Christmas is in the air...

December has been filled with the usual festive activities... ever since mid-November, it seems our lives have been in a whirlwind! From each of the girls' choir productions to our annual Thanksgiving in Florida to Abbie's Christmas piano recital-- not to mention decorating, shopping and sending out Christmas cards (Yes, I am still clinging to the old tradition of sending cards through 'snail mail' as opposed to cyberspace... I did finally give in to the seemingly standard 'photo card' this year... but only because I wanted to share pictures from our trip... next year I'm going back to regular cards with perhaps an attached photo. I miss regular cards!!)

Here are a few glimpses into Christmas at our house this year (for you, mom!)

First- some of our Christmas decorations...

The fireplace:

The piano:

Our tree (which is happily still very green & drinking water!):

The "Christmas Card Tree" (I got this idea off of a blog that I read and think it is such a fun way to display our cards!):

And here are some of the fun things we've done...

Visiting the "Magical Nights of Lights" at Lake Lanier:

Putting together a winter puzzle:

Emma's 'dogsled' (& please don't tell her that her horse isn't a dog!!!):

Watching Abbie perform at her Christmas piano recital:

Here's a sample of her performance (sorry for the shaky videography & the fact you cannot see her face!!). Enter the password 'piano' and then click the play button.

Abbie plays "Deck the Halls" from Wendy Timms on Vimeo.

Our "French Artists"

We have been working our way through the continent of Europe over the past few weeks and have made a stop in France. Although we've yet to try some French food (what I was really looking forward to!), we have been studying some of the artists of France-- particularly the Impressionists. We've been enjoying looking through a beautiful picture book full of Impressionist paintings that belonged to my artist grandmother, Nunu (who passed away when Abbie was only 4 months old). It is bittersweet to be teaching/trying to teach my children about art, knowing they had a great-grandmother who was so much more qualified and skilled than I. Having some of her things like this book and the art smocks the girls are wearing helps keep those memories of her alive for me as well as passing down her legacy to my children.

The girls enjoyed their turn at trying to create their own renditions of 'Impressionist" paintings. Emma chose a painting of the Eiffel tower as her inspiration and Abbie chose one of Monet's garden paintings.

They thoroughly enjoyed this project and I was super impressed with their results! So much so I'd consider framing them and putting them upstairs somewhere!!

We also took a turn at doing Silhouette cuttings which were also a type of art perfected by the French (and I know this is true because last year the girls had their silhouettes cut at the French pavilion in EPCOT!!! If Disney says it is true, it must be so-- right?!!!). The girls each drew and cut out the silhouette of their sister.

These were a bit trickier to accomplish than I expected (hence the 'bigger than lifesize' results) but the girls still enjoyed giving it a try. I think, however, that this artwork will stay downstairs in the schoolroom :-)

Next up... French pastries!!!

* A * L * O * H * A *

Emma requested a "Hawaiian Luau (in the garage)" for her 7th birthday party... All I can say is thank goodness for the internet because do you know how hard it is to find beach-themed party supplies in the fall??!!

Thanks to Michael's insistance that we remove the wall in our garage, we now have a large open space that doubles quite well as a party area! Add a wall covering of sand and ocean (a few space heaters for warmth and some hidden floral air fresheners) and our garage had quite the 'tropical' feel!

Emma had a great time with her friends-- she enjoyed serving tropical beverages from the '7 Islands Tiki Bar' and playing limbo and a beach bag relay.

Presents and a set of birthday cakes (hula girl & volcano) rounded out the evening.

Emma and Grandma are now busy planning their trip to the "real" Hawaii!!

A 7 year old

So... my 'baby' is now 7 years old. I can hardly believe it! We had a great day with her yesterday (probably mostly because I only made her do math for school!!) and I have lots of pictures to prove it. She had a pile of presents waiting for her when she woke up-- but was only allowed to open a few of them because we wanted to wait until Daddy was home from work.

This is one of her 'early open' gifts-- her #7 Precious Moments from Anna & Pacca...

After a busy morning at home, we headed out for Abbie's piano lesson but made a stop at the Mayfield Dairy on the way-- where the birthday girl got a free scoop of ice cream (mint chocolate chip!)

Is this display not the cutest thing? The corn ear is made from Mayfield milk jugs!!!

After piano, we did some more errands and then met Michael at Longhorn Steakhouse for dinner. Michael has started a new tradition with the girls of picking out his own 'special' gift for them just from him... Emma's was a 'paint your own horse' set. She LOVED it!!

Dinner was followed by singing from the waiters and more ice cream!!

Once we got home, she was FINALLY allowed to open the rest of her gifts. She got lots of nice things including a "girl and doll" pajama set from American girl, a bead set, gift cards, money, 'girly' legos (they are pink!!), and a set of colored pens and drawing pad. She was VERY excited about all of her gifts

All in all, I think it was a great day to turn 7 years old!

Happy Birthday Emma Grace!! We love you!!

We miss the leaves...

One of the good things about our current house is that we have very few trees (and the ones we do have are still fairly small)-- no leaves to get into the gutters, no leaves to blow off the grass, etc.... One of the bad things (in our children's eyes) about our current house is that we have very few trees-- no leaves to rake into piles and jump into in the Fall!!

So... we went to Grandma and PawPaw's house this weekend and took advantage of their abundance of trees!

Even the dog enjoyed playing in the leaves...

All this playing made for a very tuckered out dog and youngest daughter who took a nap together on the way home.

Fall

I love fall.

That is probably why my blog has been so quiet for the past few weeks (honestly, I'm in awe of people who blog every day-- I don't see how they A- have the time, and B- have so many interesting things to say!!). We have been busy doing fall stuff: soccer games, visiting the pumpkin patch & corn maze, celebrating Michael's birthday, baking pumpkin bread & muffins and just enjoying the cool weather in general! Oh, and of course, trying to keep up with all of our school work/projects, clubs and homeschool co-op!

Here are a few pictures from our recent activities.

We visited a local pumpkin patch and corn maze with some friends. We also pick strawberries in the spring at this farm so it is a favorite. We'd never done their corn maze and it was tricky but fun!

Here are "Her Royal Highnesses" Queen Lucy and Queen Susan (of Narnia)! I decided to take the easy (and almost as cheap) road of buying halloween costumes this year. They had the opportunity to wear them this past weekend at a neighborhood fall party and they will be decked out once again this Friday night for neighborhood 'trick or treating'. In past years, Pawpaw has brought his 'mule' to drive the girls around the neighborhood (when your houses are on acre lots, it's a long walk from house to house!)-- but I think that they are going to be on their own this year. I have a feeling it will be a short evening!

And last, but not least, Michael celebrated his 41st birthday this month. It was with a little less fanfare than his big 40th bash last year but it was still a fun day. He organized a fall cookout at the RC Flying club he belongs to on his birthday and we spent the day outside with daddy enjoying one of his favorite pasttimes.

His cake represents one of his favorite airplane 'vendors'... a little non-traditional, but the guys at the field thought it was funny!

(Sorry this is sideways-- for some reason Blogger keeps turning all my cake pictures and I can't get them to show the right way... at least you can get the idea!)

So that's it from our house. Hope everyone is enjoying fall as much as we are!

Persistence Pays Off!

Guess who scored her very first goal in a game last night???

We are so proud of how hard she has worked during this first season of learning a new sport. She LOVES playing soccer and has really come a long way in the past month.

Me? I'm loving being a 'soccer mom'... :-)

Got Scarecrows?

I am so proud of our little hometown...okay, maybe 'proud' is a little too strong of an emotion... but it was neat of the community to come together to pull this off...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSPNMCvh18M

http://www.braseltonnewstoday.com/archives/965-Hoschton-surpasses-world-record-goal.html

These were our contributions to the endeavor... Beauty & the (scarecrow)Beast:

The really funny thing is that we have nearly 60 of these guys around the entrance of our subdivision and EVERY TIME I drive in, I think "Who are all those people and why are they standing out here??"!!!

*-*-*-*-* FIESTA!! *-*-*-*-*

Our second stop on our homeschooling 'trip around the world' this year was Mexico. For two weeks, we learned about the geography, economy and culture of Mexico. We also really really enjoyed tasting their FOOD!!! What's not to love about tortillas, cheese dip and sopapillas??!

The girls also spent quite a bit of time on their pinata project. After much discussion, we decided that we could not simply get by with sharing the job of making ONE pinata and definitely needed to make TWO!!

It was messy... but lots of fun!

As a final celebration of our time in Mexico, our friends the Moores invited us and several other families (who are also using ECC this year) to participate in a group Fiesta. Everyone brought yummy Mexican dishes to share as well as their arts and crafts projects that they'd completed during their study.

One family's dad had just returned from a mission trip to Mexico, so their boys brought lots of neat souveniers to show us including some beaded pottery that was just amazing.

We are so thankful for other Christian homeschooling friends who help make this journey fun!