Decorating Our Tree - 2010

Last Saturday, in addition to watching the Army/Navy football game, we also bought and decorated our tree (though not at the same time...during the game we were very focused on the game)! We go to the same corner tree stand every year to buy our tree. It's not the drive-to-the-country-and-cut-down-your-own-tree tradition that some families have, but it's our tradition!

The children did almost all of it this year. First they strung the lights.



Then we began hanging our ornaments. I was busy unwrapping them and putting the children's ornaments into separate piles on trays.




Little Man, looking through his stash.


Putting the angel on the tippy top.



The children did a good job, don't you think? I love decorating our tree!

Today....

I drove my mother in law to the airport for her annual trip to visit her other grandchildren and see them perform in Christmas plays and concerts.

While en route to the airport I practiced driving in snowy conditions with a rear wheel drive vehicle, which is something I haven't done in over 15 years.

I tried really hard to remember to be thankful for our new, old van in spite of the fact that it has rear wheel drive and no anti-lock brakes.

I realized it's going to be a long winter!

I truly *was* thankful that it was me driving and not my 92 year old father in law.

We stopped on our way home from the airport to buy new shoes for two children and new boots for two children.

All the children played in the snow for a long time!

A Christmas package to my parents finally got mailed!

I cleaned up dog pee from the carpet several times because my mother-in-law's tiny little dog, which we are caring for, will not "go" outside in the snow.

I briefly saw the bottom of the kitchen sink.

I picked up my father in law and brought him to our house for dinner.

We did very little school, but we blessed my husband's parents, and that is far more important.

We received two grocery cards in the mail from anonymous sources, and I was humbled once again at God's incredible grace and the generosity of others.

Our Beautiful Daughter! (her coat, her gingerbread house, and her weaving)

Here is the new coat I mentioned we got for our daughter. Doesn't she look grownup?


And this is the gingerbread house that we made together at her friend's annual gingerbread house decorating party. She did most of the work, I just continually cut short pieces of licorice for the roof while chatting with the other moms. :-)



Friends are such a blessing in life!


Last week our daughter participated in her first ever craft sale. She sold woven products that she made herself. So for the six weeks leading up to the sale, she spent every spare moment weaving. She focused on two items, coasters and small purses with shoulder straps. She made all the looms herself out of cereal box cardboard. The shoulder straps for the purses were by far the most time consuming and complicated to make. Here she is with her strap loom.

It took her about 8 hours of weaving to make one strap!



I am proud of her for persevering. She completely "owned" this project from start to finish, setting weekly goals for herself and finding ways to make the weaving always enjoyable rather than drudgery (she listened to 26 volumes of Adventures in Odyssey! YES! 26 entire volumes in 6 weeks).

Here she is displaying her wares the night of the sale. She interacted well with her customers (other homeschool kids and their moms) and did weaving demonstrations and answered questions. I am so proud of her!


She sold several items and made a decent amount of money for a 13 year old!

Here is a sampling of her work. If you live locally and are interested in purchasing anything you see here, please contact me at the email addy in my right sidebar and I will set you up! (I guess we could even mail it to you if you don't live locally but really want something). The small purses are just perfect for a young girl or teenager who doesn't like to carry a bulky purse. They are just the right size for some money and a chapstick (and for older girls, a cell phone and keys!). The straps are extremely sturdy (they will not stretch out nor rip away from the pouch) and can be worn under or over a coat. The coasters are sold in sets of two.

GO NAVY, BEAT ARMY!!!

Our annual watching of the army/navy football game was this past Saturday. On this one day each year my husband becomes a huge football fan, and he requires everyone in the family to be a football fan too. I love this day! There is so much tradition that goes along with the army/navy football games. The "spirit breaks" (like commercial breaks only they are all about patriotism and serving one's country) are often tear-jerkers. The traditions of the game are so deeply entrenched.... it's really kindof cool for me to see how much this means to my husband. To get in the right spirit we all wear our Navy clothes.



You may see quite a bit of gray in this picture, but make no mistake. It is NOT Army gray, but simply a background for NAVY BLUE AND GOLD!!!





Each time Navy scored, everyone dropped to the ground and did the same number of pushups as the score (something that plebes [their word for freshmen] are required to do during the actual games). The boys wore out pretty quickly and just did 7 pushups for each goal, but my husband did them all each time. Navy ended the game with a score of 31. His pecs are quite sore today!


And at the end of the game my husband stood and sang the Naval Academy alma mater along with all the midshipmen on the tv screen.



A day for traditions!

Oh, and Navy WON, which makes the day even better!! (9th year in a row!)

Our Week in Review - Ancient Greece

So much "life" has been happening lately that I have oodles of things to post about, and school has taken a backseat for awhile. But I've had this post in my drafts for over a week and I'd like to finish it and move on to other things!

Recently we spent two weeks learning about Ancient Greece. Not the classical period of Ancient Greece, but before that... during the time of the Trojan War, Odysseus and his odyssey, Jason and his golden fleece. We learned about the beginnings of the greek myths of gods and goddesses, which were well formed by the time the classical period of Greece began. Our middle schoolers read abridged versions of both the Iliad and the Odyssey. It was very fascinating and we all enjoyed it very much!

At the end of our first week learning about Ancient Greece, we enjoyed Greek food while watching the movie: The Odyssey (made for tv version starring Armand Asanti ~ we ended up watching over a couple nights because it's nearly 3 hours long, and fyi if you ever watch it with children, we had to skip over a few suggestive parts, so you definitely need to preview). Our dinner consisted of Greek style lamb and rice, with hummus and bread on the side. You can find the recipe here on my cooking blog. It was absolutely delicious!!



We also did a couple really fun crafts. The first was painting Greek pots. Pottery was not only functional but also became an exquisite art form. Scenes of daily life were often painted on pottery, which is one way we know so much about the Ancient Greeks today. And different areas had slightly different processes for making pottery, so when archaeologists find pots in one area that they know were made elsewhere, it gives them insight into trade routes, trading partners, and types of things traded (depending on the type of pot).

So to begin this project we first looked at pictures of pottery in our history books.


Each child was given a small clay flower pot and sketched their picture on it. Then they painted!





Little Man decided to add handles to his pot. Didn't they turn out wonderfully?




The second project we did was make mosaics. Below is what the boys used. We chose the "under the sea" mosaic kit since the Greeks were surrounded by water. Beautiful mosaics have been found in Greek ruins, and it was they who introduced this art form to the Romans. The Romans took this idea and perfected it, making amazing mosaics that look like photographs!

If you have a child who is focused enough to sit for an hour or more doing one activity if it really interests them, and you need to keep them busy while you work on a project of some kind, I highly recommend these peel and stick mosaics! The picture is already "painted" on, and each square is numbered so the child knows what color of sticky backed foam to place on it. It's not hard, just a bit tedious. However, my boys were so enthralled with this activity, they happily worked for nearly two hours on their masterpieces! (yes, even Little Man!)








Daughter G did a different type of mosaic, and this was more involved and took more time.


She sketched her picture and taped it to her desk under a lamination sheet, sticky side up. Then she placed colored squares of paper on the lamination sheet. Many of them were not small enough so she had to cut them down to the right size.


Didn't it turn out beautifully?


All of the children had fun and did a great job!


Now when we come to the classical period of Ancient Greece we will have lots of mental "hooks" on which to hang new information!