Who needs toys? Really!

Our toys get so little use until I try to get rid of them.  I am always caught and then the toys are their favorites.  I pulled out the Little People and bagged them up to send to my mom's because her toys were mostly ruined by a leak from the attic.  Sure enough, even Drew was playing with them the whole day when the bag was discovered.

No really, most days, it's playing with cardboard boxes, balloons, or some other crafty thing they discover.  Most recently, Isaac read about how to make your own window clings with nothing but puff paint and wax paper.  We happened to have both and I let him go to town.  Several days later and all the boys (sans Bobby) were making clings for the sliding glass door.  This took up so much of their time and helped to use up an old craft supply.  It wasn't too messy and I didn't run this craft at all.  So win-win for me!

You have to really look to be able to see them in the photo.  

I was trying to figure out how I could get everyone to just buy the kids craft supplies or books and not get us anymore toys for Christmas!

Sewing with My Girls

A sweet lady who works with Brian is a big quilter and she sent pre-cut fabric and the instructions for the girls to make themselves a pillowcase.  I had put it off because I have not been sewing lately.  With traveling, homeschooling, and the rest of my regular life, I just don't have the time for machine sewing right now.  I've been hand sewing and crocheting lately instead because I can do it on our long drives when traveling.  However, my two daughters have been wanting to get back into sewing.  They learned to use the machine back in the states, but didn't show much interest in doing more until recently.  They want to sew clothes, but I thought this might be an easier first step.  Especially since all the fabric was cut and ready.

They both enjoyed it, but didn't love all the pinning.  Genna's got a heavy foot on the machine and Hannah is slow and careful in her sewing.  Wouldn't have guessed it would go another way, knowing their personalities.  The pillowcases had a border and french seams.  They turned out perfectly!

I am making a list of summer goals this year as I usually do to keep us from being lazy and the kids from having too much time to bicker.  One thing on the list is to teach them to make a few simple clothes items for themselves.

The Gingerbread House Personality Test

For the purposes of this post I am labeling these gingerbread houses:  back row starting from the left will be called a, b, and c; staring from the left on the front row is d and e.

We were invited to a party by another homeschooling Catholic family that we met through the Nativity pageant.  This was a fancy Martha Stewart kind of party as it turned out.  The house was decorated to the nines for Christmas and the whole family was dressed up like they were going to a ball.  One of the daughters read a Christmas story to all the children during the party and the mom (7 months pregnant) sat down at her harp and played Christmas carols while everyone sang.  We came to find out that she was a professional harpist before she had children.  There were amazing party favors, and it all was just too good to be true.

The most notable thing was that the mom had stayed up late the night before putting together the frames for the gingerbread houses.  There were more than twenty gingerbread houses waiting to be decorated by the children.  When it was time to decorate them, bowls full of every kind of candy were brought out and laid along the center of a long table.  The children squeezed around the table and stood to decorate their own gingerbread houses.  It was the best gingerbread house decorating experience of my life since all I had to do was help Judah and Drew with spreading the icing so they could stick on their candies.  I usually hate doing it with the kids since they are all asking for help or bombarding me with questions at the same time which is the number one difficulty I have with being a mother of six.

So the point of this post was to show how these gingerbread houses all turned out like each of their personalities.  If you know my kids you should make your guesses now before I go into detail about how I would have been able to tell which belonged to which child even if no one had told me.

a.  This one is Drew's.  He likes to make everything look like it is really supposed to look which is shown in the Twizzlers brick tiles for the roof and the door with a door knob.  He does this with his coloring as well.  He always wants to know what color things are supposed to be and will not take, "I don't know.  Color it whatever you want  it to be," for an answer.

b.  This one is Genevieve's.  She makes everything flashy and noticeable.  Her house is covered from top to bottom with candy.  In addition to that, she is my sweet tooth who loves her candy.  She put extra candy on the plate to take home and eat.

c.  This is Judah's.  It is simple and random like any three year old would do.  This shows more his age than his personality, but then again his personality isn't fully formed yet.  My children have changed so much from when they were three.  Drew's love for order has completely developed since then.

d.  This is Isaac's.  This one could cause some trouble if you were trying to guess because you might think the crushed in house belonged to the three year old.  If you knew that the house did not look like this when it had first been decorated then you might understand better.  My sweet, sweet Isaac kind of breaks things a lot, particularly lately.  For example, he broke some Christmas lights because he just wanted to see if one of the bulbs would come out if he pulled.  Well, it broke.  He crushed an ornament because "it looked like it was made of stone" when in reality it was made of clay, and it shattered when he squeezed it to test it's strength.  He was getting out of the van when we got home and he dropped his gingerbread house.  To his great credit, he did not cry and handled it very well.  I love that boy.

e.  This is Hannah's.  Like Drew she likes things to be organized and look "right."  She makes a plan and does not just stick candy on willy nilly.  Her house is crisp and clean looking.

I wonder what Bobby's will look like one day.  He's got a long way to go in his personality development.

Craft Crazy

Drew is obsessed with crafts lately.  He asks me constantly to do a craft.  I love crafts, don't get me wrong, but I am so busy these days that I can't see straight (I can't even make time for my sewing or blogging hobbies!)  So, my solution has been to give him mostly crafts he can do on his own,  This has been working until the other day when he said, "Mom, can I do a craft that I don't do by myself?  That you have to do with me?"

Be still my heart!  How can you resist that?  I've been really bothered by the fact lately that there are just not enough hours in the day for me to get everything done.  I was rocking Bobby and praying with him and it hit me.  One day I will most likely have time to do all of the important things and even get to my hobbies again, but guess what I am going to want then?  To hold someone's baby.  To read books to someone's baby.  To do crafts with someone's baby.  Why in the world wouldn't I just enjoy, without the thought of my to do list, these moments holding my own baby, reading books to my own baby, and doing crafts with my own baby now when I can?  I know this, but I needed a reminder.  And I'm here to tell you that if you come to my house, I will not have it all together and in the shape that I like.  I will not be on top of things because I am choosing to love on my babies rather than have the perfect house and the to do list checked off.  I'll always have a to do list anyway.

Back to my story about crafting with Drew.  I had to literally schedule it in for the coming Sunday because Thursday, Friday, and Saturday were just too packed with events, but Sunday it could be done.  I pinned a few ideas of things that wouldn't take all day and we already had the supplies for (the latter is always tricky.)  We ended up doing one craft that we couldn't finish that day (finished the next day though) because the glitter glue wouldn't dry and then we made a snowman out of an old sock.  I did most of the work on that one because it required a hot glue gun, but he and Isaac both were just happy to be helping where they could.  Isaac told me all day long how "cute" their snowman was.

And there he sits, amongst the Advent calendars and O Antiphons.

This coming week is the week before Christmas.  We are taking it easy on school and only finishing up some units in a few subjects.  I plan to hug my babies a lot and to focus on Advent activities and prayers.  Go hug your babies too, because let me tell you, if you don't already know, they don't stay cute and little for long.  Soon big problems and attitudes will be coming your way.  I'd take a baby who requires all of my time and physical energy to a preteen/teen who requires all of my emotional energy any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Advent Decor and Activities

The tree looks amazing all decorated and trimmed.  I was so worried about Bobby pulling it over on himself, but he hasn't touched it.  He loves to look at the ornaments when his sisters hold him up high, finding the horses and neighing or the trucks and making vroom vroom sounds.  I had to have gates up and couches moved for Isaac and Drew to keep them away from the tree, but this guy is not into causing that kind of trouble.  He has his own issues, but getting into stuff isn't one of his things.  God bless him!

We have been so blessed by this giant tree.  It has brought us all into the spirit of Advent.  Decorating it was a fun time for the kids and I.  I had to put Judah and Drew to bed in the middle of it before too many of the nice breakable ornaments came out.

The Advent calendars, my Aunt Cindy got the three oldest these Advent calendars the Christmas right before she passed away.  Drew was only a baby then, so he didn't get one.  I have been searching everywhere for them to get for the youngest three kids, but I haven't found them yet.  Drew and Judah just had store bought Advent calendars which did not seem to bother them in the least.  The one pictured is Isaac's train, but the girls have matching gingerbread house ones.

I should have taken a better picture of my O Antiphons.  I have wanted to make these from Waltzing Matilda's blog forever, but have been pregnant or had an infant every Christmas and couldn't muster the energy.  This time I almost said, "Next year" again, but I decided tat it would never get done if I didn't do it now.  I bought seven boxes of Altoids and printed off her pictures and prayers at the beginning of Advent.  I felt like I was on on a roll and doing well.  Then time passed very quickly and suddenly I had just a few days to get them made.  I had planned to have the girls color them and tape them on.  I figured the backs wouldn't quite be completed this year, but I am trying to let go of my perfectionism and just do it anyway.  I was going to do this one way or another.

 I couldn't find the print outs anywhere.  I searched the house four times over.  I have no idea what I did with them when we did our big cleaning right before decorating the tree.  Here's the bigger problem, our internet was having trouble only on the desktop which is connected to our printer.  I sent them to Brian to see if he could print them at work, but that wouldn't work either.  Crunch time was nearly over and the very next day was the beginning of the O Antiphons.  I had to draw the pictures and have Brian print out different prayers that were not already sized perfectly to the Altoid tins.  I wrote the "O" and the fancy lettered name of each Antiphon for the front cover.  They look like they were printed unless you look closely, but they took a lot more of my time than they were supposed to.

Nativity scene taking over the altar, I had lots of trimmings from the tree to decorate with and I LOVE the way it made Mary stand out better in her niche.

Our Jesse Tree in progress

We used our hand-made set of Jesse Tree ornaments and used Geraldine McCaughrean's Jesse Tree story.  The little boys picked out a different Christmas book every day.  We have accrued quite a collection over the last few years.

The stockings were all hung on the window with care...because that's the only place I had room for them all.

We keep them hanging all Advent and Christmas even after St. Nicholas Day because I worked so hard on them that I like to see them as long as possible.

My Pumpkins with their Pumpkins

Drew with his Spiderman Pumpkin, carved and cleaned out by Mommy

 Pumpkin carving used to be something I loved to do and looked forward to the day when I would be able to do it with my children.  I thought it would be all fun and a little bit messy.  We would all sit at the table and I would patiently help each of the children with their own pumpkin.  Well, then I had kids and realized that these kinds of crafty projects with a bunch of young children is actually full of me saying, "Hold on a minute," and, "You have to wait your turn," until even I don't believe I'm actually going to get around to helping them.  We start this at 4pm and guess what I am having to do simultaneously?  If you said, "Cook dinner," you'd be right.  If you said, "Nurse the baby," you'd also be right.

So you can see how this wasn't what I pictured ten years ago when I was carving a pumpkin for my front door step alone.  Drew immediately decided it was too dirty in that pumpkin to help pull seeds and pulp out.  Surprise!  Surprise!  (My tough as nails son who falls out of windows and down a flight of stairs with barely a cry cannot stand dirt on his hands or clothes.)  Hannah wanted help in designing her pumpkin carving, but didn't like any of my ideas.  Genna knew just what she wanted, but drew the picture way too small to actually carve it.  Isaac needed help carving.  Drew also needed me to just do the whole thing since he is not allowed to tough sharp things.  Judah was just hungry and wanted attention, because did I mention he is my only jealous of my or Brian's attention child?

Genna did a Eucharistic pumpkin.

Brian was out of town and so that added an element of craziness to the whole thing, but, as you can see, the pumpkins got carved in the end.  We almost made it with no injuries, but at the last moment Genna was using my linoleum cutter to write her name and slashed her arm with it.  It took a very neat little piece out of her arm, but nothing a little band-aid wouldn't fix.  She is one of my two tough ones, so she handled it calmly.

Hannah made stripes.

Isaac made Mary's heart, pierced by a sword.

This was on Wednesday, and as I write this on Sunday the pumpkins have already been banished to the front porch due to mold.  The squirrels will probably eat them soon.  

Motherhood Lesson #3,025: Label your bag of valentine cards!

The lessons just keep coming!  Why do you label the brown paper sack full of valentine cards that all the children so dutifully and diligently filled out?  The answer is that on trash day, your husband may assume you left a bag of trash on the kitchen counter and lovingly take it out to the curb with all the trash.  Then you may not notice it is missing from the kitchen counter (because maybe it is cluttered, okay!) until the afternoon when the trash man came and took your valentines and your children's hearts with him.  I may have been more upset than the kids were.

However, I would have been in a full-fledged fit if they had been the homemade ones that Genna and I spent a week making.  Luckily, they were not finished yet and so were not in the bag yet.

These were majorly labor intensive pencil toppers!  I got the idea from The Idea Room.

I know my limitations sometimes and I knew that I couldn't do 4 sets of homemade valentines, so I bought premade ones (twice in the end since the first batch was thrown away) and chose Genna, my most patient crafter and Olaf's biggest fan, to make these cute valentines with me.  She was able to trace the patterns, do the tags, and draw (with marker) the rest of him.  I had to cut out 30 bodies, eyes, and arms, 15 noses, teeth, and cheek pieces.  Then I had to hot glue them together even though Genna really wanted to use that gun.  They were tiny pieces, and I knew burned fingers didn't make good valentine hander-outers so I did that part too.

A Monk's Meal

The Story of the World 2 activity book is just full of great ideas to add to our study of the Middle Ages.  This time the kids dressed up like monks in very simple robes made from cut up brown shirts of daddy's.  They made clay cross necklaces (which you may or may not be able to see in the picture below- they blend in with the robes.)  These didn't actually ever harden the way I was expecting so that was a bummer.  Two have already broken.  Brian really got into this and tied rosaries around their twine belts and brought some Gregorian chant music for the meal.  He even lit a candle.  Genna also was fully in character telling us we should even have a silent meal like the monks did.  You can imagine how well this worked, but it was a much quieter dinner than usual.  Even Drew was quieter we noticed.  When Genna realized that the silent eating wasn't going to happen she suggested that we only talk about God if we were going to talk.  Hannah thought we should eat on pillows, so she filled each seat with a pillow.

The meal consisted of home-made (crock-pot) lentil soup, bread with butter (we pretended we were monks on holiday,) an assortment of cheeses, apple slices, and apple cider.  Isaac was the only one who didn't like the soup, but he doesn't like any soup.  Even Drew liked it.

They are already asking when we can do this again. 

Celtic Crafts

 This week we studied the Celts.  So we did some crafts to go along with the theme.  They made Celtic cloaks with cardboard brooches and a cardboard Celtic axe.

Celtic cloaks and brooches!

We only had one gift wrap cardboard tube, so they could only make one double sided Celtic axe.

It's hard to tell, but she went into my scraps and made her Pooh Bear a matching cloak as well.

Paper Airplanes

Isaac asked me to make him a spider airplane like in the book.  He wanted it hairy!

The kids got a paper airplane book, and there have been airplanes in every corner of my house ever since.   A good investment if you need a fun open-ended summer activity.  I had to help them get started and then they were off.  We had paper airplane races in the front yard the first day we got the book out.

Dioramas

The girls made these Red Sea dioramas. It was a history project from our Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt unit. How do you like the Army men for the Israelites? Genna's is the smaller one since she works slower than Hannah. You probably can't tell but there are rocks glued to the bottom. They enjoyed it and could do most of it themselves. Isaac worked on a sticker sheet while the girls did this project. This was a couple of weeks ago. The Story of the World Activity book has so many great project ideas, I am sad that we don't have the time to do more of them. I am hoping to make pita bread this week for the unit on the Phoenicians. Of course, I never got around to making the fig bread from the Ancient West Africa unit.

Valentine's stuff

We have been doing valentine's stuff the whole month of February. Here's what we've been making...

These valentine rice crispy treats were so good! I found this idea here. The foam valentines came from kits I got at Micheal's on sale. Isaac enjoyed the robots and was able to do them by himself once I showed him where all the parts go.

Genna made these butterfly pop valentines for her Best Friend's of Jesus club. I did not get creative here. The ideas for these came from Skip to my Lou. I needed something we could make 22 of and not spend hours and hours on them. I had them printed on colored paper and all they had to do was cut, sign, and assemble them. We did these and Hannah's (below) in stages. I helped cut out a bit because their poor hands were aching.

Hannah's flower pop valentines were for the same club, and also not my original idea.

Hannah coloring some valentines her Mimi sent her and Genna.

Heart shaped peanut butter banana bread muffins

Cranberries

I got this idea from By Sun and Candlelight. When I realized Isaac's next book was Cranberry Thanksgiving for Five in a Row, first, I wished I had looked ahead and done that the week before Thanksgiving. Then I remembered seeing this cool activity where you string up popcorn and cranberries and hang them outside for the squirrels.

While doing this craft we talked like Yoda the whole time. Funny kids, I have. :) What's funny is Hannah can't talk like Yoda, but the younger two can. She has a mental block about reorganizing her sentences or something. Isaac is a natural, and we all know Genna has no problem getting things backwards. This was spurred on because of books Hannah has been reading, kid's Star Wars books we found at the library. I was reading one of them to Isaac the night before and all the kids piled up to listen.

We also made some yummy cranberry bread from the recipe at the back of the book, Cranberry Thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving to you...

from our one little, two little, three little Indians!

The kids made their own costumes. Hannah's even had a pictorial story on hers, something about an Indian at war in the forest.

I think Isaac is excited someone trusted him with fabric markers. :)

I can not take credit for this craft. It was all thanks to my amazing Aunt Cindy. Speaking of, here she is holding Drew.

I also owe my cousin, Erica, thanks for helping out with the crafts and the kids as well!

We fried a turkey after putting it in brine it overnight. We had all the traditional stuff, stuffing, sweet potato casserole, green beans, a spiral ham, potato salad, rolls, gravy, and four pies to choose from.

Thankful Indians at the kids' table before dinner...

Don't forget our Aggie boys ready for the game!

Before dinner, my uncle had everyone read a scripture or poem around the fire pit. It was a perfectly beautiful crisp day. The girls did a great job reading the poems they were given, and Isaac said his poem he had memorized that didn't relate to Thanksgiving so that he could be included. Drew slept through the family bonding like a champ, all cozy and safely inside. (This immobile phase is awesome for napping anywhere without having to drag a pack-n-play everywhere we go.)

The company was excellent, the food was delicious, and the day was perfect. Thank you, God, for all our many blessings.

Thanksgiving Crafts

This week we are catching up on History and Science and doing crafts. Our first craft was this simple sticker turkey.

I told them to do whatever background they wanted. Hannah did a turkey in a sunset.

Genna's turkey is sitting on her nest full of eggs.

Isaac got a little backwards with his name and put his shoes on the wrong feet.

The other craft was done in their girl's club. It is a Thankful Wreath. We finished it up at home and they wrote what they were thankful for on each hand.

Here are the kids playing around. Hannah is a mummy. We have been studying Ancient Egypt way too long if you ask me.

Gifts made with love for their littlest brother

Craft time on the front porch!

The kids made Speck these little gifts last week. We were really hoping to be able to put his name on them, but we can't wait any longer. We will add his name to them whenever my darling husband picks a name for sure. I found fabric markers on sale at Joann's and pulled out a couple of white onesies and a plain pillowcase for them to decorate. Hannah did a beautiful sailboat pillowcase to go with his room. Her lighthouse, on the other side and unfortunately not pictured here, was also stunning. Genevieve did a sailboat picture on the front and an American flag on the back of her onesie. Isaac got frustrated by the fabric moving when he was trying to draw and resorted to making dots. So I traced his hand and wrote "Isaac loves me" on it to make it less of a mess. We helped him make a spider on it as well, since that's what he wanted to draw before frustration set in.