And Another Thing...

Tale of the Christmas Tree: Part 2

Oliver said he was waiting the whole time for a Clark Griswold moment of the tree mushrooming out and breaking the window as soon as the plastic was off!

I LOVE how big and fat it is.  The tree makes me incredibly happy, even if I did have to rearrange furniture to fit in my family room!

I did not actually put a single ornament on the tree this year.  I unwrapped and the kids put them on.

We have a disproportionate number of ornaments at the bottom of the tree.

Here, Oliver is trying to remedy that by convincing Saragh that he could pick her up so she can reach the top of the tree.  It didn't work.

So pretty!

As per our tradition, one of the last ornaments on the tree is the Grinch.  None of us can remember why this is, we just know that we have to do it that way.  I kinda like traditions like that.

Tale of the Christmas Tree

The searching...

The trudging...

The laughing...

The snowball scheming...

And walking,

walking,

and walking.  Until finally...

We found it!  The perfect tree, round and fat and full and beautiful!

Then there was cutting (and cursing, but we won't talk about that)

Little Christmas trees were found and absconded with.

Then we hauled that big tree outta there.

I loved this machine, big fat tree went in, nice compact package-o-tree came out!

After the tree was securely fastened to the top of our car, we carefully drove it home (I'll go into my issues with things strapped to the top of the car at a later date).

I'll post pictures of the decorated tree next.  You oughtta see this monster in our living room.  We had to move furniture to accommodate it!

Wordless Wednesday: Mama's view

St. Nicolas Feast Day

In our house, St. Nicholas' Feast Day is when "Santa" comes and fills the kids stockings with good stuff.  We do this for several reasons:

- It's a feast day that we all really like to celebrate and we have a lot of fun with.  It's fun to take an ordinary day and celebrate the life and good works of someone so great!

- Beginning the celebration season on this day let's us enjoy it all for that much longer.  We don't usually get to extend our Christmas season into January very far because Olivia and Anna's birthday's are right at the beginning of the month.

-We don't do "Santa" at our house because we choose to honor St. Nicholas as the person he actually was.  This is just a choice that we made a long time ago, we know it doesn't work for everyone.

-And for completely practical reasons, it's one less thing I have to remember to do on Christmas Eve :o)

***Disclaimer*** Benny and Braidon are not featured in this post because all the pictures I took of them were tainted with bed head and pajamas and they objected vehemently to the public airing of them.  Apparently now that some of us are almost 12, theses things matter.

The Trees of the Dancing Goats

I saw this activity on The Crafty Crow and thought that it looked like fun.  I happened to have the book from the library already, so I gathered the supplies.

And we got to work...





 

I really liked this craft because it was something that all five kids could do together.  The boys enjoyed it as much as the girls and it was simple enough that Saragh could fully do her own project.  The kids are talking about keeping their ornaments forever and ever, but since they are made of construction and tissue paper I think it's more likely that we'll just make them again next year.

On the fast track

A few days ago, we got to drive on the track at the Michigan International Speedway.  They had a special deal one day; if you brought an unwrapped toy or a bag of groceries to donate they would let you drive around the track once.  It was a very interesting experience, fun and a little scary too!  I didn't realize just how banked those turns are!

The Nutcracker, sweet

The girls playing ring-around-the-rosie with a whole gaggle of other girls during the Sugar Plum Tea before the performance.  It was so much fun to see so many girls having so much fun!

More fun pre-performance.

This was Saragh's first Nutcracker and she was thrilled with the whole thing!  Here she is anxiously awaiting the beginning of the ballet.  I remember two other little girls being just as excited for their first Nutcracker.

These two are old hats at this Nutcracker thing.  They were just as excited this year as they were last year and I think they loved it even more this time.

Very fuzzy picture, but it shows you how good our seats were.  We try to get the first row balcony so that the girls have an uninterrupted view of the ballet.  They can stand here and move around a bit more than they could on the main floor.

Wordless Wednesday: Basking

 

Wordless Wednesday: Climbing

Adventures in Art or How to Get Your Own Security Guard

We went to the art museum at the University of Michigan recently with our little group of homeschooling friends.  The kids were quite excited about being there and were expressing that emotion with gusto.  I think that kids being excited about being in an art museum is wonderful, however, the security guards were not of the same opinion.  Or rather; I am sure that they appreciated that the kids were into the experience.  They just wanted them to express it with a little more decorum.  So, the guards stayed rather close to us and observed the excitement, occasionally intervening when they thought it necessary. 

The security issues aside, we had a great time and although I can't speeak for the other moms, our family will be heading back there soon and often.

Formula Fed America

I am so anxious to see this film...

Catching Up: Bowling with the Unschoolers

 A couple of weeks ago, we had the opportunity to go bowling with some friends.  I had no idea that my kids enjoyed bowling so much, we'll definitely do this again as often as we can.  I love the picture of Olivia up there after she got a strike.  That is pure joy, my friends.  I also had no idea that they made bowling shoes small enough for Saragh.

The story behind the picture...

Hopefully you have noticed the new banner up there, if you haven't go take a look now.  This picture is the best picture I got out of a 30 minute photo shoot with 5 kids laying in the leaves.  Now, I happen to think it is incredibly cute of every single kid, and I am not really complaining.  However, I do feel like I should share the story because it's quite funny.

I took 150 different shots and in every single one of them, Benjamin is doing something like this...

 

Or this...
 

How about this...
 

And then there's this...
 

It was literally a half an hour of alternating tears of laughter and frustration.  For whatever reason, he could not just keep his eyes open and the harder he tried, the worse it got.  It was awful and hilarious at the the same time.  I still simultaneously burst into tears and laughter when I start thinking about it and when the kids see me looking at the pictures, they groan and walk away. 

Well, we ended up with the very heartwarming picture that I put in the banner and I am pleased with it.  I think it totally fits our family.

Catching Up: Halloween