Our Christmas

We had a wonderful Christmas this year.  It was our first year staying in our own home on Christmas Eve and I loved it! 

Christmas Jammies

Cookies and milk for Santa and carrots for the Reindeer

I just realized I didn’t get any pictures of Adam with the train set that Santa brought….but here’s the load from his stocking (and his train in the background)

Ditto for Abby….no picture of her with her toy from Santa.  We were too busy playing with the new camcorder that Nat got for me.  So we have lots of video but not a lot of pictures!

Isn’t it funny what kids get the most excited about?  Adam couldn’t wait to color with the “Cars” markers that were in his stocking!

We went down to my parents’ house for brunch and more present opening. 
Two words….Spoiled Kids!

Playing with Papa

On Sunday we had Christmas with the Gardner side of the family.

Abby loved the baby doll from Grandma LesaAdam opening a present from his cousins

Once again we were having fun with the video camera and didn’t get very many pictures but I sure do love my new camera!!  It segments the videos and is all digital so I can upload them and they are already separated.  No more tapes to deal with!

Adam made this Christmas so much fun and I can’t wait until next year when he is 4 and Abby is almost 2!

Tot School – Christmas Part 3

- Adam is 37 months old -

Sigh….so much to do, so little time. I had so much more planned and prepared than what we actually did but ‘tis the season for busy schedules I guess. On the bright side, I’ll have a lot of things ready to go next Christmas! So, for the past 2 weeks, this is what we did for Tot School:

The following 2 printables are from Confessions of a Homeschooler’s Preschool Pack

Size Ordering Candy Canes

Ornament CountingAdam counted the ornament on the tree and placed the corresponding numbered star on top. He easily counts and knows the numbers 1-7 and 8 and 10. The only thing he had a little trouble with was double counting or missing some of the ornaments because they were rather small.

Coloring a Nativity scene

In this picture he is pointing out that the Shepherd is signing “milk” because the baby Jesus wants some milk.

I got these Christmas erasers at the dollar store and we played a matching game
And I attempted to do patterns with him…he still isn’t quite grasping patterns
Then he lined them up all…
Stood them all up…
And then had the reindeer give sleigh rides to each pair of erasers using the cart from our Little People Nativity.
He played with them for a while and would say, “Go reindeer go! Go reindeer go!” and then “They’re back to the North Pole!” when they finished their ride.
One day we made Christmas trees out of felt and added sequins and glitter. I thought he’d really like the glitter, but he was much more interested in gluing the sequins on!

For our Family Home Evening treat one night we made Gingerbread cookies
The funny thing is that neither Nat or I even like gingerbread but apparently the kids did! I think next year we’ll stick to plain old sugar cookies.

I am looking forward to the new year and getting back into using Before Five in a Row for weekly themes. And after we finish that, it’s on to a Letter of the Week type at-home preschool. I’m excited!

I’m also excited (yet exhausted at the thought) that Abby will be 1 in just over a month so I want to begin planning and putting things out specifically for her to do as Tot School. Adam has been doing more preschoolish things for a long time now so I’m excited to research and plan things more along the lines of the actual Tot School theory.

I’m taking this coming week to plan and prepare our Before Five in a Row themes for the next few weeks so hopefully we can begin a unit the following week. Sometimes I wonder why I do this to myself. It’s so much work!

I Can See!

Technology and modern medicine truly are a miracle!  I had LASIK Eye Surgery yesterday and as of my post-op appointment this morning, I’m seeing right around 20/20 and my eyes should continue to improve over the coming months.  It’s awesome!  I went to bed with blurry/fuzzy vision after my surgery, and after a 4 hour nap (thanks Valium!), I woke up seeing clearly with only a little irritation and dryness. 

Today my eyes have been dry and a little irritated, but mostly just tired.  Most of the time it seems like I’m just wearing my contacts (which I’ve worn for probably 13-14 years) so it’ll be neat to wake up tomorrow morning (or the middle of the night since Abby has been waking up crying lately) and just be able to see without any glasses or contacts.  It’s kind of strange!

I’m really grateful to Dr. Hoopes for blessing me with this surgery.  I didn’t think I’d have it for many years and I feel so lucky and blessed!

I want to post about our Christmas but this is about all the computer time my eyes can handle….maybe tomorrow.

Merry Christmas!!

The Gardner Family’s Christmas Stockings

I am FINALLY finished with making our Christmas stockings!  I was done with all the appliques a while ago but I attempted to hand embroider our names on them and it just didn’t work.  Well, I’m too much of a perfectionist and it was taking too long so I gave up.  I had them machine embroidered instead.

They aren’t perfect.  Why was I expecting them to be?  For instance, why is Nat’s longer than the rest?  Why did the lady who did the embroidery put my name slightly higher than the others and a bigger font than Dad’s?  Why is Abby’s wreath lower than the other appliques?  The answer is….I’m a total novice at sewing!  And I have no answer about the lady who did the embroidery.  All things considered, I am happy with them.  After all, they are homemade so they shouldn’t be perfect right?  :)

We are allowed to have 2 more children…that is it!

”The stockings were hung by the staircase with care”

I just washed and dried them this morning (to make them fray) so I’d say I finished just in the nick of time!

Bring on Santa!!

Our Little Drummer Boy

Adam has loved drums since he was a baby so it’s no surprise that one of his favorite Christmas songs is “The Little Drummer Boy”. 
Every time he hears it, he starts drumming and marching to the beat.  I told him the story of why the boy went to play his drums for Baby Jesus, so now in addition to drumming, he acts out the story.  He’s so cute.

We have a tradition where every year we give the kids an ornament so when they move out and start their own lives and families, they will have a box full of memories and ornaments for their own tree.  I haven’t been able to find one for Adam for this year until tonight.
It plays the classic Bing Crosby version of the song which is the version Adam knows.
It’s perfect.

Too Pretty For Words

While eating lunch the other day, it struck me how pretty Abigail is.  Her eyes aren’t as blue as Adam’s, but the blue/grey color looks kind of mysterious and deep, for lack of a better word.
And she has long, dark eyelashes like her brother, (and mother before getting old).  These pictures don’t do her justice.

On top of being beautiful, this baby girl is growing FAST!  Here she is “walking”!  It wasn’t long after Adam started doing this that he took his first real steps around 11 months old.  Yikes!

Tot School – Christmas Part 2

- Adam is 36 months old -

We started some fun activities and crafts centered around Christmas this week. I don’t know what it is, but things seem to always get in the way of Tot School. We didn’t do as much as I had planned, but we have next week (and maybe the week after!) to get to it all.

Adam sorted pom-poms onto these cute colored candy canes from Confessions of a Homeschoolers’ Christmas Preschool Pack.
He was pretending that the pom-poms were families so if there was one candy cane that only had a tiny pom-pom on it, he would get the 2 big pom-poms, aka Mommy and Daddy and put them with their baby who missed them.

He played with play-doh and Christmas cookie cutters several days this week. He loved making cookies and sharing them with his baby sister and me.

From 1+1+1=1’s Nativity Preschool Pack I put together the mini book “Animals with Baby Jesus” and Adam glued the animals and people onto the “correct” card.
If you look closely, you can see that the sheep and the pig are on the people card. That is because the sheep lives with the shepherd….obviously, Mom. And the pig is friends with the sheep and lives there too.

Adam’s cousins came over one night to play and in an effort to keep them busy, we made a little Santa Claus craft with cotton balls. Too bad it lasted all of 10 minutes! :)

It snowed a little on Saturday so we bundled up and went outside to play. I built a snowman while Adam scooped, filled, and dumped the snow from his sand bucket. I guess he thinks it’s just as good as sand!

Adam got this Discovery Toys “Measure Up! Balance” for his birthday last month and we have pulled it out a couple times to play with but on this day I made sure to use words to describe the state of the cups. We talked about light vs. heavy, up vs. down, full vs. empty and equal.

We also sorted by color…
Stacked….
And put them nicely back in the container (because that’s the only way the lid will fit on)

The cool thing about this “toy” is that the pieces are correctly weighted in grams and the cups have milliliter markings. As he grows, we can learn about how many red pieces equal a blue and how many blue pieces equal a purple or yellow, how to measure liquids, how different objects around the house weigh compared to other objects, etc. I love Discovery Toys because each of their toys comes with a parent guide with ideas on how to teach different things using the same toy. I bought this at a gift show and I was so tempted by several other things but I restrained myself and will just have to wait for later!

Check out the Tot School posts on 1+1+1=1 and also the preschool pages!

Cancer Sucks

As some have heard on the news the past couple of weeks, my Dad has been diagnosed with Stage 3 Appendiceal Cancer (cancer of the appendix). We just got the oncology diagnosis and treatment plan today and he will undergo 6 months of chemotheraphy treatments, every 2 weeks starting in January.

I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little scared. Still, I have felt at peace since my Grandpa, brother, and Nat gave him a blessing several weeks ago before he had his appendix and tumor removed. I still feel at peace. I feel like he will be ok and although chemo is going to suck, this is not a death sentence and he will be around for a long time still.

Thank to all our family and friends who have been praying for him and us. One good thing about living a public life is that many, many more prayers have and will be offered on his behalf and that can only help his recovery that much more.