The best part about cooking is eating!!!
Arianna and I made snowmen pretzels together on Saturday. We thought they turned out to look more like wise men:) They were for our Grinch Party.
Today we went to a cookie making party with some of our homeschool friends. We made tons of cookies and had a great time hanging out with each other.
Above Ari is helping make pretzels…below Ari is helping make Lemon Bars.
We had our Christmas Party last night. We did a Grinch/White Elephant Theme. We enjoyed dinner together. Afterwards, the kids made up a play about Jesus and we enjoyed watching them perform:)
We then exchanged gifts. If you have never done a Grinch Christmas, it is fun! First you bring a wrapped gift of something that you want to re-gift. You draw numbers and the highest number goes first and picks a present from the pile and opens it. The second number can pick a present from the pile or take the first present (the first then can choose a new present). The third number can pick either of the first two opened presents or pick a new one from the pile.
The kids also exchanged gifts.
After all of the gift exchanges, we played Rock Band. This was hilarious! I think Jim was a Rock star in his former life! It took quite a few tries for the band to not get booed off the stage but eventually they got a “You Rock” by finishing the song.
Enjoying dinner with friends.
The kids put together a play for us to watch.
Jim’s ready for the gift opening!
Esther has the much wanted gift of the evening. It got taken the most.
The laughter made my little comedian even goofier
Joe ended with the beautiful photo album:)
The kids opened their gifts. 
Joe singing to Rock Band
Merry Christmas to All and to All a Good Night!
Arianna sang at church again on Sunday. She loves it when she gets to get on stage and sing! She loves rehearsal with Ms. Lynn. I love getting to see my sweet little girl sing about Jesus!
I am excited that she starts a choir/music class at Campbell University in January. Hopefully she will love those rehearsals as much as she loves the ones at church.
We have five dogs that were our kids before kids and now probably more like brothers and sisters to the kids than dogs. But my pups are getting old…two are 9 years old and three are 8 years old.
Well today we had our first bought with what is to come. And I can honestly say that I am not ready for it!
Athena has been having accidents in the house. I took her to the vet today since she also seemed majorly bloated and has been excessively thirsty . Usually when a potty trained dog begins to have accidents, it is a UTI. But Athena’s urine test came back mostly normal. Which meant more tests to figure out what is wrong. She had blood work and an abdominal x-ray. Her liver is grossly enlarged and her blood work shows some high numbers in relation to the liver and adrenal glands. So now we have to have an ultrasound to determine if it is liver disease, Crohn’s disease or (huge sigh)…cancer-lymphoma. We have her ultrasound next Wednesday to try to determine how to proceed. I hope hope hope that it is not cancer…did I mention hope?? I pray that it ends up somehow being nothing at all and she is miraculously better come next Wednesday.
This picture is Athena being fed at on the table when she was having tummy problems last month (due to dog food allergies). She is eating steamed white rice.
Thought I would include a picture taken yesterday of one of our other dogs wrapped up in our daughter’s favorite blanket.
These are some spoiled pooches that live in this house! I hope they will LIVE here much, much longer!
My husband surprised me today with a new phone…it uses the Android operating system by Google. Thanks sweetie!!!!
Now for the rest of the story…(Chris did not know this when he bought the phone). Remember that Gingerbread House Party? Well since I forgot my camera, I was using my blackberry to take pictures. (just remembered that oops, I should have posted some of those pics from the party). My blackberry was sitting in the middle of the table and a knife of icky sticky dripping icing accidentally got laid on it. Well now the keys are nice and stuck. I tried cleaning it quickly but that icing went deep behind the keys and though I can’t see it, it has majorly hardened. Now the keys don’t work very well. I was so worried about how I was going to fix my phone and wow what a surprise…my husband hand a new phone for me when I got home!
Ryan is excited because the light saber application can be used on this phone. Chris put it on his phone but I am not so sure about loading it on mine…do I really want my 3 year to be swinging my phone around like a light saber so that he can hear the sound effects?
When Chris got home last night, he found a giant box was left at our garage…it was the kids’ Christmas gifts from Nana and Dala. The kids were so excited!!
Ari loved her gown that was like Susan from Narnia.
Ryan loved his coat!-literally
Ari and Ryan got a really cool Narnia castle and lots of figures to go with it!
Ryan in his Peter costume.
My Knight in Shining Armor!
The kids loved playing in the giant box!
They made a HUGE mess with these popcorn fillers:) You have no idea what I mean!
Thanks for all of the great gifts Nana and Dala!
Ari and Ryan playing with the wood pieces from Ryan’s Handwriting without Tears.
We are having a great time getting ready for Jesus Birthday. We have been busy decorating our house for the celebration.
Ari and I made an advent wreath. We light the candles each Sunday and discuss the meaning of the candle. I didn’t realize how hard it would be to find purple candles…so we improvised.
Each day the kids and I have been studying the lineage of Jesus. We then make an ornament to remind us of the person that we study. It is great to walk up the stairs and follow the history leading up to the birth of Jesus!
We are also learning about the origin of different things that our society uses to celebrate Christmas (eg: Candy cane, Christmas tree, angels, Santa Claus, etc). We usually do some sort of activity around this…below is a candy cane we made when discussed the Candy Cane.
We made angels from our feet and hands on the day that we discussed angels.
Every day we open a day on our Lego advent calendar. Arianna does odd days and Ryan does even days. They LOVE legos!!! They are so excited to see what each day’s surprise holds.
We made a Christmas Tree out of Shrinky Dinks. Ari and Ryan enjoyed coloring the ornaments and then watching them shrink in the oven. Ari wanted to give this to Daddy to take to work so he has a Christmas Tree.
Ari colored a picture from our Color the Christmas Classics. 
We went to a Gingerbread House Party but guess what…you’re not going to believe this…I forgot my camera. So all I have are the pictures from once we got home. We had a great time decorating Gingerbread houses with some of our Homeschool friends.
Only 2 weeks to go…
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