Winter - Our Family Unit

Archives

January4th

Happy New Year!

Posted in: HouseWifery, Our Traditions

Welcome to 2012! We hope everyone’s holidays were merry and bright – ours definitely were. The kids and I headed back to Colorado a few days before Kyle, just in time for a perfectly white blanket of snow and even better, the arrival of my first nephew, JR.

Isn’t he beautiful?! And obviously a genius…we took this when he was four days old and asked him how old he was – he holds up four fingers! (OK, so that story may not be true, but he is definitely a handsome boy and so precious.)

Christmas Eve was at Kyle’s family this year and the kids were more than ready. Kade remembered all about Christmas and presents and was ready to dive in. Berlin just wanted to wear her new shoes, even with her Christmas jammies.

I made the mistake of asking Kade if he wanted to kiss Berlin on the cheek. Perhaps I should have checked with Berlin first! I love how proud he is that he “won” at the end.

Christmas Day we drove out to my family’s place where Kade got to be Santa’s helper and pass out Christmas stockings and Berlin discovered the joy of independence as she figured out how to walk alone with her new baby stroller.

It’s always so much fun to go back and be with family and friends. We did puzzles, drank hot cider, played games, held babies, and slept in. One of the best days was going thrift shopping with my mom and sister. I literally doubled my wardrobe in 1 day! We had so much fun hunting for deals and I may have actually purchased 15 cardigans for myself.

Now we’re safely back home; Christmas is packed away; we’re mid-grandparent-detox with the kids; and I’m trying to sort goals, resolutions, and to-do lists. Thank goodness for vacations and thank God for His blessings. Happy 2012 and may you see Him work this year!
December14th

Seasons at Our Homeschool Preschool

Posted in: Homeschool

I got some fun feedback after I posted about our Homeschool Preschool so I figured I’d show you a little more in depth another one of our topics, the Four Seasons. Before you start thinking that every week has this much detail, I’ll confess that “Christmas” preschool has been a lot more about decorating the house, Christmas music, and food. Essentials, I know! But not exactly classified as academic learning, but then again, I guess I kind of like that. Variety is good…sometimes incredibly disorganized and chaotic, but good!

If you live in a place that actually has four seasons you may be asking yourself why you would need to “teach” about the Spring, Summer, Fall & Winter. Isn’t that a lot like spending a week learning that there is Daytime and Nighttime?? However, here in NorCal we have only three seasons: Hot, Warm, and Light Jacket. So we had to take measures to ensure that he knew what that white stuff was when we go to Colorado for Christmas.

We started out the week with this blank poster on the pantry door. Thanks to my Cameo, it took all of 2 minutes to cut out words and trees and paste them on. Then I did my best to incorporate a variety of methods for learning: reading, crafting, hands on, work papers, outdoors, etc.

The first thing we did was to read some books about seasons and watch a couple cute videos on YouTube, to get an overall picture. Then we talked about the trees and how they change each season. He drew some buds on the Spring tree, we glued some tissue leaves on the Summer tree, stamped leaves on and off of the Fall tree, and then added glitter for frost on the Winter tree.

Next we talked about birthdays and wrote down whose family birthday was in each season. And talked about a holiday in each season: Easter, 4th of July, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. This helped with the hands on activities, too. We dyed Easter eggs, lit fireworks and sparklers, gathered leaves on a walk around the neighborhood and cut out snowflakes.

After that, we talked about the weather in each season and decided a little dress-up might be fun.

Of course, there was an abundance of “preschool papers” for each season too and we just kept adding it all to our poster until we ended up with this on Friday.

No matter which season we were talking about, we always had our little ray of sunshine. Thanks Berlin! It was a great week, so fun. See what planning gets me? Time to add it to the resolution list in January.
December4th

Holiday Fashion 2010

Posted in: Slice of Life

I can’t believe it’s December already! I thought life went fast with one kid, it seems even faster with two. The kids and I (it still seems a little weird to say that) are getting into a bit of a routine here at home now that Kyle has gone back to work. We managed to decorate a bit for Christmas on Thanksgiving weekend which immediately put me in the mood for this time of year. I just LOVE Christmas time!

But today is not what I picture when I think Christmas. Growing up in Colorado, we were almost guaranteed a white Christmas. I remember lots of sledding days, snow forts and cups of hot chocolate. But here in NorCal, it’s just cold and gray and drizzly. So rather than try to sled in the puddles with Kade, we decided to open up the Costume Box. We weren’t really trying to create outfits, more just trying to use everything in the box. He sometimes gets stuck in a rut with particular toys and only wants to play with one or two…forever. So I was trying to get him to have fun with as much as possible in hopes that he would find some new favorites.

Without a doubt, the boy is a ham. When we put on the first outfit, I told him to go have a look in the mirror. He did…cracked himself up…then HE decided it was time for a picture and went and stood in front of the Christmas tree!

This catching pose was his idea. I barely got the camera up in time to capture it!

I don’t know why, but with the rope and tiger hat this one sort of reminds me of Siegfried and Roy or maybe with the popped collar and gloves, it’s Michael Jackson???

The boy is sheer entertainment (at least whenever he’s not fighting me over food!).
January25th

Merry Belated Christmas

Posted in: Slice of Life

So you might be wondering why in the heck I’m posting Christmas photos a month after Christmas! To tell you the truth, I’m just now getting around to it. Something about getting things back into a groove after vacation takes a while, but it was such a good trip and we had so much fun, these pics deserve to be posted.