Christmas Books

Over the years, we have collected many Christmas books (ok, many books, period!). Some of these came from my personal library when I was teaching. We purchased the rest since we've had our own children.

We have books for the youngest children...


books on the true meaning of Christmas...


and classic Christmas books.


There are paperbacks and hardbacks, Advent books and readers. Some of our Advent books are not in the picture, because we aren't using them this year. We have the other two books in the Jotham series that I mentioned in my last post. We also have the Handel's Messiah Family Advent Reader which we used one year for a fabulous study.



I also noticed that one of my favorites, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, is missing from the pile and must be in someone's room! We usually get a new book every year, and I notice we need some more for my oldest kids.

My friend DeEtta wraps all her Christmas books every year so they can unwrap one each day in Advent. I HATE to wrap, and it's all I can do to wrap the gifts (which seems to fall totally to me every year). So, I'm not wrapping our books! It's a neat idea, though.

Well, I'm off to Dorothy's blog to get some ideas for books for the older kids.

Christmas Traditions, Part I

I thought it would be neat to do a few posts that tell about our Christmas traditions in both words and pictures--mostly because I'm copying and pasting all these blog posts into MS Word so that I can print out journals for my kids some day. So here goes....

First of all, we put up all the Christmas decorations during the week of and weekend after Thanksgiving. I try to get a head start on this during the week as we take the entire week off school. So I put up those interior decorations that don't replace any of my fall decor. I like to leave that up until Thanksgiving is over. Then, on Friday, I put up the rest while Greg tackles the outside. Greg is a very laid-back person, and things rarely bother him. But he gets SO frustrated at the icicle lights that never seem to work! It is the bane of his existence.

Here's a picture of our tree. I love these tall, slim trees. They fit so much better in the available space. I'm going to try to set up a tripod and get a picture of the outside with the lights on. It is really beautiful, in my humble opinion!


The next BIG part of our Christmas is the celebration of Advent. I grew up in Southern Baptist churches (when we were going to church anyway), and they didn't teach about or celebrate Advent. After we became parents, though, we began to look for ways to instill the true meaning of Christmas in our children's hearts.

We started with an Advent wreath, I think this is the third one I've had, and various Advent studies.

Then, thanks to the wonderful ladies on my homeschooling e-mail loop, we learned about the book Jotham's Journey. After reading that book three or four years in a row, we discovered two more books in the series, Bartholomew's Passage and Tabitha's Travels. The kids all greatly anticipate the reading of these books every year (unfortunately, they are no longer published). We've been through the entire cycle twice now. So, I guess we've been reading these books for at least 8 years!

Here is a picture of Greg reading Jotham's Journey which we have returned to this year.


Although the traditional Advent season doesn't begin until Sunday, December 2, this year, I got messed up and we started this past Sunday. That's probably a good thing as a couple of nights every week are very difficult for us to read since we're out until late.



Finally, the kids get one "family" gift on each Sunday of Advent. The first one has been the same for the past 3 years, the Lego Advent Calendar. Lego makes two different calendars each year, the Lego City Advent Calendar for boys and another one for girls. In previous years, it has been a Clickit calendar, which didn't appeal to us. But this year they made a Belville Advent Calendar for girls. Chase loves the Lego Belville stuff. So, I got Landon's agreement that we could get this calendar for 2007. (It helped that it was also cheaper!) Gerren had a fit about this, of course.

Stay tuned for a post on Christmas books!

Thanksgiving

Well, I only managed to take a few pictures yesterday. I was busy cooking! My friend Kim took a bunch, so I'll get some from her. She has an incredible digital SLR camera. Here is a picture of the table before dinner with the fabulous centerpiece I got at Sam's




Here is a picture of Matt, Landon, Gerren, Erin, and Kim playing Apples 2 Apples, the favorite game of the weekend. Our friends Dave and Kim, Matt and Erin arrived from Raleigh, NC, Wednesday evening. We ate dinner out at El Ranchito that night and actually managed to spend the entire day Thursday at home. Friday morning, they left to do a whirlwind round of visiting old friends (I think at least 4 families were slated for the day!) while we put up Christmas decorations.




I took a picture of our very first Thanksgiving tree before taking it down. We got it rather late in the season and only had about a week to put leaves on it, so it didn't get very full. However, the kids really LOVED it, and I think it helped remind them to be thankful, even for each other!

Post Office Dedication

Can you tell I'm getting some time to blog since we're on Thanksgiving break from school? On Monday, November 5, we attended the renaming/dedication of our local post office in honor of a young man who lost his life fighting with the army in Iraq. Landon's Civil Air Patrol squadron participated by handing out programs since this young man, Dennis Flanagan, was a past commander of the squadron. I was surprised at the number of people there - many veterans. It was a neat ceremony.

Here are Carys, Chase and Gerren before the ceremony started. Carys was good until the beginning of the ceremony. Then someone had to push her around or walk her around.


Landon is the handsome young cadet on the far left of this picture.


This is how the entire squadron stood for an hour during the ceremony. Impressive!

Annual Scavenger Hunt

Well, I''m finally getting this event blogged, only 18 days after it actually occurred! LOL!

Every year for the past 6 or 7 years I have created a scavenger hunt for the kids around the house. They look up Bible verses and a word in the verse will lead them to the next clue.



After a total of 10 clues, they are led to a pumpkin filled with candy. We've had a blast doing it over the years.

This year, for the first time, Landon wrote the clues. Here he is helping me hide them.



He hid one of the clues in Chase's playhouse which is in the playroom, a room above our garage.



Carys wanted in on the action. So she carried the Bible around.



Some of the clues are harder than others. This is Gerren's exasperated face!



Greg can't believe that they can't figure out a very simple clue!



Finally, success! Chase gives the thumbs up after looking at the candy. Good job, Mom and Landon.

Re-evaluating

Well, I have been re-evaluating, prioritizing, redoing our schedule--again! We are still not quite clicking this school year. I'm not sure that it's possible to make Carys click! Actually, Gerren is doing the best, getting his work done in a reasonable amount of time. We've deleted a couple of things from Chase's schedule and swapped her writing program. She still gets bogged down in math, even though I've started taking it at a much slower pace. She also has trouble keeping on task without a taskmaster (that would be me). Landon is never getting done at the scheduled time (3:30), but I'm trying to convince myself that he shouldn't be done by then since he's doing junior-level high school work. It's tough, though, especially when he wants me after 3:00. I'm whipped by then after getting up at 5:45. We're trying another new schedule next week, the fourth since we started in August. I moved all the stuff that requires me or that requires being at home (computer, piano, etc.) up as far as possible in the day. That way, if we have somewhere to go in the afternoon, the kids can take unfinished work (mostly reading) with them.

There are so many things in our schedule that I can't seem to do anything about right now (like the 2-hour round trip drive to church) or Civil Air Patrol on Monday nights.

One of the things I'm trying to streamline and simplify is scrapbooking/journaling. I have wrestled with the idea of digital scrapbooking, wondering if it would save time. I've been resistant mostly because I like the 3-D aspect of my real scrapbooks, and because I have invested too much in scrapbooking materials over the years. I'm also thinking there will be a huge learning curve in the beginning, and I certainly don't have extra time to devote to that. I wish someone would just tell me what to do, and then help me do it! LOL!

As for the journaling, I have tried over the years to keep "journals" for the kids. Now, I am NOT a prolific writer of profound material. I have just tried to keep a record of vacations, memorable events, gifts received, etc. for each child. I'm really pretty bad about actually doing it, and I usually only write 4-6 times a year in each book. I have considered stopping those journals and using this blog as the record book, instead. However, I want to have an actual physical book for them. I really like the idea of something to hold in your hand more than something to read on the computer. I have looked briefly at blurb.com which allows you to make your blog into a book. Landon used this program to make a book of the poems he wrote in school last year. It turned out really nice. I just haven't had the time to research it thoroughly, though.

That is part of my re-evaluating problem. I have several books on homeschooling, too (Homeschool Odyssey-which is supposed to tell you how to homeschool in an hour a day, Fundamentals of Homeschooling--which is supposed to help you homeschool through play, etc.), but I don't have the time to actually read these books to find out how to have more time in my day to read! LOL!

I am feeling slightly more positive today than I have in the past, at least. Stay tuned for further updates in the saga of the overloaded homeschool mom!