how excited she is with her book! She hasn't finished it yet. I just reminded her today that it's due back to the library on Monday. But told her I'd ask the librarians about renewing it an additional time (I've renewed it as often as I'm allowed to online). But she's loving it! And constantly telling me about all the interesting things she's reading about (I try to be interested, but science SO isn't my thing . . . I love how interested she is though!).We had planned to go to Rodney's mom's house for Thanksgiving but Rodney was sick so we couldn't go. We rescheduled our visit for the middle of January and thankfully nobody got sick that time. While we were there the girls noticed that they have passed their Aunt Lynette in height. Not that they would rub that in or anything . . .
The electric heat pump in our house is in the attic, with the air vents all in the ceilings. Needless to say, especially with our beam ceilings (no insulation between the floors) and "rustic" wood floors that have cracks between the boards, that means that using the heat pump for heat results in overly warm bedrooms and a chilly main floor. All of us prefer the reverse . . . well, not the overly warm part, but we all like sleeping in cold rooms and it's nice to keep the main floor warm enough that our guests want to remove their coats, at least. So we've been using the basement wood stove quite a bit for heat. Needless to say that means the basement is toasty warm. So when the wood stove is on we'll often go hang out in the basement for read aloud time. The cats love the basement, and laps, for warmth so when our laps move to the basement it's an added bonus! I couldn't resist snapping this fun picture of (some of) my girls and (some of) their cats while we were reading one evening! On a side note, I'd been trying to figure out a way to have comfortable, portable/storable seating for the living room. We usually end up moving kitchen chairs in, and people can sit on the piano bench and hearth, but none of those options are very comfortable any my kids tend to complain when I ask them to take the less comfortable seating. And with using the wood stove, we also wanted some kind of seating in the basement but again, portable/storable so the space can also be used for kids to get their wiggles out. It finally occurred to me that butterfly &/or saucer chairs would work well for both. I ordered 2 butterfly chairs & 1 saucer chair to see which we liked better, would like to get a couple more, but it's working well in the basement and worked great to bring upstairs for Christmas :) 
During the library Ancient Civilizations class about the Greeks, the teacher asked for volunteers to help her model Greek clothing. Lexie volunteered :) I was also interested to see how well both girls did when the teacher divided the class into groups to do presentations. It was pretty simple and straight forward, they only had a few minutes to prepare and all the information they were supposed to present was given to them but working with a group of students you don't know, and then presenting the information up front isn't something my homeschooled kids have ever done before. Both Lexie and Ashlyn took charge in their group, found ways to include younger, shyer kids without pushing those kids out of their comfort zones. I was proud of them. And silly kids, thought it was "fun" to get to do something so school-like. Though Ashlyn did comment that she'd really hate having to do a project like that for a grade because what if the other kids in your group don't do it right (yes dear, that's why I always hated group projects in school!).
And that's at least a sampling of what we did in January :)
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