Holidays
After we partied in style, we woke up and celebrated Scott’s first birthday. He got dressed up in a new outfit from my grandma and we headed to church. Unfortunately, Scott fussed a lot on his birthday. I was sad with him that he just seemed unhappy so much of the day. But that evening we found the culprit: his first molar coming in. It had already cut the skin. Poor kid. Cutting molars is the pits.
To ease his pain (he, he) we gave him a birthday giant marshmallow. I ran out of energy to make him a cake so we snacked on leftover goodies from the NYE party. He didn’t seem to mind so much and enjoyed the marshmallow enough that he left his hat alone.
Sammi wrote him a couple letters, very sweet and thoughtful, and a coloring book, mostly blank pages. Elli gave him something she pulled off the school shelf and Mom dropped the ball on a present at all. My goal is to get it done by the end of the month. It will still count, right?
Here’s part of his birthday song. I love the eye thing he does right at the beginning. It’s my favorite!
I have never gone all out on party decorations before. Usually I’m still trying to get cleaning done as guests arrive. So this year felt extra special because of all the help I had to get it all done and how wonderful it turned out. I really liked how everything looked. And now we have a gold clock hanging back in our bathroom. It’s just too cool. Makes me want to spray paint the wall silver!
After snacking for a while the girls made their New Year’s self with party hat and blower. They seemed to enjoy it and it was simple enough that all the girls finished theirs. While they were working on that, the grown ups were blowing up all the balloons I didn’t use in decorations. Once that balloons were blown up and the kids played with them for a bit we decided to do the kiddie countdown earlier than originally planned. It worked perfect though. We did the countdown at 8:3, popped all the balloons (my favorite NYE tradition) then headed outside to do some fireworks provided by a family that came to the party. All the kids did tons of sparklers, including Scott who was mesmerized and didn’t even try to put it in his mouth. There were some bigger fireworks and then we headed back inside.
Three little girls got jammies on and snuggled up in Elli’s bed. Scott and Brady fell asleep and shared the crib. Jaylee fell alseep in her Daddy’s arms and was snuggled into our bed. Then the games began. Brent was such a trooper and played all sorts of games with the older kids: Chutes and Ladders and The Tinkerbell Game.
The grown ups played the sign game. I remembered that I am really not good at that game but it is fun just to laugh and relax with friends. I love the mirror ball and plan on keeping that safely tucked away for next New Year’s Eve. It was just the right length for the tall guys to bump their heads on it, but no one seemed to mind too much.
Sammi made it all the way to midnight. It was fun to have her sit on my lap and Brent at my side as we counted down to the new year. Lots of kisses and hugs. Then jammies and bed for the rest of us. Overall, I feel blessed to have ended 2011 on such a great note and to have begun 2012 with friends and loved ones in out home.
Hope your 2012 is off to a great start!
I’ve been enjoying Pinterest more than ever as I’m trying to find ideas for celebrating New Year’s Eve and sneaking in a bit of a birthday celebration for Scott. He turns ONE on January 1 which makes it his golden birthday so I’d like it to be a little extra special, at least for those of us who will remember! Side note, it also occurred to me today that it will be Brent’s golden birthday on the last day of January. I think extra special birthday celebrations are in order for January!
Click on the picture to see more of the pins on my board.
I’m particularly intrigued by the yarn balloons. We tried them once, but we didn’t wrap them with enough yarn. We may have to try again. My plan is to use white yard and then spray paint them either silver or gold. I’ve also gathered a selection of mini silver, blue and gold ornaments to make garland to hang down from the ceiling around the food table.
What are your plans for New Year’s Eve?
We’ve baked up a storm today making chocolate chip cookies and ginger snaps to leave for Santa. Sammi also thought it would be prudent to leave Santa a gift. She chose to give him cookies for the ride home 
We’re off to read the Nativity Story and
open our new Christmas jammies.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!
Merry Christmas!
I have always loved Nativity Sets. My mother had a beautiful ceramic set painted in blue and white that I remember from my childhood. It was so soft looking that it helped me feel the tenderness of the Christmas story: the birth of Jesus Christ. Since I first went away to collage I have added a few nativity sets to my collection, including my mother’s set from my childhood.
At the beginning of each December we pull out our nativity sets. This year we have the same number of sets as people in our family: 5. Scott is using the Fisher Price Nativity Set we got when Sammi was a baby. As we set up our nativity sets we read the Bible verses about each character. Then we sing a song about each character. This has proved to be a successful activity with young children.
This year it was all about Elli’s wise men visiting Sammi’s Jesus. It’s so fun to see the girls finding each person or animal as we read about them. Then when we are finished reading we play with the sets, retelling the story or parts of it. I love starting the Christmas season this way because it puts the Christmas story of Christ’s birth in our minds and hearts as we go about the rest of our holiday preparations.We also read the story and sing the songs again on Christmas Eve.
Here are the details of our Nativity Story and Songs for each character:
Mary: Luke 1:26-38 “Silent Night“
Joseph: Matthew 1:18-25 “The Shepherd’s Carol” CS, 40
Jesus: Luke 2:1-7 “Away In a Manger” or this version
Shepherds: Luke 2:8-20 “Angels We Have Heard on High“
Wise Men: Matthew 2:1-12 “With Wondering Awe“
This year we are also making a little book that follows the order we read the Christmas story from the Bible. I wrote a short summary of each part with the verse references to put on each page. Yesterday we did the Angel Gabriel and Mary pages. We’re making three books, one for each child, so it’s taking a fair amount of prep work, but the pages yesterday turned out so cute and we had so much fun doing it that I think it’s worth it.
Today we did the pages for Joseph and the angel who comes to him in a dream. Sammi totally won the creativity award today. She made the best looking sleeping Joseph. I wish I’d done my arms the same way! If you’re interested in making this book, too, you can download the words and verses for each page here.
How are you sharing the Christmas Story with your family?
I have a huge aversion to spiders. Seriously. I literally cried when the park ranger walked by me with a tarantula at a show we went to. Then I turned around and carried the snake around for all the kids to see. It’s just spiders. They freak me out. So celebrating spiders on our Halloween Countdown took a lot of will power for me. In the end, it was one of the more fun days we had!
We made spider snacks:
They are cute and I know you want to make them, too! Here’s the how-to on spider cookies.
Supplies for Spider Cookies
- Oreo cookies
- Pull apart Twizzlers
- Chocolate chips
- gingerbread house frosting (best edible glue, ever!)
I made the frosting first following our gingerbread house frosting recipe. I was a little distracted and added almost two pounds instead of one pound of powdered sugar. I added some more milk to thin it down and smooth it out. I was worried it wouldn’t hold well with the, uh, alterations. But it did great.
Next we pulled apart the Twizzlers and cut them into little leg-length pieces. Then we twisted the top of the Oreo off. We pressed eight legs into the cream filling. Then added a little frosting to the backside of the Oreo and put it back on top to cover the legs. Then we dipped the chocolate chips in the frosting, generously, and put them on to of the Oreos for eyes. I love the look of a little extra frosting around the chocolate chip. Looks like real eyes to me.
This was great work for little fingers. Sammi (5) and Elli (3) both helped put legs on and dipped eyes in frosting and added them. Sammi also loves to twist off the Ores tops. Once she worked through the process on one cookie with me, she did all the rest of hers on her own without any assistance from me. I love how independent she is now!
We’ve been following The Home Teacher’s Countdown to Halloween. It’s been so much fun and the girls look forward each morning to picking the pumpkin off the wall and finding out our theme for the day (a picture on the back of the pumpkin). Today is Monster day and I have lots of fun things planned, but we started the day off with monster pancakes for breakfast.
Brent made the pancakes and colored some green and some purple. Then we put decoration possibilities on the table. We had chocolate chips, bananas, whipped topping, bacon and sausage.
Each person created their own monster.
Such creativity!
Even Scott enjoyed his monster pancake.
Other things we are doing today:
- Monster Measuring (free download, but you need to create an account)
- Monster Number Words Matching Activity (free download, but you need to create an account)
- Monster hand puppets out of felt (This is my own creation)
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I saw these star shaped marshmallows at the store and just couldn’t resist bringing them home. After mulling it over for a few days, I finally came up with this flag craft to do with the red, blue and white marshmallows. The pictures make a great step-by-step for this American flag craft.
The Setup: baskets for sorting, flag, glue and marshmallows
Sorting
Squeezing glue
Adding Stars
Adding Stripes
Finished Flag and Snack Time!
F.Y.I. We got the blue and red baskets from JoAnn’s this past week.
Have fun celebrating Flag Day tomorrow. If you want to know how the flag got it’s nickname Old Glory, check out the story of Captain William Driver.
At the beginning of this year we introduced you to Aaron Nigel Smith’s album “Everyone Loves to Dance.” It is still a favorite at our house. Aaron has just released a holiday song that he recorded with his two sons and Rhythm Child. We’ve had fun groovin’ to it!
Aaron Nigel Smith – Happy Happy Holiday featuring Rhythm Child
Happy Holidays from Because Babies Grow Up and Aaron Nigel Smith!
This was a quick and fun craft project we did one afternoon. We just used Halloween supplies we had on hand. Last year after Halloween I bought a bunch of rings and other Halloween plastic goodies. We discovered this year that the ring part pops off easily and leaves the Halloween shape free to become something else (other than a ring!) So we used them to make a Halloween wreath.
Supplies
- Paper plate
- Paint
- Halloween shapes, figurines, anything you have around the house
- Ribbon, Halloween colored or not
- Glue gun
Directions
The paper plate is the base of the wreath. Cut a circle out of the center of the paper plate. Then trim around the outside of the plate so the wreath is the size you want to accommodate the decorations you have for it.- Paint the paper plate. We used orange, yellow, purple and black. We also used the Bingo bottles to paint so that the pain wouldn’t be too thick and would dry faster. Let dry.
- After the painted plates were dry, we warmed up the glue gun. The girls chose which shapes they wanted on their wreath. We laid them out to see how full the wreath would be and what order they wanted their shapes in.
I added glue to the back of the shapes and helped the girls put them where they wanted them. Then they pressed down and counted to five to let the glue dry before we did the next one.- After all the decorations were on the front and the glue had cooled, we added the ribbon. I just cut the ribbon pieces all the same length. I doubled the ribbon and glue gunned the ends at the top of the wreath. After a minute to cool, they were ready to hang.
Wishing you Happy and Safe Halloween Celebrations this weekend!
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