Wrapping Up the Week of January 18-24

It's a good thing we made our trip to Mama and Papa's when we did, because apparently WINTER is here!

We came home from my parents' house on Sunday, in rain that kept threatening to change to freezing rain. Thankfully, we got home without any icy spots.

Lexie's been having fun with the sourdough starter. She made bread, cinnamon rolls (that she baked with apples on Sabbath morning, YUMMY!!!) , tortillas . . .

Our read aloud times this week were full of paper snowflake making, in preparation for the church social Saturday night. The girls had a blast, and made some BEAUTIFUL snowflakes. The floor of the school room now looks like it snowed in there, but such is life . . .

Otherwise it was a pretty quiet week. I like quiet weeks. . . we did school, we even got some cleaning done . . . it was good.

Friday, Little Bit realized that her hair is now short, and therefore can't be braided like Anna's (for the Frozen-themed church social Saturday night). When we had been shopping for the fabric to make the cape, we'd seen a brown fleece winter hat with the sides braided kind of like hair. Lexie and I had pointed out to Little Bit that the hat would look like Anna's hair, but at the time Little Bit didn't like it. NOW, the day before the party, she decided she HAD to have that hat. So, after making sure she knew that there were NO guarantees they'd still have the hats, I went and got her the hat LOL.

Friday night it started snowing . . . Sabbath morning we woke up to a winter wonderland!  Needless to say, church was cancelled. The snow was soft and pack-able and it wasn't too terribly cold outside. So, the girls headed out to build a fort and pull Little Bit around on the sled and generally revel in the winter wonderland!

By afternoon the roads were clear and we headed to the church social. The girls had made the snowflakes to hang from the ceiling, so we went early to help set up.

Obviously Little Bit went dressed head-to-toe Anna and joined Elsa, already there. They were SOOOOO cute running around together, I think everyone there asked them to pose in front of the winter background for pictures. They insisted that Lexie and Ashlyn call them Elsa and Anna . . . it was adorable, and they had a blast.

Of course by the time it was actually time for the social to start, both of them had decided they were too hot (honestly, Little Bit kept hers on a LOT longer than I expected her to) and both of them changed out of their costumes and into Frozen t-shirts and pants. Still cute, and by then another friend had gotten there.

While they were waiting for the social to start they settled themselves on a cart, out of the way, with their goldfish crackers and chattered away. It was adorable!

And to add to the adorable factor, today when Lexie and Ashlyn asked Little Bit what they were talking about her response was "I don't remember, that was YESTERDAY!"

The social was great. Yummy food, a pinata, fun games, some for the kids, some for the adults, one for the kids, but the adults kind of took over . . . an indoor snowball fight LOL. I think everyone had a good time.

By the time we helped clean up and came home, it was bedtime and another week was history.

Lexie at the church social

Wrapping Up the Week of January 4-10

Another quieter week. I could get used to this . . . :) 

We've slowly continued working on cleaning and rearranging the girls' room, and school room. . . as long as there's progress, I'm happy :)

I finally got around to growing a sourdough starter. Once it was ready to use, Lexie happily dug into my sourdough book . . . she made bread on Wednesday, challah bread (sort of, we cheated . . . just used our regular bread recipe and braided it. certainly nothing like store-bought challah bread (a while flour, sweet egg dough vs a simple whole wheat sourdough), but it's an easy recipe and gave us a chance to tweak that regular recipe to improve it from Wednesday's bread), and also on Friday, she made cinnamon rolls for Sabbath's breakfast. Again, some tweaking is needed, but they turned out great for a first attempt, and she's excited to keep playing with the recipe.

Ashlyn and Daddy are getting more serious about garden plans. . . still in the planning phase, but Ashlyn's been happily researching and reading and trying to pin Daddy down on what, exactly they're going to plant.

We finished our week on a cold, but satisfying note. The second Sabbath of the month is "Jean Sabbath" at our church. People come in jeans and church logo t-shirts and after (and before) church do various community service projects (breakfast at a soup kitchen, play games with kids at a children's home, etc). We usually join a group that goes downtown and passes out soup, sack lunches, etc to those in need. A couple months ago someone had donated some jackets and thermal shirts and people were soo appreciative. The girls and I decided to knit some scarves to pass out another time. We got several done, but they wouldn't have gone far if a friend hadn't heard what we were doing and asked if we'd also take donations of gently used items. She gave us bags and bags of scarves, gloves, hats, etc. that she'd accumulated over the years. So we sorted everything into boxes and took it downtown. Someone else had made a huge pot of vegetable soup and buttered bread to go with it. Other people had made sack lunches. It was COLD, I think the high was around 20 degrees. We could have given away soo many more pairs of gloves than we had, and everything went fast. I wasn't sure we'd give away all the scarves (besides the ones the girls and I had made, we had a BUNCH of donated ones) but they all went, and people asked for more. Lexie and Ashlyn spent most of their time passing out soup and bread, or a sack lunch to people. Little Bit was helping with the bread until she got too cold! I finally had her and Daddy go hang out in the warm car.  It was soo sad to see so many people in need, and soo appreciative of the little bit we were doing. 

Weekly Wrap-Up for the Week of December 28

Ahhhh . . . after the busyness of December, this past week was a very welcome week of relaxing . . .

New Years just isn't something we bother to make a big deal of in our house, we took down the Christmas and Hanukkah decorations, we fell back into our normal school routine . . . it was nice :)

The girls had decided, in the midst of the busyness of December, that they wanted to rearrange their bedroom. For awhile now, Ashlyn has craved a more "just my own" space. Lexie and Little Bit continue to be happy sharing a bed (I must admit, I hope they continue to be ok with that until we do the new addition (hopefully in a few years), because the space fits a double bed better than 2 more twin beds, and the sloped ceilings don't allow for bunk beds). So they got out the tape measure and figured out exactly how they want things. But . . . first there was/is LOTS of cleaning up to be done. That was one of this week's projects. They still have lots to do, but we managed to clear out the area that Ashlyn wanted for her bed, which included rearranging the schoolroom to make room for the sewing stuff in there. And, much to Ashlyn's excitement, by the end of the week she was all settled in her nook.

 One side of their bedroom had a closet built into one side and then, the previous owners, planning to use that entire room as a "dressing room/closet" had put closet rods across the rest of that side of the room. They're easily removeable but we've left them so far and Ashlyn chose that space as her nook, and hung curtains (that we had on their windows at the old house) on the outer rod to separate it from the rest of the room.

She decided awhile ago, that she'd rather sleep on the floor, instead of having a trundle bed under the double bed, so that made this move easier :)

She got the feather bed topper back out (that's what she used instead of a mattress at our old house) to use as a mattress, but during the day she kind of scrunches it up into the corner as a "chair" of sorts, giving her a place to sit, and the rest of the floor space free (otherwise the featherbed takes up the whole space).

There's no light in that space, so when we were using it for sewing, we had clamped a desk lamp onto one of the "closet rods", so she just continued with that, as lighting in her space.

The wall at the "foot of the bed" is for storage. She packed up the legos that were in a plastic drawer unit. Now she's using that as her dresser, and Lexie and Little Bit continue to use the shared dresser, which we moved closer to their bed.

When we shifted things around in the school room to make room for the sewing stuff, I had some "milk crates" that there wasn't really room for, so she took those to use as additional shelf space in her nook as well.

So that was the big project. It's still very much in progress, we need to do a bunch more rearranging and decluttering in the school room and the rest of their bedroom to get things to the place that we can try moving Lexie and Lina's bed the way they want it, and finish the rearranging, but Ashlyn's very happy.

And interestingly, at least for now, this change has brought her and Little Bit "closer". Little Bit is so excited that Ashlyn "invites her" into her space, and reciprocates by "inviting" Ashlyn to play with her on the bed.

In homeschool news we're back Bible Road Trip for Bible, the girls were concerned about remembering memory verses after taking December off to do Jotham's Journey, but with a few reminders, they're doing fine. We've been using Simply Charlotte Mason's suggested approach to memory verses for the past year plus, so we've accumulated quite a collection. Except I have them all nicely organized in an Evernote notebook instead of keeping track of index cards.

History's been all about the crusades, and Robin Hood. Lots of interesting books and videos about that time period, I'm enjoying learning right along with the kids.

Spelling Wisdom continues to be a good fit for us for language arts. Little Bit continues to enjoy writing, but shows no interest in reading, so we're going with that for now. I think she's starting to read bits and pieces without really realizing it, so time will tell, if she ever has to officially "learn to read" or if, as I suspect, she'll learn to read by writing :)

With such a nasty flu season going on right now, our science has focused on herbal cold and flu prevention, and care. Thankfully, so far, other than some minor sniffles over the holidays, we've not had to put any of the actual care ideas into practice. As we get more fully back into our normal school mode, we'll re-add astronomy back into the rotation. Lexie got tired of waiting for the rest of us to find time, and is reading Signs and Seasons at her own pace (it's looking like 2015 might be the year of her shifting almost entirely to independent work, choosing to read things to herself even if I'm reading them to Ashlyn and Little Bit).

So that's at least some of what's been going on around here.

Weekly Wrap-up for the Week of December 21

Wishing you a belated Merry Christmas!

Not surprisingly, the "busy trend" continued last week.

We made Dreidels, the girls made brownies, to round out their cookie-making.

We made yarn baskets (that I forgot to take pictures of) and the girls assembled the cookies into bags to put in the baskets as gifts.

We'd also found a recipe for "coal" (make rice crispy treats but use crushed oreo cookies instead of rice crispies) so the girls made "coal" for Papa and their uncles.

Tuesday night was the final night of Hanukkah. With all our menorahs it was quite the display :)

Wednesday we headed to my parents' house for Christmas.

We got there and the girls spent the afternoon helping Mama make food and decorations.

Christmas Eve we made pizza and the girls opened their Christmas Eve gifts:

Our traditional gifts for Christmas eve are books, audiobooks, games and/or DVDS (one per kid, but generally all to share). This year the books and audiobooks were more for the big girls, though the Adventures in Odyssey CDs should start to keep Little Bit's attention before too much longer, but the DVD was most definitely for Little Bit. I wasn't at an angle to get her face, but even in profile you can see how excited she was to get Frozen!

The other Christmas eve gift(s) was new nightgowns for each of the girls from Mama. In the past they've all matched, but when Mama found Hello Kitty Christmas flannel, she decided Little Bit needed that. The big girls were, of course, much too mature for Hello Kitty, so theirs are Snoopy :)

We settled in and watched Frozen while we enjoyed homemade pizza, and cookies/fudge/etc. for dessert.

Our final Christmas Eve tradition before bedtime is making monkey bread for Christmas Morning breakfast.

This year my mom made the dough ahead and froze it. She used a recipe for monkey bread dough that was a sweet dough (more like cinnamon rolls). Interestingly enough, I think we all agreed that we like it better with the plain bread dough that we normally use. Now I'm motivated to try making homemade bread dough and freezing it ahead next year instead of being lazy and buying frozen bread dough.

Christmas morning was stockings, breakfast, and then Papa and the big girls went to pick up my grandma from the Assisted Living Center.

When they got back with Grandma, we started presents. The girls were excited to watch Grandma open the cookies they'd made for her. It seemed like every time I looked over at her she was eating another cookie, so apparently they were a hit, hee hee.

They were also anxious to see Papa's reaction when they gave him "coal". He reacted with the anticipated "offense" at deserving nothing but coal.

Mama and Papa's presents for the girls this year included several hard-to-wrap items, so it was a Christmas of "treasure hunts".

The first treasure hunt led all three girls all over the house to find a dollhouse in the spare bedroom. It's a huge, handmade dollhouse (that I apparently didn't take a picture of) that a friend of my parents was making for his daughter and never finished.

Now the big girls get the fun of helping Papa finish it, and decorate it with wall paper, flooring, furniture, etc. Little Bit is already having fun playing with the dolls and furniture that came with it. Because of it's size, and the fact that it needs Papa's expertise to finish it, it will live at Mama and Papa's house. Proof that it was, indeed, a hit, came that evening when Little Bit wasn't sure she wanted to drive through a local drive-through lights display because she wanted to make sure she had time to play with the dollhouse before bed.

Another treasure hunt lead Little Bit to the playhouse where she found the world's largest stuffed giraffe, sigh . . . Mama and Papa tried to convince her that it should live at their house too, but she wasn't going for that idea. We DID decree that, since she shares a double bed with Lexie, it can only sleep in their bed if Lexie ok's it, which she's done once, so far, I didn't ask her how it went.

The final treasure hunt was for the big girls. They searched the house and outside before ending up in the shed where they found their new, full-size bikes. Ever since they used Mama and Papa's bikes while at their house this spring (during Rodney's surgery), they have insisted that their bikes were too small to ride comfortably, so now they don't have that excuse anymore! Or won't once Mama and Papa come visit us and bring the bikes to our house, since they certainly don't fit in the minivan!

The other present of note, was Little Bit's Frozen Dress-up Dress. When she told me to put an "Elsa dress" on her wish list, I added the Elsa dress from mydressuptrunk.com The big girls each had a couple different dress-up dresses from there and I love that they're easy to put on/off and don't have any itchy trim, etc. Some of the other cheaper, dress-up dresses we have, none of my spirited girls have been willing to wear because they don't feel right. So now I pretty much insist on this brand, or homemade. When my parents went to order the dress it was out-of-stock, but they decided to order it anyway and hope it came back in-stock by Christmas. It shipped out soon after ordering BUT when they got it, instead of the requested Elsa dress, they sent the Anna dress. When mom called about it, they said she could, obviously, return the Anna dress, but that the Elsa dress is back-ordered until JULY! With such a long wait time, and with the Anna dress already HERE, we decided to wait and let Little Bit decide for herself if she wanted the Anna dress now, or to wait for the Elsa dress. My mom did say she could make Little Bit an Elsa dress which is less of a wait than July, but still not instantaneous. It took Little Bit ALL DAY on Christmas, and some angst, to finally decide to keep the Anna dress, and put the Elsa dress on her Birthday list. Despite her preference for Elsa, she wore her Anna dress all evening, and even insisted on wearing it for the ride home on Friday. She thought I should let her wear it to church yesterday too, but I was mean mommy and vetoed that idea.

By the time presents were done, and the mess cleaned up, it was time for dinner. My brother, Dan, and his girlfriend and her boys came over.

Dan was trying to get his girlfriend's son, to climb the wall to the loft with Little Bit, but he (the son) was scared, so Dan showed him how it's done. Still didn't convince him to come up, but at least Little Bit had her uncle up there to keep her company :)

We had a nice afternoon with Dan and Beth and the boys. Then walked to their house to meet their new puppy. Little Bit had fun playing with the boys' huge nerf guns :)

Friday morning we had a relaxed morning getting things packed up and just hanging out, before heading home after lunch.

We finished up our week with an eventful Sabbath morning.  Lexie and Ashlyn did the Bible story part for Little Bit's class, by having the kids act out the story of the Wise Men.

Instead of a sermon for church, we had an all-music program. Lexie played violin with a couple other girls and also a solo.

Weekly Wrap-Up for the Week of December 14

And another busy week . . .

Before Lexie knew about making the cookies to pass out after church, she had promised Little Bit that they could make gingerbread men, so that was one of this week's projects. It took all day, and made a huge mess, but Little Bit had fun, and the cookies are actually pretty yummy.
As a convenient bonus, they are relatively healthy too . . . whole wheat flour, natural sweeteners, etc. We used this recipe.

This week was also when we FINALLY decorated for Hanukkah and Christmas. I tried to convince them that since it took us so long, we should skip the tree this year, but they had it all planned out and would have been soo disappointed if they didn't get to carry out their plan, so we went with it. Little Bit got to decorate the small pink tree in the girls' bedroom, AND the small purple tree in the school room.

The big girls took charge of the bigger tree in the living room. They had decided to combine the 2 holidays that we celebrate in December, and decorate the tree with Hanukkah colors, so after Christmas last year we found silver and blue balls on clearance, and the girls borrowed some more blue and silver balls from Mama when they helped decorate her tree a few weeks ago. They spent as long deciding on a specific "pattern" (don't ask me what it is) as they did actually decorating the tree, but they had fun with it, so whatever works . . .

The final result was nice, and there wasn't TOOO much arguing involved!

Hanukkah started Tuesday night. The first night's gift was a menorah of their own for each of the girls. In addition to being pretty to have more candles lit, it solved the whole "it's my turn to light the menorah!" argument. Now they each have one to light!

We had music lessons on Wednesday this week, because Thursday was otherwise occupied.

Thursday was super busy, but super fun too! My friend, Amy, is a part of a homeschool co-op group that was going to Fulton Theatre to see a performance of the Nutcracker, and asked if we wanted to come too. It was a performance just for school groups, so geared toward kids, and was great! It was a "play" rather than the "ballet" (which we watched on DVD last year, but was really hard to follow the storyline, the play was much more kid-friendly). The actors encouraged the kids to clap along, and such, and then, at the end, came out and answered questions.

As we were driving back from the Theatre, and eating our lunches, Little Bit took a bite of her sandwich, and her (extremely loose) front tooth fell out! She was very excited! Her sisters are now telling her that she should work extra hard to get her other (also loose) front tooth out before Christmas so she can actualy say "all I want for Christmas is my two front teeth!"

On our way home from the play, we stopped by Amy's house for the afternoon. Lexie is playing violin with Amy's daughter, and another little girl for church next weekend, so they all practiced, and the kids played all afternoon, including putting on their own version of the Nutcracker, which was awesome! So fun to see which parts of the show made the biggest impression on the various kids.

With the coming of Hanukkah, our "Hanukkah Fairies" came to visit as well. They've been doing many of the "normal" things, like bringing donuts and such, but this year they had a special surprise just for Little Bit! After watching the movie, Frozen, last month, she is totally obsessed. AND ever since last summer when we made sensory "ice cream" (flour and baby oil) for her to play with, she's been asking when we can make it again. So Thursday night while the girls were sleeping, the fairies made up a batch of the sensory stuff (but called it snow), and the characters of Frozen came to play in the snow with the fairies, and Little Bit. She still likes the "ice cream" aspect of the sensory dough, so she got out the ice cream scoop too. She's spent HOURS playing with that stuff! I suspect we'll be using it alot this winter while cold temperatures keep us inside more.

And finally, we wrapped up our week, with Lexie and Ashlyn teaching in Little Bit's class at church. The story was the shepherds visiting baby Jesus, so the girls had all the kids dress up (Mary, Joseph, shepherds, angels . . .) and act out the story with Ashlyn "directing" and Lexie "narrating". It was adorable to watch :)

Weekly Wrap-Up - The Week of December 7

Whew! Life's been hectic this month! Let me see if I can re-cap.  I'm going to go ahead and break things out by week, like normal, despite being a full week late, posting this one, so that the post isn't too horrendously long!

One of our the girls' big projects this week was baking 10 dozen (ish) cookies! My only contribution was making sure they were using recipes that I knew worked, and had all the needed ingredients (and a large part of the clean-up). They did all the actual baking! At church the previous Sabbath the pastor had asked people to bring cookies to pass out downtown on the 13th. Lexie was happy to volunteer and got a package of 40 bags to fill (each bag got 2 cookies, the rest that they baked went in the freezer for Christmas). The girls made snickerdoodles and chocolate, candycane, cookies, and put one of each in the bags.

Sight and Sound:
One of this year's Hanukkah gifts for all 3 girls, was to go see Moses at Sight and Sound. Originally we planned to give them the promise that we'd go see it sometime in January, but then a friend sent me a coupon code for 50% off the price of weekday tickets if we bought our tickets by a certain date, and went to a show in early December, so we went ahead and bought the tickets, and the girls got their gift a week early :)

Little Bit didn't really remember going to see Noah last year, so it was a new experience, all over again, for her. A lovely advantage, in addition to the discounted price, of going on a weekday in December, was that the theater was almost empty! Despite only buying the tickets a week ahead of the show, we were able to sit in our favorite section (middle, about 5 rows back), and there was nobody right beside us. If there was anyone ahead of us they weren't tall enough to block our views, even the kids'.  The one thing I didn't think through well, was that we went to an 11:00 show, which meant we were all STARVING by the time we left, around 1:30. I noticed a group near us eating sandwiches during intermission. If we decide to go to an 11:00 show in the future, I'll look into doing that (I assume, since they sell food in the theater, that food's allowed, but will need to confirm that OUTSIDE food can be brought in). It worked out ok though, because we were already planning to stop at Costco before heading home. DH took the girls to get pizza as soon as we got to Costco, and I did my shopping (without "help", woo-hoo!) while they got the pizza and started eating.

We headed home just in time to beat the beginnings of snow flurries.

The next day we woke up to snow. It snowed ALL DAY!! At the time that we would have needed to leave for music lessons, the road was snow covered and it was still coming down hard, so I contacted the girls' music teacher and arranged to shift their lessons to Friday. However, while it continued to snow, it also warmed up, so by late morning, the snow that HAD stuck, was completely melted, and never did accumulate enough to be real snow. That evening, I met some friends for dinner out. While WE didn't have any snow, people 5 minutes away DID, and people half an hour got several inches! So obviously elevation and such had a huge impact on how the weather played out that day.

Friday was more hectic than usual, with music lessons added into the mix.

Sabbath was "Jeans Sabbath". After church, we ate at the church and then a large group of us headed downtown where we passed out hot chocolate, cookies, clothes, and balloon animals. It's always nice to see people made happy by our little gifts.

So ended that week . . . and we took a deep breath before diving into another busy week!

Weekly Wrap-Up for the Week of November 23

Whew! It was a busy (and CRAZY WEATHER) Thanksgiving week. The girls and I spent the week at my parents' house.

Monday's weather was AMAZING. We spent as much time as possible outside.

Tuesday we spent the day with friends. Again, lots of outside time soaking up the weather. And, oddly enough (considering how much I dislike chickens) playing with chickens. And ducks. And turkeys. And guinea fowl. But mostly the chickens because they're the friendliest, I guess. 

 Tuesday evening Rodney joined us at my parents house, just in time for the weather to do an abrupt about face and went from gorgeous and warm(ish) to snow and sleet and . . . wow I'm glad none of us have to go anywhere, today!

We ordered new tablets for the big girls because we found a good deal and Ashlyn's iPod had died, leading to her borrowing my tablet and discovering how superior Android is to Apple. Much to their excitement, the tablets, that we expected to arrive while we were gone, arrived before Daddy left home, so he brought them with him.



 I had to laugh at the sight that greeted me the next morning, Daddy and his girls, playing on their devices :)

The girls spent a large part of Wednesday making Thanksgiving decorations.

They made enough pinecone turkeys to have one at each place for Thanksgiving dinner.

And they made construction paper pumpkins.

Needless to say, Lexie has been doing lots of practicing with her new size of violin, and I finally remembered to snap a picture of her practicing.

Thursday for Thanksgiving, My dad and the big girls went to pick my grandmother up from the Assisted Living Center while Rodney went and picked up his mom and her house. His sister and her husband stopped by for awhile too. 

I showed Lexie a picture of a Turkey Veggie Tray that I saw online, and she decided she could do that, or better, and set to work.

The finished product:

My brother and his girlfriend came to dinner too. And after he went through line, the turkey veggie tray looked abit different. It gave Lexie some good insight into what it's like to have a brother LOL.

Thursday evening was quieter than usual, with Rodney was taking his mom home and my Dad and the big girls were taking Grandma back, so it was just Lina, Mama and me.

Friday afternoon friends came over and we made homemade pizza. After it was too late to make for Thanksgiving Dinner, I had seen ANOTHER picture online of a turkey made out of rice krispy treats and M&Ms, so that was Lexie and Ashlyn's Friday project, to have for dessert after pizza.

The lighting is horrible but it's proof that once in awhile Lexie and Ashyn actually work together happily on a project.

Once the turkey was all shaped, Little Bit got to "stuff" the turkey with M&Ms.

 And, after we'd all stuffed ourselves with tons of yummy homemade pizza, we dug into our turkey, didn't it turn out great?




And that was our Thanksgiving.

Saturday morning Rodney and I headed home, leaving the girls to be well-spoiled by the grandparents for a few days, so I can't tell you much about their Saturday. I hear they spent the afternoon earning their Junior Ranger badges at Catoctin National Park, and looking at Christmas lights.