Welcome to the craft factory

Tomorrow is December 1st and I'm beginning to get anxious about creating a magical Christmas for four little biscuits and having a baby all in one extra busy month. I think it has to do with the nesting phase that comes over me near the end of pregnancy. Nothing is ever clean enough and organized enough it seems. My Christmas shopping is done, I washed up the car seat and baby blankets, I sorted through all the baby boy clothes I've had stored since Jacob and washed up the ones I want to keep. What am I forgetting?? Why do I still not feel ready? This week I decided that the projects we've started and have looming need to be finished up and put away. We finished all three of them today and that really helped.

Project Wrap Up #1 

Christmas Pompom Garland

We had the yarn suitcase out for a few weeks so there were pompom sessions periodically

 throughout the month.

Once we had enough pompoms made, Jane strung them all together and hung them for Christmas, hence the "Ta-Da" pose below :0)

Who new a little Christmas pompom love would make the room so happy.

Project Wrap Up #2

Recycled Crayon Christmas Trees

We peeled a million broken crayon wrappers. Put like colors in muffin tins. Added a little glitter (always glitter) and melted them up. 

Once melted, we poured them into silicone molds.

 So adorable. Scarlet was excited about the hearts.

Project Wrap Up #3

 We pressed a lot of baking clay into our flower molds and then baked them. We coated each one with clear nail polish. Next we glued them onto special bobby pins that have a flat circle attached at end for this kind of thing (although we glued the smaller flowers onto regular bobby pins and it worked just fine too).

Charlie and Jane colored these Mandalas this morning. Maṇḍala is a Sanskrit word that means "circle". It was a whole new coloring experience. I'm just waiting to try one myself :0)

Scoopy

In this video she is quoting Proverbs 16:24. Jacob has been learning it for our recitation day tomorrow and somehow Scarlet picked it up all on her own and surprised us.

Scarlet is wild- she bosses all of us around, all day! We all get such a kick out of her new phrases, like today when she said, "Are you kidding me?" She does this thing where she repeats herself about 4000 times when she wants something- its like demands on auto pilot. My personal favorite is when she repeats, "I'm hungry mom." Over and over and over and over. Even after she has just had a bowl of oatmeal, applesauce, potato soup, a cheese biscuit and a some yogurt. So we've learned that I'm hungry really means "I'm so tired, please put me to bed immediately." She LOVES to dance- especially if she has a "princess" (dress that twirls) on. Anytime I wear a dress or skirt she asks me, "Are you a princess mom? Does that one dance?" This means she wants me to twirl so we can find out if my dress is a princess our not (if it twirls or not), if it's not a princess than it's useless to even try to dance. You can't dance without a "princess".

Music From Heaven

Our friend Jody told us to make these homemade bagels and they were tasty tasty. Here is the recipe if you want to try them. They are crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside. Yum. Jane enjoyed the part when you drop them into a boiling water bath while they were still in dough form.

Jane is in the most beautiful stage right now. She is so happy and cooperative and helpful and sweet. 

She will be baptized when she turns eight in January, so we have been spending time with her preparing for that. She is genuinely studying and working hard to understand what being baptized means for her. She memorized this really long scripture about baptism and I didn't even know she was doing it.  She came up to me and said, "mom, watch this" and then recited it to me. I was shocked and asked her how she learned it and she told me it was because she reads it to Scarlet every night before bed (they share a queen size bed) so now she knows it by heart. Cuteness.

Another cute Jane moment was last Monday. We do history on Mondays and we were having a rather mundane lesson on ancient Egypt, nothing overly exciting. When we finished, I was tidying the table and getting things ready for the next lesson and Jane, out of now where, gives me a juicy hug and says, "I'm so happy I get to be in home school." If you educate your kids at home, then you know how good that kind of moment feels. It was a victorious feeling. 

On Saturday Tim and I took Jane out on a special date. We went to see a strings trio called the Ivory Strings. The trio is a violin, cello and piano. Our friend Rachael is the violinist and she was thoughtful enough to invite us- she knew Jane might be interested in seeing the cellist. Anyways, it was an amazing evening. Rachael and the cellist are in the symphony so we knew it would be good, but we didn't fully understand how good. It was unreal good. They played in someone's home so it was an intimate setting and the music was heavenly, literally. One song in particular that changed my life was called, Oblivion by Astor Piazzolla, arr. Jose Bragato. We looked at their music during the intermission and I seriously didn't know music with that many notes existed- the page was just black and covered with notes! I was so happy that Jane had the chance to experience such an inspiring evening and that we got to share it with her. 

Sumo and Isabelle

Have you ever seen such beauty!

Timmy laughs when we talk about how I never had a sister growing up. He thinks its funny to picture how I'd be with sisters since its so foreign to me. Now that I have my first sister-in-law, I'm realizing  that sisters are A DREAM! I really love it. I especially love when Jenny calls me during the day for a little visit. We're hoping that someday we'll get to live on a giant acreage together... 

Jenny and Eli babysat for us on Saturday and our kids had the time of their lives! Uncle Eli showed them some Sumo wrestling videos, they moved the furniture, and then stuffed their shirts with pillows for the big wrestle... it doesn't get more fun than that.

Charlie said that by the end Scarlet said, "I don't want to be chubby anymore."

Scarlet was in heaven with baby Isabelle around. Before bed tonight she said, "I want Isabelle in our house again." A few nights ago she was talking to me about Isabelle in the

 middle of the night in her sleep! 

Timmy admitted, "I didn't know I would like her this much."

Field Trips

Tim set up a fascinating field trip for the kids this month. We went out to Foothills Taxidermy and learned all about the process of hunting an animal, to having it mounted on your wall. Who knew that it takes almost a year and a half from start to finish! The kids had some super good questions, which means they must have been as interested as I was.

 The taxidermist gave us some owl eyeballs as a souvenir. Pretty awesome.

 The following weekend Tim got to see the real deal. The night before he went, I was seriously worried. I didn't like thinking about him in the dark, cold snow, with a gun and bears possibly sneaking up on him... but he had a good experience and they ended up shooting 3 white tails.

 Yes, that is Timmy's hand!

So True

Lapbooks Round 2

Sea Otters for Jane

Snakes for Charlie

Sharks for Jacob

I keep explaining that they can choose anything for their lapbooks, weather, poetry, a notable person, space etc. but all they ever want to study is animals! They've told me their lapbook waiting list topics and it's something like wolves, seahorses, peacocks, crocodiles... animals for miles!

Front

 Back

 The next two pics are the inside of Jane's folder.

This is the inside of Jacob's. I love his yellow shark he cut out. Check out the head he attached to it.

 This is the inside of Charlie's. It was totally his idea to write his info. on paper cut out like a snake.

 So clever. 

Scrumptious

Marshmallow Snowballs

Jane and Charlie played Champs this fall. I'm not sure who had more fun, them or Tim and I. We got such a kick out of watching their games. Charlie had the best victory celebrations after he scored. It melted us. And Jane played with a big smile the whole time. I chose this picture because Haylie is in it and seeing the Holland's was the highlight of Champs for all of us.

 Scarlet collected some nature things in her little bucket one morning. She was delighted and wanted to show me everything and I tried to enjoy the presentation even though it was making a 

big mess on my bed.

I found this picture of Scarlet on my camera.

Today it was snowy so we decided we better winterize our school room with snowball garland. We used cotton balls and white yarn. Threaded them up and hung them. Easy, cheap, fun for all ages. Done. Scarlet was extremely disappointed to realize that the cotton balls were not marshmallows.

Finally Finished

I'm going to bore you with way too many pictures of this project but I've been working on it for over a year and I finally finished it. All 440 pages of it. It's a blog book that I made using Blurb. I loved using Blurb, it was super easy with no glitches ever. The quality is beautiful and the shipping was so fast. Doing a blog book is nice because there is so much journaling all ready done and you can print off as many books as you want. The other handy dandy thing about it is that once you upload your blog, then you don't need the internet anymore so I could work on it in the car or wherever. I would do about 50 pages at a time. It feels so good to finish up big projects!

Here is the front cover

 The spine

 The front page

 The next four pictures are just some sample pages

 And the back cover

See how thick it is! Next time I'll divide it up into two books so I don't have to heave-ho this heavy monster of a book to look at it.