Tea time // a new tradition

One thing that Sally Clarkson mentions in her books and on the podcast is how she started Tea Time each day with her children when they were young and to this day when her grown children are home, they still take time each afternoon to do it. I was inspired by that, so we have been having our own Tea Time each day at 3pm. 

The kids LOVE it! They look forward to Tea Time all day long! I had them each pick out their own special mug from Target (on clearance!). Right now milk is what they like, but as they get older it will probably change to tea, coffee, and hot chocolate. We have a snack - cookies, fruit, cheese sticks, pretzels, etc - drink our milk, and snuggle, talk, and read (I read chapter books aloud to them). 

I love that it's become a special time during the day that we all enjoy and I hope that it will be a lasting tradition in our home!

Catching Up: Christmas activities

Lily has been taking piano/music lessons from one of Jacob's violin student's mom. We trade lessons and it's worked out great for Jacob to teach the daughter in one room and Lily to have her lesson in another. Lily's been learning composers, rhythm, theory, fun songs and games. She loves it! She had her first recital right before Christmas. There were 4 or 5 other kids her age/level and they performed two songs in the recital. Lily did great and didn't have any stage fright. I was preparing myself for her to get nervous because I HATED recitals when I was taking piano lessons, but she was just excited and didn't act nervous at all!

The last storytime at the library before Christmas break. My kids love going to storytime every Monday morning! The teacher is so great to keep their attention and do really fun things.

Singing to elderly friends and family. We missed going singing last Christmas because Ava was just a month old and it was freezing cold. The kids had such a good time this Christmas! They know lots of the Christmas carols so they joined in singing. So precious!

Our kid's co-op Christmas party. We do a twice a month co-op with some other families at church. We do a different theme each time - not super structured because our kids are still young. Myra's mother-in-love came with salt dough ornaments and helped each child paint a couple ornaments each. 

We also acted out the Christmas Story! We were missing some children because of other obligations, so some of the kids were shepherds and wise men. :)

There is this awesome trail of Christmas trees in a nearby city where you can walk through for free. All the trees are decorated with a different theme. We went one evening after Christmas and really enjoyed it. There were some really creative decorations!

Right by the trail of Christmas tree is an outdoor ice skating rink. The kids had never been skating before, but they wanted to try. Asher tried for about 2 minutes and then cried until we took his skates off and let him sit on the side and watch the others. I didn't skate, so I kept Asher and Ava on the side. Jacob, Lily and Levi had a blast! L&L pushed the green push thingys and they whizzed around the rink. There is a homeschool ice skating day each month at an indoor rink closer to where we live, so we are thinking of trying that since they had so much fun.

Sweet Levi!

Blurry Lily going the wrong direction on the rink. Haha.

We had so much fun making memories over Christmas. I'm thankful for everyday I get to spend with my family. 

Catching Up: The Nutcracker

I'm going to be doing a few catch up posts from Christmas. I want to have the pictures and memories saved here, so bear with me :)

Lily got to go to The Nutcracker performance with Grammie and Aunt Elizabeth again this year (I think it's going to be a yearly tradition - at least Lily hopes so!). 

It was a school performance so there weren't designated seats, but Lily was really happy that they got to sit on the front row! 

Lily with Jacob playing in the orchestra pit. During the intermission, Jacob took Lily down to the pit to see what it was like. She thought that was pretty neat! One of the other musicians commented to Jacob after the performance about how mesmerized Lily was the whole time - sitting on the edge of her seat watching every move. :)

Sweet girl and her Daddy!

Family Day 2014

Every December we dedicate a day (or part of a day) to be "Family Day." Jacob is so busy during this season, it can sometimes be a challenge to find a time when he's free. 

We started our day with a small town parade. It was so fun!

Then we headed to a Christmas tree farm. It was our first time to do this and it was a lot of fun! 

We picked our tree and Jacob worked for awhile to cut it down with a dull hack saw, but that didn't work so well. Haha! One of the workers came of with a chain saw and cut it with one swipe. 

There were free pony rides and a small petting zoo, so we took advantage of that. Lily and Asher rode the pony - so fun!

We decorated the tree. This year we used colored lights for a change. 

After our traditional homemade pizza supper, we decorated penguins (in past years we have always done snowmen, but we used the last of the snowmen last year and the kids wanted the penguins this time. :)

The kids opened their Christmas jammies and then we watched Charlie Brown's Christmas. :) Ava's jammies were Lily's first Christmas pjs. We like to give the kids their jammies early in the month of December so they can enjoy wearing them all season.

I'm thankful for the memories with these wonderful, crazy people!

Thankful Tree

After seeing lots of ideas for Thankful Trees on Pinterest and blogs, I thought it would be fun to do with Lily. She doesn't completely understand, or know what to say, when we ask her, "what are you thankful for?" So what we've done is just while we're talking about stuff we'll ask her if that's something she's thankful for. That approach has worked a lot better.

 Our tree is very simple - construction paper and tape.

 Lily loves to stick the leaves on.

Some of the things included on the tree are - Daddy, peanuts, goats, Mama, Levi, baby dolls, swing set, family, milk, and raisins.

This is a fun tradition I hope we can do every year. What a great way to teach children to count their blessings!