A Month of Photos

On Pinterest, someone had posted a "Photographing December List", the original post is linked!  Well there's nothing like jumping in half way (or slightly before halfway) now is there?  I'll see what I keep up with and if I can catch up with some of the previous one's as well.

Today, December 15th, is Christmas cards. 

Wreaths Across America

This past Saturday, many folks across the United States participated in "Wreaths Across America".  Wreaths Across America are a nonprofit organization founded to continue and expand the annual wreath laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery begun by Maine businessman, Morrill Worcester, in 1992.  (Copied almost directly form their site).

A solemn time to remember those of have served our country and died in combat or later in life.  It was a time to come together to show our support, our respect, and our thanks.

Here are a few photo highlights:

 Presentation of the Color Guard

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Following are representatives from all Branches of Services including a

representative for POW/MIA's.  Unfortunately, I missed a photo, I believe

of the Marines.  I meant to talk one of all.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Taps being played, prior to

laying the wreaths.

One section of Quantico National Cemetery

Gentleman paying his respects.

Still brings tears to my eyes when remembering the fallen soldiers service to our country.  Was hard to see dates of those younger than myself, who've died within the last year or so.  Reminded me to be thankful for those who have served in various wars and made it home safely. 

Remember, freedom is not free, there is a cost.

School Pictures

We actually had professional school pictures this year!  With a photographer!  With the usual blue back ground!  (I've had the disc with photo's on it for almost a month and am just getting to this ~ okay, blame my computer issues! ;) )

So, here is our 2011/2012 class:

 Thing Two

Third Grade

Thing One

Sixth Grade

It was Christmas Craft time this past Friday - Gingerbread houses to be exact!  Bought a couple Wilton's kits a week or two ago and thought it would be loads of fun for the boys to do.

Mid decorating, once the houses were put together.

Youngest adding decorating candy to "their" house!

(yes, decorating candy - tastes bad but looks pretty on this sort of thing)

More additions to the house!

First house put together!  Looks pretty bad from the

other sides as it was hard to find the right consistency

of frosting to hold the ginger bread together.

Boys finished project!  Looks a lot better than the other one!

Lessons Learned:

• don't plan to eat these and use super glue to hold house together
• probably does pay to trim the house part to a bit more square ~ I'd thought I could easily figure out the right consistency of frosting and use enough to keep it up (WRONG)
• have ginger bread cookies available to eat while working on houses as the house smells good enough to eat
• have a few bowls worth of different consistency of frosting; it will be helpful!

 

I'm B.A.C.K.

Kevin and I found a refurbished MAC on Ebay for a couple hundred less than what it would have cost to fix the water damaged one.  It arrived Saturday and various parts and pieces from the old one, that still worked (memory board mainly) have been transferred over.  So, I'm back to blogging again.

Boys and I are into a light Christmas school season.  We're reading a lot of fun Christmas books, watching Christmas movies, have made ginger bread houses (I'll blog about that soon - what an experience!), choir practice.

Now to spend some time updating the look of the blog for the holidays!

Testing & Musing

My computer is on the fritz, S.T.I.L.L. Have been wanting to blog for awhile, but it has been difficult with the boys computer. So I sit here trying on my phone. Has been a beautiful day for photos, but either I couldn't get a good photo (of the moon and stars) or didn't have the camera (trees with varying degrees of leaf loss - that sounds weird. It the best I can come up with).

Been home today with Thing Two today; he has had a bad headache since yesterday that seems to come and go. Have been getting a bunch of putzy chores done - a good thing I supppose. Best things so far: sharing Rosemary with a neighbor and making mini banana muffins.

Suppose this will do for a test and ignore the typos as I am still learning to type on a little keyboard.

1st day of the month

of November.  Only two calendar months left in 2011.  Can you believe 2011 is almost over?  W.O.W.!!

As there are 30 days this month, I am planning on going through this "30 day mom challenge" with the family, whether they realize it or not.  Here's the link.  I still need to print it out, but that is the next activity I'll be working on.

Goodbye October!

Last day of October ~ time is beginning to go at warp speed and seems to continue accelerating with each day.  Here's a brief photo journal of our day:

 A layer of frost on just about everything.  Had to scrape the windshield in

order take Thing One up to speech at the local public school.  Windows

had to be scrapped yesterday, too, for church, but Kevin did a bulk of that - on both

cars.  Thanks honey!!!

 We had a few extra Black Eyed Susan's grow, after the first round.

They're even pretty in the frost.

 Started taking pictures of the boys and Charlotte serious wanted her picture

taken.  She was a wee bit hyper through our legs and as soon as I said, "Okay,

Charlotte, I'll take your picture!", she sat down.  Go figure.

 Boys were happy to start their new math level today.  As Thing Two

pointed out, we've started to reuse some of the things we bought four years

ago.  When we switched to Math-U-See, Thing One was in third grade, now

Thing Two is in third and so we just need to buy the workbooks as we

have everything else.  Somewhere along the line, probably when they were in

1st and 4th, we got off track for finishing a book in one traditional school year.

This year, they are working hard to get caught up.

 Thing One volunteered at the Harvest Festival at

Burke Community Church.

 Mr. Ninja

A totally kid made costume out of things we already had.

Like that idea!

Is there a better game than eating Krispy Kreme

donut?  Ah, it smelled like the parking lot of Krispy Kreme, you

know the smell of sugar before you even get out of your car!

Only thing missing was the Hot Sign!

So, good night October, look forward to seeing you again next year.

Congrats are going out

to our youngest (well, yesterday anyway)!  The boys had swim and a certain almost 8 & 3/4 yo finally made it across the pool without a floating device, touching the bottom (good thing as they were in the deep end), a lane line, or a wall.  I've known for awhile that he could do it, he just finally figured it out and did it.

Christmas Count Down

While scrolling through Pinterest the last few weeks, I saw a Christmas Count Down board that was so simple ~ a clip board jazzed up for the season with "Days till Christmas" at the bottom.  You'd then clip on the days till Christmas number like a regular sheet of paper cut down some.  Very clever idea, worthy of recreating.  I thought it might be nice to add an activity to the back side of the number, so there would be something to do each day.  Not sure what all would go on this list, but here are some ideas:

1. daily Advent activities
2. make hot chocolate with candy cane stir stick (dip the non-hook end in melted chocolate or something fun like that)
3. make Christmas Cards
4. drive around neighborhood to look at lights
5. watch a Christmas themed movie (repeat as often as necessary to get to 25)
6. go into D.C. to look at National Tree and State Trees
7. bake cookies
8. make Christmas candy
9. read some Christmas books cuddled under blanket
10. invite friends over for Christmas sing along
11. deliver treats to neighbors
12. make wrapping paper
13. look up/research favorite Christmas songs or activities
14. see a live Nativity in your area (if available)
15. take some corny family Christmas photos
16. see how many things you can be thankful for from the past year
17. Christmas Party!

This may be a good enough start to a list!  Don't want to overwhelm ourselves during this holiday.  Now to keep my eye out for good bargain on clipboard andChristmas Paper.

When nature calls

Go for a walk and enjoy the weather!  Dropped Kevin off at the airport and made it home.  It really seemed to nice of a day to spend the remaining day light in the car or house so we took a hike through the woods.  Never seems to get old going out into the woods (it's still a value added to our home)!

Here's some of what it looked like:

 liked how the light was coming through the trees

 off and walking away!

 off paved path adventures (to see where a beaver dam used to be)

 What is on the other side of the log?

 Charlotte wants to know as well.

the creek of course!

Dreaming ~

That is what I would be doing if I could actually play the piano like David Nevue.   Here's a youtube video of one of my favorite songs, it's called "While The Trees Sleep".  I got hooked on this guy from reading Ann Voskamp's blog and am almost daily inspired to try to learn to play the piano.  Time is the hardest thing to find, for with out time, practicing becomes difficult.  Without practice, one doesn't get better at anything.  We've got to do things over and over again to make progress.

Anyone want to give me a time management class?

Welcome to October

and a rainy cool one at that.  Today, the 3rd, was no different.  Actually a nasty sort of Monday ~ cool/cold, rainy, and overcast just about the whole day.  Had really wanted to have a fire with this weather, but the schedule that I woke up with, just wasn't going to allow it.  Dropping a kid off for speech, picking him up from speech, have a meeting late morning, and a ball practice (or possibly make up game) in the afternoon.  Just no time to light a good fire and keep it going all day.  Ah, then the email came that baseball was canceled.  I knew this before the meeting and couldn't wait to get home!  Well over 6 hours later and it's still going strong!  Ye haw!

And out of shear delight, I took a video of it.  Yes, you can hear the logs popping!

School Lunches today . . .

At Kevin's suggestion, while at Costco the other day, we picked up a four pack of pizza crust and sauce for each.  Today, I surprised the boys with pizza for lunch.  Usually, if we have pizza for lunch it's on an english muffin or soft taco shell.  They were very happy about it today.  This got Thing One talking about how he'd have pizza for lunch, on Fridays, when he was at the public school for K and 1st.  The one I made, though not home made, was still way better than I remember from being in public school (I spent all but two years attending a Fairfax Co. Public School and we're still in the same county).  The one thing I missed today was having a chocolate eclair after the pizza; I would usually by a slice of pizza and one of those just about every Friday.  Ah, fuzzy wonderful memories from so long ago.

Chore Sticks

A few days ago I read this blog post about chore sticks and thought it might me helpful in our household.  So today, I began painting away.

 Painted 8 of blue (for Thing One), green (for Thing Two),

and orange (for household chores).

 Began labeling the sticks, for the boys, with regular chores and

individual school subjects.  Some of these include things like:

~ make bed

~ pick up dirty clothes and put down chute

~ strip sheets and put down chute

~ make bed with clean sheets

~ math

~ grammar

The orange sticks have household chores and group

subjects.  Here are some:

~ empty silverware

~ empty plastic ware

~ empty recyclables

~ empty trash can

 Here are a bunch of them.

 For the sake of getting a blog post up, I used a can to hold the

sticks.  I still may end up using a can or three, but with paper around it.

If I use three, one for Thing One, one for 

Thing Two, and one for school related stuff.
Anyway, put the sticks in, colored side down.  When they are sent off to

do chores or school, they'll pick their sticks and work through them.

When the chore is complete, it can be put back into the can

with the color side up.  They should keep working until all chores

and subjects have been completed and colored end is up.

I will probably end up making more sticks and going over the pen with a fine point felt pen (which I didn't have today).