The end of December

Jessie got some window/glass crayons for Christmas and all sorts of notes have been popping up at our house.  Spencer wanted to write the “mirror, mirror” and Jessie helped him spell out the first “mirror” then wrote the rest for him.  He finished it off with “me!” and the picture.Jessie created a “willow wiggy.” And she and Abbie spent a whole two days creating a town, math books, drawing books etc. displaying them.  It was very fun and Abbie got to use her new markers from Christmas that each have a different tip on them.The Monday after Christmas everyone was so excited to go play outside!!  Here are the boys sporting their new gloves…the girls and their new rollerblades…That night we had dinner and FHE with Steph and McKay and the kids stayed for a sleepover.  Our plan was to go to Boondocks the next day, but Neil was up almost every two hours that night and I was exhausted by the next morning…worried the kids would be disappointed Ken and I planned a bunch of fun activities to do at home instead.  First we had scones for lunch!  Then we played games everyone could participate in.  First was Toss Up.  Part way through, one of the kids started a drum roll if someone took a chance and rolled their very last die in hopes of more points.  We all joined in and it made for a memorable game.  On one turn I just wanted to see how many points I could get in one turn and I made it all the way to 59 (in increments of 10).  It was a lot of fun and included quite a few drumrolls.Next up was A to Z.  Abbie and I were the winners on the first round.  (If you have this game I made up a whole set of kid friendly categories that I’d be happy to share.)Then we headed to the living room for charades.  My favorite was Jessie trying to be a cactus.  When we couldn’t guess it at all I suggested she break the word apart and try try and help us that way and so she broke the word into “cat” and “tusk”…and we finally got it.

Watching a segment of our new Life movies was next.  Jessie picked out Hunters and Hunted and we watched 1 week old baby Ibex escape a fox, a pack of brother cheetahs catching prey, a killer whale and more.  We were going to to pop some corn to snack on while we watched, but we were all still full from lunch.  Whole wheat scones go a long way.

After the movie we played Monopoly Deal then had Nachos Supreme for dinner.  Ah… this is what vacation is made of.  (That night we found a little drawing on the bathroom mirrors with the following inscription…I love scones…I love scones…I love scones.)Jessie made up a game called Turtles.  Basically you get out a bunch of your junk that you’re willing to trade and set a price for each item.  Then you find a medium to trade with… in this case they used marbles… and you go around in a circle buying each other’s stuff for a certain number of rounds.  The kids really enjoy it…the only hard part for me is trying to remember who the junk belongs to afterwards in case I’m cleaning and need to put things away. :-)I made some birdseed wreaths (found here: http://www.bystephanielynn.com/2010/11/how-to-make-homemade-birdseed-wreath.html) with Knox gelatin and hung them in our trees for the birds.  I had been very disappointed that the birds hadn’t found them.  Finally I guess the birds decided they better look for something besides snow to eat and came to visit!  YEAH! (For the big one I put a cup in the middle of a big bowl and for the smaller ones I filled muffin tins and poked a straw into them before they gelled.)Mark, Ken and I played Settlers and Mark creamed us with his forest and ore refining facilities.And here is my newest favorite Neil picture.