Christmas Catchup - The Clan Meeting

Mr. at Home is the youngest of 7 children. One has passed, one is off in foreign lands, one has her own family, and the other 4 all met up in the Georgia mountains the week after Christmas. Two of his sisters, Heather and Leah, flew from Texas and the plan was for us to drive down on Tuesday morning and join them at the home of Mr. at Home's brother, Howard, and his wife Nancy.

Did you get that?

Brother: Howard, married to Nancy (Georgia)

Sister: Heather (Texas)

Sister: Leah (Texas)

Just thought I'd clear up any confusion.

Well, on Monday, I started getting that "about to get a cold" feeling. Tuesday, I wasn't feeling too well, but it wasn't too bad. Unfortunately, K and Dad were feeling a bit sick to their stomachs. We held off for a couple of extra hours and everyone finally felt well enough to make the short trip. Yea!

For dinner Tuesday night, Heather had graciously spent most of the day in the kitchen slaving over lasagna dinner that was amazing. Stacks and stacks of cheese, an enormous pot of sauce, and boxes of noodles.

L helped assemble the lasagna. After all, it's made of pasta and she loves pasta.

Wednesday morning, we piled into 2 cars and we were off on an adventure. The first stop of the day was Babyland General, where the hand-stitched Cabbage Patch dolls are made. I was part of that generation when Cabbage Patch dolls were THE thing to have. It was a huge deal when my uncle and aunt gave me my first one as it was during the huge first rush when you just couldn't find them anywhere. I still remember Isaac Evin in his red checked shirt and denim overalls. So when Nancy said she was taking us to Babyland General, I think a shiver went down my spine.

It's a very impressive building full of doll nurseries and a cabbage patch where a "baby" is "born" from "Mother Cabbage" during a little presentation they do periodically during the day. I couldn't resist getting the girls both dolls. Not the $200+ hand-stitched ones, just some small babies with plastic heads made in China. There were less zeros in the price.

After a long, satisfying visit with the dolls, Howard and Nancy took us out to a wonderful little buffet at a lodge. They had the best fried chicken. We left there for the small "Bavarian" town of Helen, where they transformed all the buildings into a little old-fashioned village full of shops and ale houses. It was such a neat place.

The girls took their dolls with them everywhere. K's doll hitched a ride in her hoodie pocket.

The last stop of the day was at Tallulah Gorge. We walked out to an overlook, then down hundreds of stairs to a suspension bridge. Then back up hundreds of stairs. It was hard work and we laughed at our efforts on the stairs, but it was beautiful!

Look! I made it into a picture again and even got the whole family!

Here's the siblings. Heather, Mr. at Home (aka Will), Leah, and Howard. There's a very strong family resemblance.

Then we went home and had cheesecake for dinner. Could the day have been any better?!

It was a wonderful day and a fabulous visit. I loved all the places we visited and I loved spending time with the other side of our family. Thanks, Howard and Nancy, for hosting and planning and thanks, Heather and Leah, for coming all the way out here to see us!

Christmas Catchup - Snow!

After dark on Christmas Day, it started to snow! A white Christmas!

It snowed all evening, most of the night, and was still coming down nicely the next morning. We left early for church to make sure the heat was on and to sweep the snow off the sidewalks. Ok, Mr. at Home actually did all that and I walked around taking pictures. The snow was beautiful.

All that walking around in the snow had me covered myself. And since I decided to make more of an effort to get in front of the camera, here's a picture of my snowy self.

After church, the girls got outside and played in the last of the snow. They're much cuter than me.

Christmas Catchup - Christmas morning

We don't really do Santa around here. I don't really care much one way or the other, but I have to say that it makes Christmas gifts a whole lot easier. We don't have to stick to the whole Christmas morning surprise thing. A couple of years ago the girls got a trip to the American Girl store to pick out their own dolls and stuff and just got their stockings on Christmas morning.

This year the girls big gifts on Christmas morning were things they needed for their activities. They both needed big ticket items and we just made things easier on everyone by getting them for Christmas. It was also a good lesson for them - activities are a privilege, the equipment needed is expensive, and sometimes gifts are things you really need rather than toys you just think you want. The girls had really good attitudes about it all and never questioned it after we told them that's what they were getting.

K ended up with 2 big gifts that she needed. One was a new trumpet. We were renting one for her band class, but she loves playing and practices often, so we bought her a new one since she will be continuing. It's just a very basic beginner trumpet and it ended up costing less to buy than to rent for a semester. She also needed a new glove, so I took her to the store and let her choose a new one. She knew she was getting a trumpet, and she obviously knew about the glove, but she *didn't* know that I had signed her up for a softball skills training course for the next 6 weeks. She was so very excited about that!

L's big gift was new dance shoes. She needed very specific jazz and tap shoes for her competition team, so I took her to the dance store and got them fitted properly. I then sent the girls out to the car while I paid and I managed to sneak in a new, bigger dance bag. The girls would be shocked if they ever knew how many of their gifts I managed to buy while they were with me without them any the wiser. She's already told me a few times that she loves her new dance bag.

The girls both got new Webkinz because they love to play with them and they got new purses filled with a few goodies. K got a new Bible and she had bought her sister a new one. L got a couple toys and clothes and they both got some cool stuff in their stockings. My big gift was a Nook ereader which I l.o.v.e. and Mr. at Home got a box of his favorite cigars.

So it was a very nice Christmas where everyone got something they loved, then we went and had lunch with friends where I didn't take a single picture and just had a great day.

Christmas Catchup - Gingerbread

My birthday is 4 days before Christmas. And yes, it has always irked me that we were rarely in school to celebrate, people combined gifts, it kinda got lost in the Christmas celebrations, etc., etc.

But this year? I had a very, very cool birthday. Mr. at Home and I had plans for that night to meet some good friends at a Brazilian steak house (the food was *amazing* and the company even better). I did, however, find a very neat way to pass the day until it was time for dinner.

Some friends invited us to the Grove Park Inn in Asheville to see the gingerbread houses. I've always wanted to go, but it's never worked out until this year. So the girls loaded up and drove out to the mountains to meet our friends for lunch, then we went out to the hotel. Now this is an amazing hotel. First off, it's HUGE and incredibly fancy, but it looks like exactly the sort of place you'd expect to host a gingerbread house competition. We had a difficult time finding a parking spot, then we had to trudge up an enormous hill to the front porch. At which point I discovered that I had left my camera in the car.

Now if I'd known what this place was going to be like, I would've sucked it up and gone back for it, but I didn't and you'll just have to put up with camera phone quality.

First was an enormous lobby with a beautiful sleigh and reindeer setup for photo opportunities.

Then we took off wandering through the winding hallways and levels where there was a fabulously decorated Christmas tree every few feet and breathtaking views of a beautiful courtyard and the mountains beyond. And then we found the cases where the gingerbread houses were displayed.

And they were beyond anything you could imagine.

Each piece in the adult categories had to be handmade and they had done so in exquisite detail. This was the first house we saw.

The icicles blew me away. The horse. The tree with a cardinal. It was simply breathtaking. But there were so many more. They could be no bigger than 2 foot square, so everything was done is such miniature perfection.

Most were buildings - houses, stores, theaters, but some people really pushed the boundaries and created other things like dolls and pumpkin stands. The grand prize winner was a set of nesting dolls where each one appeared to be finished with wool or wood or lacquer that looked real.

There were tons of houses of all different types.

Some whole landscapes.

Some famous houses like Falling Water.

The little girls' favorite was this gold-roofed theater with a single ballerina on stage. (It's on the left.)

After we had seen all the gingerbread creations, we wandered outside to a little artists' shop where they wanted $65 for a crocheted baby hat and most of the stuff was breakable, so I took most of the girls outside where they ran around like crazy and found a bit of leftover snow.

The girls have all declared that they want to enter the contest next year. There is a child category where the rules are far less strict so we'll have to see what happens before entries are due for 2011. Whatever the case, you need to plan to come visit us next Christmas and we'll go see the gingerbread houses together.

Christmas Catchup - Cookies

I will finally actually really post a few pictures from Christmas for those family members who read my blog and want to see pics of my kids. And I'll tell you about our exciting Christmas.

Want to know what was so exciting about our Christmas?

Well, it was a quiet, simple, holiday season. Nothing much planned during the week before Christmas. A little time with friends, dinner out, hanging around the house, a little trip after Christmas Day to visit Mr. at Home's family, then back home to lay around being sick with a cold. The exciting part of our Christmas is how easy and nice it all was.

Since we had all this free time the week before Christmas, I decided to do something I enjoyed from my own childhood. The girls and I picked up some sugar cookie dough. Because we like shortcuts like that. We floured up the countertop, used the Christmas cookie cutters, and baked us some fancy shaped cookies.

But then the real fun began.

As the cookies cooled, I filled bowls with powdered sugar and carefully dribbled and stirred water into them until it came to the consistency of thick paint. The girls added food color to make six different colors, then we took six clean paintbrushes to the table and got busy.

When I tried to do this with the girls in the past, they got bored after only a few cookies, but I guess it had been awhile since the last attempt as they had *never seen this before*. They sat and painted and painted and painted those cookies.

Even dad got in on the fun.

These are my favorite. Mom let each of us kids pick out a few of her cookie cutters for ourselves when we left home and I ended up with these. They're a bear to actually use because they're so detailed. You have to make sure your dough is plenty full of flour and that you coat both the dough and the cutter thoroughly with flour. Then it works just fine. But just looking at them reminds me of sitting at our kitchen table painting cookies exactly the same way as a child.

And then we ate all the cookies. They were incredibly yummy.

Time for Learning Review

"Can we just do Time for Learning from now on?"

L seems to have liked it :-)

Time for Learning is an on-line curriculum that covers the core subjects. We received a 1-month free trial in exchange for an honest review, so here goes.

We used Time for Learning as a supplement to our normal work, since it was just a try-out. But I tried to keep their regular stuff light and gave them plenty of time to get the computer lessons accomplished.

At the beginning, K loved the PBS-educational-show style of the Time for Learning lessons.

(I'm having a hard time conecentrating as L is having a royal dramatic meltdown because she simply can't do her writing properly (and she might get another B! Oh, the humanity!!) if she doesn't get to use the TV tray and stool that K claimed this morning. Darn that K for picking the "comfy" spot! anyway...)

Then the PBS-educational-show style began to really get on K's nerves. Because every example they showed was the example+dialogue+humor+animation and it took forever to get through every example and the lesson seemed to drag on forever.

I have to pause and preface the next part by saying that I'm not being prideful or better-than-you. It's just the way they're made.

My kids are smart. As in rather intelligent. They're accustomed to getting through their work quickly with minimal explanation and interruptions.

The constant repetition and lengthy teaching segments drove both my girls batty. For L, the worst was the reading where she had to redo the same story with a little less help each time. She kept saying "I've already done that!" Sometimes the problem was that she had simply not clicked through every part of the lesson and sometimes she just had to do several similar lessons in a row.

Both the girls liked the ease of having their lessons on the computer and I liked how little I was responsible for. Many of K's lessons were ones she had to read and even some of L's first grade lessons were the same. Sometimes a voice read the words on the screen and sometimes it didn't.

From what I saw, Time for Learning is a great tool if you need something your kids can do mostly independently. It would work well for most learners with the repetition and explanations and instant feedback when you answer a question incorrectly. Because we've always used a fast-paced curriculum with high expectations, most of it was too easy for my kids, but it's probably on an average grade-level.

If you'd like to learn more, you can use the following links to their website.

http://www.Time4Learning.com - Online interactive curriculum for home use, PreK-8th Grade.
http://www.Time4Writing.com - Online writing tutorials for high, middle, and elementary school students.
http://www.Time4Learning.net - A forum to chat with parents online about kids, education, parenting and more...

Surviving the Plague

I have lots of pictures from Christmas break to share, a review to write and post, news and stories and funny moments. But they all took a back seat to the plague that swept through our house last week. I got it first and worst, spending 2 days in bed and two more dragging myself around the house trying to get a handle on the chaos. Mr. at Home and K both got milder versions of it and L just had a runny nose.

My personal theory is that L just doesn't have time to be sick. Because she is never sick. She's too busy moving and shaking and dancing around that the germs can't catch up with her. I can't remember even one time in her whole life that she's thrown up. And she's been here for over 5 years now.

On Saturday I felt well enough to go to the store for more medicine and we had just left the restaurant where we lunched on soup when a terrible thunk heralded the fact that our transmission had just gone out. So my big red van was towed to the service shop and we spent the rest of the weekend at home. I'm currently waiting on the service place to call back so we can see what the damage is.

The thing is that just within the last week or two I had thought of two things I wanted to change about our life. I wanted to be more intentional about what I spend and I wanted to spend more time at home. I hadn't actually prayed about them or made them goals or resolutions or even given either of them more than a passing thought or two, but seems like God was listening anyway and decided to force the issue. We'll have to tighten our budget if we're going to pay for a new transmission or a new car.

Today we've jumped back into schoolwork and housework and activities. Thankfully, we have some amazing friends who came and gave us a ride home on Saturday when the car broke down and they insisted on loaning us a car until we get ours repaired or replaced. I love our friends. That's really how you survive the plague. You have great friends to help you out.