Christmas Decor

What fun we had having Gramma over after Thanksgiving! We decorated the tree, Gramma and Sarah and I strung popcorn and cranberries (thanks Gramma!) and the guys made sure all the lights were lit (thank you!) on the tree after taking it out of the box. Gramma made her delicious Parker House Roll recipe in person for me! What a great time!

Thanksgiving 2013 with Friends

Usually we spend Thanksgiving with my family, but no one was available this year! So I set to work making my own turkey dinner. At the last minute, it turned out that our sweet friends were able to come over and spend the afternoon and evening with us! Which was brave of them because this was my first Thanksgiving dinner! We took a nice walk at dusk and totally enjoyed being thankful together!

Travel-Birthday Partay

My husband turned the big FIVE-OH this year. To celebrate, we took him to a cabin. One of his favorite activities is role playing games and thus we did! And made cookies. And hiked down to the creek. And visited the Ape Caves at Mt St Helens. What a fantastic birthday weekend!

New Video Game Shelf

I've been thinking about Daniel a lot lately.

The main things he talks about are comic books and video games, mainly certain characters, like Sonic the Hedgehog. Even though he only plays video games on Fridays, he is very interested in the characters and of course, the action. He reads game guides various publications on the games and different systems.

So I've been thinking how I can validate his interests and express my interest in these things that I see as non-productive at this point.

To the right of the TV was a chair with a cardboard box and various tubs with games and controllers tossed inside. The Lord prompted me to plan some kind of shelving (for ME), he doesn't really care about how they are organized. This is what we put together.

Read Alouds-Runt the Hunted by Daniel Schwabauer

Round two! We loved Runt the Brave and we're looking forward to starting the next book in the series on Monday.

Halloween Costumes 2013

We are looking forward to visiting friends at the Halloween party soon. Sarah is going as a Ranger (from Ranger's Apprentice) and Dan is going as "The Guy in the Space Cape". He's wanted to make a cape/cloak from this cool solar system fabric for A LONG TIME. Way back when, I bought him one yard, thinking we'd make a cape (not)!

When all four of us go together, Joann becomes a dangerous place because we tend to buy all sorts of fun things. We had a great coupon and the space fabric was on sale, too, making it a killer buy. I bought what was remaining on the bolt and I'm SO GLAD! Dan is getting TALL!

Sarah chose the cloak pattern. We all worked together, our first time pinning and cutting out a pattern together. Well, not me, of course, I cut my share of patterns with Mom growing up. We extended both leaves of the table and got to work.

Once Dan's was cut out, I knew what I was doing and we doubled Sarah's fabric, so it took half the time. Yay!

Daniel did a little on the machine and some cutting and pinning, too. I sewed two pieces together wrong and had to rip out the seam. Sarah's went together much easier and faster since it was my second time. I would have had her do it, but the fabric is so stretchy and hard to work with and we're starting to be short on time, I just decided I'd do it for her.

Read Alouds-The Cabin and the Ice Palace by Ruth Beechick

I think I saw this book on someone's read aloud book list. I had to get in on Amazon and I'm glad I did. Terrific story on its own, though the lone Amazon review says that it is a retelling of Plato's "Allegory of the Cave", but I never read Plato throughout my education, so I didn't recognize it. Ruth Beechick's "The Cabin and the Ice Palace" was a solid 8 out of 10 for us.