Excited for Christmas!

Today was the first day of Christmas vacation and although in our house, that merely means that Bella doesn't spend her usual 2 hours at preschool in the morning, it changed the feel of our home entirely.  We spent the entire morning in our pjs, listened to Christmas music, made Gingerbread cookies, finished our present for Kelly, and played in the first snowfall (more like snow dusting) of Winter.  Such a fun day!  I love this time of year.

We had a snowball fight outside and the younger two wanted to ride bikes.  Christian discovered that it's kinda tricky riding a tricycle snow pants and boots.  It made him quite cranky at first.  He finally got the hang of it, though.

Bella is in the process of learning to ride without training wheels and so I took the pedals off her old little bike so she could use it like a balance bike - just sit and walk it with her feet to practice balance.  She's loving it and I'm happy I saved all that money not buying a balance bike.

We did homeschool during Christian's nap and Bella was so excited to join in.  She has a much harder time with math than Benjamin does, but she's right where he's at in spelling, despite her age.  So I had Benjamin read to us to practice reading, then I made up a spelling game to play together, and then we did separate math activities.  Bella amazes me with her determination.  She had a super hard time with the math but she never gave up. She just kept sitting there and struggling and making mistakes and I kept explaining it and trying different ways of making it clear to her.  She's a tough girl.  So different from Benjamin who just flips out when something doesn't make sense immediately and he doesn't get a 100% on the first try.  I was really proud of her despite her problems with it.  She really enjoys learning and school work.  She comes to me all the time with papers on which she's written her own made up math problems.  "Mommy, 5+10= 15!!" she'll declare proudly, holding up her paper with the numbers written in bright orange highlighter diagonally down the page.  So cute.

We're also doing a really fun unit this week on ocean animals.  Every few weeks, I sit down with Benjamin and we plan what things he'd like to learn about.  I have him give me topics and then he brainstorms questions within those topics that he wants to research.  For this week's unit he said he wanted to understand better how fish in the deep parts of the ocean handle the pressure and lack of sunlight.  He also wanted to understand how a giant whale could survive by eating something so small as krill.  We did the deep ocean stuff earlier this week and today we researched the whale.  In researching it we found tons of cool interactive websites on whales and lots of other information that brought up questions we hadn't even thought to ask.  Both Bella and Benjamin were really into it.  I love when that happens. To finish it off, just for fun, we watched the part of Finding Nemo where Dory and Marlin talk to whale and then get swallowed by it.  The kids were laughing so hard.  I love that we can all be together like this.  It makes me so happy that I have this time to spend with them and that they can be with each other more too.

Here's where I often find my three: 

This is a division wall between my living room and kitchen area.  They will push a chair over, all three climb up there, and call it "the train."  Then they'll play up there and make up all sorts of stories.  Christian will scream out "All aboard!" at random intervals and they have a blast.  It always makes me laugh.

My boys also love to cuddle together.  Yesterday Benjamin was cold and huddled under the blanket on the floor when Christian walked by with his milk.  "Want to come cuddle with me?" Benjamin called to him.  "Okay!" Christian responded excitedly and crawled under.  It lasted about two minutes before Christian became bored laying there, but they really are so cute together.

Can't wait for Christmas!  Only a few more days!