Passing the time...

While we wait for the big fat guy in red, the girls and I have been crocheting. It's actually our favorite winter sport. We don't get any snow and the weather has been unseasonably warm (hovering in the 70s) for the past few weeks, so we have to make winter wear to feel wintery.

So far I've made scarves for the girls, and this one is my favorite. It's the Botswana flag for Kenna. She loves that particular African country and now has something to show everyone. Santa will bring her a few more African articles, but this one will suffice while she waits.

Silent Night

May your Christmas be merry and bright...and peaceful. :)

Our pioneer Christmas

Last year, amist all the lavish gifts and crumpled wrapping paper, I declared this year to be a Little House Christmas. I told them that they would only receive what would fit into their stockings--just like Mary and Laura.

This year they reminded me of what I said, except they wanted a tree just like the Ingalls may have had.

So we picked a tree from the woods (okay, really it come from Lowes, but that's near the woods of our house...) and strung some popcorn

with cranberries (that could have come from our backyard, if we had any).

The girls enjoyed this project so much that they even helped clean up. Mabry even asked if she could do it again because it made her "behave," she said.

I think I'd behave too if Santa was coming next week. :)

If you have to stay home from church,

you might as well make marshmallows.

And if you're the sick girl with pink eye, you get to pick the color and the shape. In my crazy Christmas mind, I thought we'd do green Christmas trees. But, nope...she wanted pink hearts.

(Anyone else have "yellow moons, orange stars, green clovers and blue diamonds" randomly repeating in your head?)

Pieces of Pennsylvania

(This post is a bit late; the presentation happend over 3 weeks ago. But hey, what's a mom to do when she's got sick kids? So far we've passed around general nastiness and pink eye. We've avoided the stomach virus, but have visited the doctor more times in the past two week than in the past two years.)

For our co-op on the 50 states, we presented Pennsylvania. Kenna was a red crayon in honor of the Crayola Factory in the upper part of the Keystone State.

Kissable Mabes told about the Hershey factory and how chocolate is made. I think the girls would really like to move there forever.

Behind her is our poster. Everytime they presented some information, they would lift up a blue flap to show a picture on a red background. The turned the entire state into an American Flag a la Betsy Ross...

Cayli Grace's hero! CG was able to share Betsy trivia and facts about American Revolution, much of which started in Philly.

Then we all cut out Betsy's famed 5-pointed stars. When George Washington approached Besty to sew our first flag, he suggested 6 points on each star because they were easier to cut out of fabric. Betsy, creatively knowing better, showed him a 5-pointed one, with a few fold and a snip. The rest is history.

Excuse us as we withdraw from civilizaton...

and empty these containers:

I truly believe that for every trip to Walmart, a virus finds a new home. We must have loaded up on the common crud last week, because it's been never-ending since Friday. And this virus is especially family friendly, jumping from kid to kid (which explains why my sedated girls played 6 hours of monopoly yesterday). Hopefully we'll be our jolly selves in time for the Christmas pageant next week.