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!

Our Weekend Vacation

Hello?  Anyone still out there?  Sorry about the long silence.  Sometimes life just simply gets the better of me and certain things fall off the radar.  I'm back now, though, and in full Christmas-season swing.  It has been so fun around here ever since Thanksgiving.  We've been celebrating Advent every Sunday, making cards and crafts for people (I think Bella painted on herself more than on any cards, though), listening to Christmas music, reading Christmas books, etc.  I've loved it.  And all my Christmas shopping is done!  Yay!

With the end of the year also comes the last of the vacation days, so Kelly took a day off and we took a trip to the glorious metropolis of Toledo, OH.  ;)  After our 23 hour drive to Yellowstone, we decided we wanted something a little closer to home.  The one hour to Toledo was perfect.  The first day we visited the Toledo Zoo and saw their "Lights Before Christmas" display. That was lots of fun. Like Temple Square at night and the Zoo in one.  We got to pet snakes, ride the train and the carousel, get right up to a snow leopard and a bear (through glass, thank goodness), and watch some fun light shows too.  Of course, as usual, the kids also loved jumping on every statue they could find.  By the end, they were all quite tired, especially Benjamin.

That night we stayed in a hotel of which we only required two things - be close to the zoo and have a pool.  Luckily they didn't change their location on us at the last minute but they did decide to drain and completely refill their pool hours before we got there, so that pool was COLD!  Reminded me of a time I was in a contest to see who could stand in a near freezing river the longest and I won because I simply stayed in until my feet went numb.  Benjamin was a trooper and swam quite a bit, but Bella, Christian, and I mostly hung out in the knee deep parts and then spent most of the time playing around in the exercise room.

The second day we went to Toledo's children's museum - the Imagination Station.  A really great place with tons to do.  We liked the live science demonstrations the best.  Every hour someone would come on stage and do 20 minutes of science demos.  Those were amazing.  The kids also loved being able to make gingerbread houses because I'm a mean mom and have never let them make one at home. :)  There were a bunch of other really fun things there too like a bike up on a high wire, a giant mouse wheel, and a house that was built to look slanted on the inside so as you entered, you had the constant feeling that you were falling over.  It was so crazy to know that you're not falling and have seen the outside as stable, but no matter how hard you tell yourself that it's only an illusion, you can't get your body to stop feeling like it's falling.  People were crashing against the walls and screaming and straining to escape.  It was the wildest thing.  I was nauseous for a long time after I finally got out.

The whole trip took just over 24 hours and yet it felt like much longer.  It was fabulous.  The kids had a blast and want to go back.  The cool thing is that we can!  Nearly anytime! :)

The other day as we were making Christmas cards, Christian came to me asking me to put the CD case on his back.  I couldn't figure out why he wanted it, but asking a 2 year old why he's doing something is such a waste of time, so I just strapped it onto him.  "I'm CD boy!" he exclaimed and started dashing around like a super-hero.  Cracked us all up.  (And much better than "naked boy" which is his alter ego who fights crime every morning in our house.)