Couple Last Things

 Bug has been working on his model boat that he got for Christmas. It's been quite the learning experience.

The miniature cannons are so cute, though!

Finally, just because they're so cute. . .

One of my dog clients has had to go back to working in the office and traveling, so we've gotten to hang out with her pups a couple times recently.

And we got a 3rd guinea pig! Bandit was one of Tilly's babies, and the family who took her ended up having a child with extreme allergies, so they asked if we wanted her back and since she was our favorite, we said yes. With that many pets, what's a little more poop? Really, it's been good because she seems to like Poppy, which makes us all happy. The other two pigs aren't always that nice to the bunny, so maybe she'll have more of a buddy now.

A Litte Creativity

Peanut is probably the most inspired person I've ever met. . . meaning that every single thing he reads, watches, or does tends to get his creative juices flowing and he starts thinking how he can make it his own. This often means writing a new story, or trying to make something, like this Animal Crate box, similar to the dozens of Kiwi Crates we've had over the years.

He decided last year that he wanted to make this one for a friend's birthday. He started working on it, but didn't get it done in time for the birthday, or for Christmas, so this year, we finally managed to do the last bits and get it in the mail only a few days for the birthday.

I can't get over how involved it was, and how he managed to do most of it all by himself. I helped him work through a couple issues, but otherwise it was all him. He came up with an octopus tank to be put together, a sheet of stickers to decorate the tank, and even this cute yarn octopus.

Of course he had a booklet with activities and instructions.

His ability to imitate the style of things is uncanny--he does it with the voice in his writing all the time. I feel like he would make a pretty excellent ghost writer.

The birthday boy was pretty impressed by the gift, too. He sent us a photo when he was all done with the craft.

Merry Christmas

Christmas Eve and all through the house, there were projects aplenty.

These kids spent a chunk of the afternoon building gingerbread houses.

Peanut requested that they try a theme this year, so here is presenting the 3 Little Pigs:

A house of straw, and house of sticks, and a house of bricks.

They turned out so cute!

Peanut was so happy with it all.

he even made furniture in his house.

And the rendition of the house of sticks included a Big Bad Wolf.

He's already made it to this house, haha.

It was a good way to wait for Santa, and all the fun that came with that.

 

December Adventures

It's been a month of hiking (and catching a beautiful sunset at Del Valle).

Sometimes it's just the kids and I, but we love it when Daddy-o gets to come with us.

Peanut and I continued our Christmas Carol study with a chalk pastel of some symbols that represent the story. Peanut was very taken with this book and has loved all the different versions of the story.

We've taken a LOT of walks to see the lights around our neighborhood, and to get those 1000 hours outside.

I can't always convince anyone else to do a chalk pastel lesson, and this is one I wanted to do last winter and never got around to, so I sat down one evening with Nana from You Are an Artist and did this one on my own. I love little birds.

Our city put together a geocache style hunt that took us around the city, including a couple new spots that we hadn't visited before. It also has gotten us out for a really long walk one evening and a bike ride another.

Peanut and I made "snow" from baking soda and shaving cream and had fun playing with our artic animals.

We haven't baked quite as much as we usually do, and haven't done any marathon baking days, but I almost like this better. I made snickerdoodles one day. A few days later, Daddy-o and Peanut made Mexican wedding cookies, and then the kids had a gingerbread man baking zoom call with friends one day. It's meant that we've had a pretty steady stream of cookies all month.

Bean was with them most of the call, but then she had to go.

I love how the cookies turned out. We usually make buttercream frosting because I think it tastes better, but royal icing is the way to go for pretty cookies. 

There have been a lot of games played, many outdoors. Really, in order to get those outside hours, we've been taking everything we can outside. Peanut had fun learning how to play chess.

Peanut and I collected sticks to make these fun decorations.

Peanut and I had a surprise visit with the Grinch when we were dropping off a food donation.

The kids and I also had a fun winter picnic in the backyard--hot chocolate with all the fixings, cookies, a nutcracker picture book. 

We even made some fun shrinky dinks while we were out there.

An outdoor dinner on one of the warmish evenings. And notice the tent in the background--the boys slept outside for 3 nights in a row in order to make a dent in those hours they needed. They were the three warmest nights of the month, but it was still a little chilly.

We went hiking near Berkeley one Saturday, grabbed dinner at a Jewish deli, and then stopped by the Oakland Temple on the way home to see the lights.

If I had to pick, I'd say lights and outdoors are our theme for the month. We have been on every street in our neighborhood, as well as a couple other neighborhoods as well. We went to visit another spot one evening to do a decoration scavenger hunt (we had to go somewhere that none of us were familiar with, or the boys and I who had done the most neighborhood walks would have had an advantage.) We had so much fun running around for 45 minutes seeing what we could find. Daddy-o and Bean found a couple more items than the boys and I did, but they were a couple minutes late getting back to the car, so we're calling it a tie (and excited for a re-match next year!)

It's been a pretty fabulous month.

When We Aren't Out Adventuring

There's been a lot of being on the go, which led to a record breaking month of outdoor time in July! Peanut had 147 hours! Bug and Bean had even more thanks to water polo. But we have been busy with a few indoor things, too.

We actually had one cooler day, so after a lot of avoiding the oven for days at a time, I decided it was time for homemade pizzas. We did individual ones, which was fun for everyone to get to pick their own ingredients (and I need this picture to remind me that while Peanut is an incredibly picky breakfast eater, he really has a pretty adventurous palate--his pizza looked just like mine.)

Peanut has been in major writing mode--he's got several different books he's working on, including a new project--a scientific book of dragons. He's got them classified and categorized based on their habitats and has come up with scientific names in Latin. Google translate is one of his favorite tools.

Bug has been hard at work with the finishing touches for a huge project that's he's been thinking about and planning for 2 years. He came up with a sort of mail-order mystery for a couple of his NC friends. He created puzzles and codes hidden in letters, and then is creating a treasure chest for the end, which includes hand-sewn dragons, a dragon book (where Peanut got his inspiration), and a few other treasures. This has been a HUGE undertaking, and he's done it all himself. He won't let me include pictures of all the parts yet (just in case his friends see this), so that will have to wait, but it's pretty incredible.

And while the boys were doing their stuff (and Bean was keeping up her normal schedule of Duolingo, working out, reading, and artwork), I spent a lot of hours on science this past couple weeks. I've been trying to finalize the schedule and activities so I could get everything ready for my students to pick up. It's a lot different having it all planned out like this, and honestly a little stressful to have to have all the supplies ready for 13 weeks of class, but I'm hoping it will feel a little easier during the semester. (But I'm not counting on it because I now have the added job of creating Google slide shows for each class, which was NOT part of my normal teaching routine. Online classes are no joke!)

It is pretty exciting watching their binders come together and I'm getting excited about some of the things I've found for us to do (that I think are going to work nicely over Zoom.) It may not be the class I'd hoped to have, but I think we're still going to have fun.

 

And, finally, I convinced the boys to play a new game with me. I had bought several to go with last year's science topics, but we'd only played a couple. Constellations has been on my list to play since we studied the stars in the spring. It is not only beautiful, but a really fun game, and it has some definite learning, too. I love it when games include real information, too. This one is good balance of it all.

And that is a pretty good summary of what we've been up to. I guess I should have included pictures of the animals, who still occupy a lot of our time, and books. So many books. Maybe I'll do a separate post of all the reading we've been doing.

Rainy Sunday

Sunday meant another day of listening to the hopeful and encouraging messages from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints conference. It meant another day of rain outside, while we snuggled under blankets and played Conference Bingo and ate Jelly Bellies and popcorn. 

It meant a long afternoon of projects and reading and phone calls. Bug built a hand pump and learned how to make balloon animals. Bean researched colleges and started a spreadsheet of her top choices. Peanut alternated between watching Bug, getting frustrated at the lack of someone to play with, and crawling all over his parents for snuggles. It's hard being a much youngest in a house of teenagers.

Bean made dessert--a cookie pizza, with chocolate chip cookie crust, ice cream, shaved chocolate and Joe Joe's as the toppings. 

Delicious!

Today was also the day I had to call to cancel our flights to Boston. Originally, we were leaving Monday morning. The flight had been changed several times and the most recent change had us leaving Tuesday morning. They gave us a credit, which we just hope we're going to be able to use again at some point. This can't last forever, right?

Living It Up

We're finishing out the year strong. The kids and I got out for one last hike of the year. 

It had rained the night before so we opted for the paved path in Sycamore Grove for most of the hike, but it was a beautiful morning with lots of sunshine.

It was great being outside after a lot of days in PJs at home.

After dinner, we FINALLY made it to Deacon Dave's to see this year's light display. The theme was Poinsettias and the Magical Plant Plant was a hit! We were hoping by waiting so long after Christmas, there wouldn't be a line, but we had to wait about half an hour to get in. Serves us right for not going at the beginning of the month when we know it's not crowded.

We took this on the bridge where 72 couples have gotten engaged over the years. I think we only look a little older than we did 17 years ago when we got engaged, haha. (Side note--I just finished the white hat, my first, a couple days ago. I feel like I cheated a little because I used a loom, but now I'm feeling inspired to learn to knit in the round for real.)

Everything Christmas is winding down. Hard to believe it's almost 2020!