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.
