Thinking about Christmas Cards...

Designing our family's Christmas card or Christmas letter is one of my favorite things to do each year.  I love pouring over the photos that best capture the year.  2010 has been a hard year, but I am still excited about the Christmas card.  So when I saw the chance to get 50 free cards from Shutterfly, I thought it was worth checking out.

I have personally never used Shutterfly's services before, but I really enjoyed looking through their Christmas card designs.  I like how they have more traditional designs but also have plenty of modern and colorful cards to choose from. 

I love the Celebrate Family Christmas Card!  I love the colors, the hint of Christmas without being to kitschy, and you just gotta admit that's a cute picture on their sample.  It leaves me wondering if it's even possible to have all my kids smiling & laughing & looking generally the same direction.  I almost picked this one for our cards this year.

I also really liked the Spot the Snowflakes Christmas Card because I thought the pink would be a good choice for us this year.  We have lots of pink going on this year.  And I really like snowflakes.  I also like how it includes two different photos.

So which card did I choose?  I can't tell you that!!!  You'll just have to wait & see!  But I did find what I thought will be the PERFECT card for our family this year!!!  And I am very excited!  And it's there at Shutterfly!

Our cards will be going out after Christmas this year... so that we can include Baby #4.  So watch for them late.  But please go ahead & send me your card!  Because I love getting Christmas cards & pictures just as much as I love sending them!

So where did you find your family's perfect Christmas card? 
Are you going to try the "Bloggers get 50 free holiday cards from Shutterfly" link, too?

Tiny Talk on Thankfulness

While we haven't been posting what we're thankful for daily this year, we've still remembering the season with our Thankful Turkey!


You can tell what's most important around here.  These are the first ones they came up with:

The kids are enjoying adding to our turkey's feathers and coming up with something unique each day.  The rules are that they can't say the same thing as someone else on the same day.  So Elizabeth could be thankful for her family, but not on the day that David already said it.  Hopefully by Thanksgiving, we'll have a very full Tom!

My sister is hosting her 30 Days of Thanksgiving again this year.  Check her out.  She's cool.  : )

P.S. - It's  46 days 'till Christmas... 6.5 weeks... and I'm almost ready to skip straight to the Christmas decorations.  I finished my Christmas shopping for one kid today!

Feliz Dia de los Muertos!

I've never celebrated Dia de los Muertos before.  But then again, I've never been in a Spanish class and I've never taught a Spanish class and I've never been in mourning.  This year it all changed.

 David's Skull

This year, even though I have never taken a Spanish class before, I have started teaching it to the kids.  This consists mostly of David asking me how to say something in Spanish, I say I don't know, and he says, "Why don't we call Kalaya?"  (that happens to be my BFF and she happens to be a Spanish teacher!)  We're making a folder of the words he learns from her.  He wants to know how to say things like SCUBA diver and manta ray and Battle Droid.

Oh, we also have a set of beginning lesson plans we're working through - so far we've done the Spanish alphabet and animal names.

So I figured, this year, I'd introduce them to a little international culture.  We already tried to make a pinata and discovered that I need better instructions.  We planned on making maracas from our gourds, but the things are still green!  Then today, David just happened to be playing with a Lego Skeleton and our intro to Dia de los Muertos began.

Elizabeth's Skull

I explained how, in Mexico, they celebrate today as a day to remember the dead and that they decorate with skeletons and skulls... but not in a scary way, it's a celebration of the people they love.  I asked David who he loved that had died.  He replied, "My Great, who made my Great Blanket.  And my Grandma.  And my Papa."  So we thanked God that we had those people in our lives and decorated some skulls.

Mom's Skull

Maybe next year, I'll think about it enough in advance to get a library book or do something a little more elaborate as the artistic skill of the kids increases.  I did find the following links that looked like they'd be pretty helpful for future reference:


Day of the Dead Mini Unit - includes good background info
How to Make Sugar Skulls - step-by-step with photos

Did anyone else do any celebrating today?

Tiny Talk Tuesday

Two really cute things were said in the car on Monday by David & Elizabeth both.  I was driving & couldn't write them down.  I have no recollection now.

Elizabeth's was one of those things where she used the wrong word in a sentence & it turned out hilarious.

David's had something to do with the fact that putting an ice cute in his arm pit tickled.  What does that tell ya? 

A few moments later, Elizabeth decided she wanted to tickle her armpits with an ice cube also.  I told her no, because the ice would melt & get her clothes all wet.  (Seemed to not matter with David, because he'd already gotten himself wet doing this several times... and he was wearing a muscle shirt anyway.)  She promised not to get her clothes wet.  Then I heard these words come out of my mouth:  There is no way you can put an ice cube in your arm pit and not have it melt on your clothes.

Later that same day, I heard myself saying these words to the OLDEST child:  Are you licking the floor!??!?!?  STOP THAT!!!!

What a day.  Perhaps I should have called this Big Talk Tuesday.

November ONE

Here it is, the first day of another month.  Seriously, it does get faster every month!  Can you see any changes in the kids from last month?  I definitely see some longer hair.

 

 Hanging out on the couch with a minifigure.

 

Oh, those eyes.

I love those eyes.

I always wanted eyes like that.

And now I have them.

 I caught Rebekah doing a little decorating in her kitchen area.

 At this moment 

she's adorable.

I really need to remember this moment

when I'm racing across the room to save something

from being destroyed by her.

Belly Shot, 31 weeks 

David hugs and kisses Baby-Sarah-inside-my-tummy

all day long.

More of my Month ONE posts.

Halloween 2010

There's Rebekah's mummy pose a few days before Halloween:

And there's Rebekah stealing the apples out of my pretty fall centerpiece:

Now on to today!  I wasn't really planning on going, but Elizabeth got excited when she heard she could dress up and go to church tonight, so we went.

 Elizabeth as a Princess Butterfly

(same dress she wore last year!)

 Rebekah as a Ladybug

 The "Together" Shot

also featuring David without his astronaut costume

 Fly away little ladybug!

 She was sooo adorable!  

She enjoyed wearing the ladybug costume 

so much more than when Elizabeth was one.

The hood squished her little cheeks so that

she looked like an Ewok!

The kids had lots of fun playing games and getting candy at the church festival.  I had my hands full, especially when Rebekah got too hot in her ladybug jacket, Elizabeth gave me her pumpkin, I had my camera and water.  Thankfully Lauren offered to help with Rebekah!  Thank you, Lauren!!!

 Elizabeth digging for treasure

Playing something like musical chairs

Honest Abe (aka Grandpa) was there

 EB & Rebekah digging/playing in the sand, 

and the top of David's head in the other sandbox.

This is my kids' favorite stop every year!

 Her antenna got a little askew on the slide!
David was busy eating popcorn and drinking sprite at this point.

 Hot & tired Rebekah with her tattoo

 Elizabeth told the teenager who was painting faces 

that she wanted her whole face to be painted like a butterfly.
She might have overwhelmed the girl.

David opted for the tattoo.

Grana spins the wheel of fortune!

 I caught Lauren force feeding chocolate to Rebekah...

HA!!!

The kids got more candy this year than they did last year.  Perhaps they're finally getting the hang of this.  Rebekah & Lauren got a box of cupcakes at the cake walk.  Elizabeth got some toys in addition to her candy.  And David pretty much stuck to the candy.  All the way home, they were talking about what they got in their pumpkins and then, giggling, would add, "I got a rock," just like Charlie Brown.

You may have to click to enlarge this one - obviously, after it was all over, we had to have bath time!  Rebekah had cupcake & frosting all over her body and hair!  And Elizabeth went to bed with a still stained pink & purple face!  But it was fun!

The spider you are about to see is not real...

That disclaimer is specifically for the Aunts:  Aunt Sissy, Aunt Wee and Aunt Jana.  (Aunt Jana griped at me one time for not warning her that a spider picture was coming.)

Now... how cool is this?  I recently discovered that you can cut a paper spiderweb in the same method as a paper snowflake!!!  Why did I never think of this before?!?!

 Just to reassure that it is not real, here it is with the flash on:

Fake spider courtesy of a Halloween spider ring that the ring broke off of.

When I turned around from photographing the spider snowflake, Rebekah grinned really big and said, "CHEESE!!!"  So of course, I had to take her picture!

Automated Pumpkin Carving Machine

Adventures in First Grade Projects

We recently did an activity for science that demonstrated what happens to lava when it cools.  We used melted butter as the lava, so when it cooled it turned hard.  David wanted his lava to be colored & we don't have any red food coloring, so we made green lava... again.

I think I just need to get rid of all food coloring.  The plate of lava was sitting on the dining table when Rebekah found it.  Apparently the first thing she did after eating some of the green butter and getting it all over herself was to try to feed some of the green butter to Fluff... through the screen door.  Then there was a trail of green fingerprints on the white cabinets into the kitchen.  Of course, it was easier to find all the splotches of butter since they were green.

Today we did a pumpkin project.  Before cutting into the pumpkin, David estimated that there would be 12 seeds inside.

After a peek inside, he changed his answer to 100.

We sorted the seeds into 10's.  Then grouped the 10's into 100's just like we've been doing with the manipulatives in Math-U-See!

 Then David tallied up how many hundreds, tens and units we had...

Wow!  That was a lot of seeds!

After that, he designed a face for his pumpkin and I carved it for him.  I love this picture!

More Tiny Talk Tuesday

When we gathered at Aunt Wee's house last Sunday to celebrate Grandpa's birthday, David & Elizabeth asked about going to Jesse's room.  But Jesse is growing up and his room isn't full of all the fun toys it once held.  (That's Jesse - and his hair - taken Sunday by Lauren.)

Tonight, I was helping Elizabeth out of the tub when she said, "I don't want Jesse to grow up."

I'm sure Aunt Wee will love this, but I said, "Maybe Aunt Wee needs a toy closet to keep a few toys in, so you'll have something to play with when you go down there."

As I helped her into her PJ's, she said, "Well, I think Jesse needs a big pink doll house in his room.  And a Barbie with a pink dress."

Don't you think Jesse would just love to have a big pink doll house in his room???  : )