All things Christmas

I'm a little too sick to my stomach to post all the homeschool things we did before our official Christmas break, so instead I'm just going to post all the fun Christmas things we did and our Christmas Day celebrations with minimal explanation. (We do the exact same thing every year - down even to the food we eat - so you can look up last year I guess if you need more details.)

Our one Nativity that the kids play with every day (we only lost baby Jesus for a week this year)

The lights at our house

note to self: buy new tree lights

 
Annual trip to Festival of Lights in Spanish Fork

5th Annual Mock Family Christmas Candy House Party

For the Christmas Baskets (tins this year) we had almond roca, white chocolate peanuts and popcorn, gingersnap cookies, a glass ornament I made with a picture of Jesus or the manger scene inside, a bar of home made soap I made myself, jalapeno jelly (also I made that), and a hickory farms smoked cheese and summer sausage - I didn't make those.

Ward Christmas Brunch Primary Christmas Program - Joshua as a cow and Abigail as a sheep

Wish lists written to Santa on Christmas Eve and hung by their stockings

Joshua's says, "Remot kanchrol kar, woky tokis, ipod, pritend bat man, pritend spider man, ril tuls, wepins, tow pars of waky taky, to santa from Joshua"
Abigail's says, "litl momy, woky totys, krawns, prinses shus, doly klas, jolry, to Santa from Abigail" Joshua helped her write her list.

Christmas Eve Norwegian dinner - Red cabbage, Cauliflower soup, green beans with almonds, fish (Tilapia, not very Norwegian but the cod was too expensive and I don't really know if that is Norwegian either.) Lukas set the table.

Christmas morning!!

"Unbelievable! Unbelievable!"

We all got snow clothes

Christmas Evening at Midway

Thanksgiving

It was a short homeschool week. But we did manage to get a few things in.  Besides the normal math, grammar, copywork, and spelling (I got my new spelling book in the mail, yea!), we kept history but didn't learn about an animal. Tuesday I hosted the preschool Thanksgiving party and Thursday was Thanksgiving so there really wasn't any time.

Anyway, for history we learned about the 1st Thanksgiving by watching these little films from scholastic.com . http://www.scholastic.com/scholastic_thanksgiving/webcast.htm On Monday we watched the virtual fieldtrip of the Mayflower. It is like going to the actual Mayflower and talking with and asking questions from reenactors. Actually going there would have been better, but we are on a time schedule and a budget, so you know, maybe next year.  After we learned from the 20 minute virtual fieldtrip, we wrote a narration page and then made our own little boats to sail out of walnut shells.

On Wednesday we watched two more of the virtual fieldtrips, but this time we learned about life in Plimouth and also life in a typical Wampanoag village. Personally, I thought the films were kind of boring, but Joshua thought they were awesome and he even watched the fourth little video I hadn't planned on showing because it was recommended for 3rd grade and up. He learned that the pilgrims actually fasted first before their Thanksgiving feast and that was how they showed thanks to God.

Tuesday was the big day. It was the preschool Thanksgiving party that I had been stressing out about for a while. I've never thrown a party before - well, not like a preschool party, so I wasn't really sure what I was doing.

We started off with a little coloring page of pilgrims and Indians. That was the activity as we waiting for all the kids to show up. Then we played pin the tail on the turkey. I had drawn a big fat turkey minus the tail feathers on a poster board and we blindfolded the kids and gentle spun them around, and semi-guided them in the right direction to pin their tail feathers on. It was cute. Then we did the TP roll turkey craft (see previous post) and then headed upstairs for the apple/jelly bean turkey craft/snack (again, see previous post), which of course morphed into snack time and then the rest of the party was just free play time. For snack the kids ate their jelly bean apples, cheese and crackers, popcorn, and had water to drink. The popcorn was kind of a flop. My burners aren't exactly crumb free so we kind of smoked up the kitchen a little and then the kernels popped really small, as if it was 5 year old popcorn, which it wasn't! It was brand new. So I was a little peeved. Also, for the moms I planned to pour my jalapeno jelly over a brick of cream cheese for us to eat with our crackers, BUT the jelly didn't cooperate and no matter what I did to it, it remained extremely jellified and unpourable. But we ate it anyway.  Also, the day before I had made these really cute pumpkin pie bites - you know those recipes you see on facebook and think, someday I'm going to make that. Yes, well, I did make it. BUT I forgot to put them out for the party, so after everyone left I realized I had 30 little mini pumpkin pies just sitting in a container above my fridge. That was kind of a let down. However, the kids had a lot of fun and one mom said it was a really great party, so I wont be to hard on myself. I wish I could have taken pictures because Joshua and another little boy spent extra time (I think their goal was to use up all the extra jelly beans) and made spiders out of their apples - spiders with about 15 jelly beaned legs each. And of course, after the party when I went to clean up the kitchen there was not a single jelly bean to be found. Imagine that.

Thursday was the actual day. We went up to Midway and had a lot of fun. I'll just let the photos mostly speak for themselves. All of Derek's family was there so we had a bit Mock family photo taken and I had our little family photo taken, but I don't have those photos yet, and they will probably be on our Christmas card so no early peaking anyway. Oh man, the Christmas card. I better start working on that.

These boys know the good stuff when they see it: SHRIMP DIP!

Lukas and Elena spent most of the time together doing whatever 2 years old do together

Here is a family pic we will NOT be using - even though Lukas actually smiled for this one.