A bit of light homeschooling today: math, spelling, Illinois History (have to use the library books while we have them) and history reading.

Dinner: "yum-fest" trays consisting of smoked sausage, 2 different cheese balls, colby-jack cheese, two types of crackers, cucumber slices, baby carrots, ranch veggie dip, mint cookies, M&M's, a chocolate orange, eggnog, and sparkling cider served in holiday glasses. Not as big as the yum-fest my mom had when we decorated her tree, but there was only three of us tonight!




Activity: decorating the Christmas tree (finally!), watching Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas (my DH's favorite Christmas movie), Garfield Christmas, and part of Jack Frost (1979 animation). Additionally I also got two presents wrapped after DH and DD went to bed. I would have wrapped more but that was all I had downstairs!



Books: Tonight's read-aloud was Bright Christmas: An Angel Remembers (another Christmas Mosaic featured title) which had BEAUTIFUL illustrations. It told the story of The Nativity from the perspective of one Angel who was there. And, of course, we read more from Bartholomew's Passage.

Today was spent being busy around the house. I did laundry, tidied the downstairs, baked off more cookies (from the dough in the freezer I'd previously made), and various other things, including moving some furniture around to make room for our Christmas tree we've yet to put up! *gasp*!! DD spent most of the day cleaning her room and her bathroom.  Dinner was delicious: marinade pork loin, "fried" potatoes, steamed broccoli. Tonight  I read aloud The First Christmas Stocking. Then we read two days worth from Bartholomew's Passage. We're still not caught up yet, but will be tomorrow or the next day.

Oh, let me tell you a funny from today. So this afternoon my dear mom calls me up and after a few minutes of chit-chat finally tells me "what she did." It turns out she had ordered a ProClick Binding system for me for Christmas. She'd seen it in my Amazon store as  "must have" and thought that meant that *I* must have it., as in I REALLY, REALLY wanted it. Well, nice gift for a homeschooler, right?! Yes! However, I already OWN IT!!!  And have for a few years. LOL It wasn't until she went back to my Amazon store to then access the regular Amazon (for me to get affiliate credits for purchases) did it dawn on her what my "must haves" truly meant!  When she told me this I just laughed. I thought it was priceless. She thought it was pretty funny, too, and I reassured her she'd be able to send it back to Amazon for a refund, even telling her where on the site to do this. Gotta love her for trying!!! {{{hugs, Mom!}}}

And finally, I came across these computer wallpapers this evening. I thought they were rather funny, and perfect for the summer gardener who is going through a cold, snowy, icy winter now.. just like me!  Check them out!

Well, i knew it was too good to be true... trying to blog every day this month. HA! So the next best thing I can do is just catch up a bit and continue on.

This weekend was a flurry of activity starting with homemade pizzas on Friday night. DD and I followed that up with a bedtime reading of Danny and the Kings. (A featured title in Christmas Mosaic.) Surprisingly DD said that she remembered this story. I didn't recall reading it before so we decided it must have been one of the MANY, MANY library books I checked out last year for the CHRISTmas season and one that she just read herself. It is a really good book, nice storyline, easy to make connections with the "three wise men". 

Saturday my DH had duty so was at work most of the day. DD and I went to another homeschool group's entrepreneurial "Stop and Shop." I don't know MUCH about how they work it, but I've heard that this is for an entrepreneurial club of some sort.... with writing out a business plan, costs involved, etc. etc. for each kid/group of kids. I haven't verified that yet, but it's what I was told. This event was in their gym and each family looked to have a table with whatever crafts, baked goods, and other  handmade items they were selling. There was everything from flannel pajama pants, to cookies & brownies, to decorated journals, hand-cut wooden trivets,soups and baking mixes in jars, jewelry of all kinds, terracotta pottery items, blankets, crocheted dishtowels, and much more! Truly a wide variety of things. It was a really neat idea, indeed. We'll definitely go to their next one! I had hoped to find a something or two to pick up as gifts but, while everything was very lovely, nothing jumped out and said, "BUY ME!" Maybe next time!


After a brief stop at the library to pick up the next book in the series I'm reading and a swing by the house for my cell phone we went on to the Youth Center's Holiday Celebration. We had attended it last year and really enjoyed it so looked forward to going. It's a free event to military families in the area. There was a raffle, refreshments, arts & crafts for the kids, a Santa for visiting, and wonderful dancers from a local dance academy.








Would you believe it... I actually won something! Too bad it was only a jar of chocolates! Bah!! LOL I was surprised though. I guessed 122 and there was 123! LOL I'll be sending the candies with DH to take to work and will keep the jar for some future use.


After all that excitement DD and I went out to  lunch at our current favorite restaurant, Sweet Tomatoes then out for a little holiday shopping. How come she comes up with great "stocking stuffer" type ideas for herself when she's WITH ME shopping??! This makes it incredibly difficult to actually GET THEM, as I don't want her to SEE anything! *sigh* I did manage to buy a cute pair of slipper socks for her while out with her though, bwahahaha.


Saturday night after having worked on the sidewalk and driveway a bit together, decided to move around back and begin the private sledding hill. LOL (Something they did last year together too!) And, because you're lucky... here are a few photos from that, too!

DD also finished up reading a Nancy Drew book, The Case of the Twin Teddy Bears, over the weekend.

Tonight DD had rehearsal again for a Grease Jr. production she's in. While she was there (and DH was at home) I was able to slip away to Target and pick up a few stocking stuffers for the kids and DH. Oh, and I also picked up a gingerbread house kit. Having done them in the past from scratch, and wanting to make giant gingerbread men this year instead, I thought this little kit (marked down a lot from the original price!) would be a fun activity for DD to do this coming week sometime. Plus, I figured it was cheaper to buy this kit than if I had gone out and bought all the various candies to use to decorate a gingerbread house.

After not quite finding the time All Week Long, and after a promise made last night for "today" to be the day... right after breakfast and morning ready-routine, the first thing DD wanted to do was MAKE PEPPERMINT ICE CREAM! Yes, I still had my pajamas on as *I* had not yet done *my* morning ready-routine. LOL (yawn)

But, as the best mom in the world dutiful mother that I am I gave in to her eagerness and shiny morning face and said, "Get the hammer, Girl, you've got crushing to do!" (or something to that effect.)

I set her up with supplies needed (a gallon Ziplock and two big candy cane sticks) and slid into my Crocs, donned a coat for myself, and headed outside to the garage (where our deep freeze chest is located) to get my Kitchen Aid Ice Cream attachment.  BBBBBBBrrrrrrrrrrrrr... have you SEEN the snow that is on the ground here? (And as of this writing it is snowing AGAIN!)

By this time DD is just about pounding the COLOR off the peppermint sticks! LOL She's really having at it. I stick the ice cream attachment in the inside freezer and quickly print a recipe for making vanilla ice cream from scratch (instead of a mix that I used to use.) I find a decent one, gather all the ingredients, and get it going on the stove. I now have to rescue the baggie of candy cane from getting completely  pulverized into minty dust. DD watches as a few drops of red food coloring & peppermint extract go into the pot and we watch it turn a bright pink (close enough to the Edy's Brand of peppermint ice cream color!)

The milky-eggy concoction is just about ready so I put together the mixer and ready it for ice cream making. A swift pour of the pot into the mixing bowl and I power up the Kitchen Aid. Twenty minutes later it is in "soft ice cream" stage and ready to be poured out.

(At this time the local Girl Scout council calls so I've got the phone in one ear, one arm wrapped around this sub-zero ice cream attachment while the other hand tries to scoop out the soft pink mess yumminess without oozing it all onto my white counter top. She called to say a spot in a workshop NEXT JUNE opened up and would I like to register my DD for it. YES, NEXT JUNE! Luckily I happen to have my credit card #, expiration date, AND security code memorized so while scooping out the last bit of icecream I registered my daughter for the forensic science workshop.)

Afterwards, since DD did a marvelous job of crushing the candy cane and most of it got mixed into the pink ice cream. (The small bowl that remained of it will be used to flavor cocoa and such.) But we didn't eat any ice cream today (and you'll see what later) but it is ready for tomorrow night!

After that side track, the morning has nearly escaped me and knowing we had a homeschool group game day to attend from 1-3pm, I opt to forego the Christmas shopping I wanted to do today.

Skip ahead a couple hours. 

Game day was great. The kids mingled, played board games and/or foosball, had snacks, etc. The moms chatted. We took two games to share, one of which was Quiddler. The other was some ol' Christmas Carols game I picked up a few weeks ago for next to nothing. Mostly, I just enjoyed talking to the other moms. I got more dates on our calendar for upcoming field trips so that was nice (I like being able to plan ahead.)

Skip ahead a couple more hours.


Tonight was Girl Scouts. Tonight was our field trip to the Zion Festival of Lights. It was FABULOUS!!! We loaded up the cars & vans and headed out. First the drive through portion then the walk-through portion. It was all just beautiful! The drive through portion wasn't very big, but the displays moved and were really neat to see in the snow. The walk through portion started with two gorgeous ice sculptures consisted of these little buildings strewn through the grounds (of the city pool of all things!LOL) and the windows were filled with animated and non-animated displays and scenes of all kinds! There was a larger human-size building with Santa there taking gift requests and passing out chocolates, too. Of course, as is habit, I couldn't pass by the "stick your head in the holes" toy soldiers display and got a photo of me with my DD. There was even a small toy train for kids to climb on if desired. What I thought was really neat was there were even lights on the pool slides! And the pool area somehow had a Santa sleigh & reindeer display right in the middle of it complete with a "runway" of lights!

I didn't take my nice Canon Digital Rebel camera with me so only had my camera phone. Here is a sampling of the photos took.

One of the displays seen from the van, as I drove!	One of the ice sculptures, this is a beautiful sleigh.
A Giant Santa on a big tree swing	us as toy soldiers
water slides all decked out with lights	a doll couple getting married in a wintery church
DD with Santa (American Girl doll, dressed in her snow clothes, tagged along)	Dolls doing their holiday baking
Display sign	A BEAUTIFUL back-lit stained glass Van Gogh's Starry Night... stunning!

After touring the walk-through portion we all loaded up again, drove through the drive-through portion again then headed back to the Girl Scout meeting place where we warmed up with hot chocolate and cookies.

Because we got home later than normal for Girl Scouts we didn't do any nighttime reading. We'll double up one day this weekend to catch up though!


**Side note for my seester.... hey girl, I emailed you the whole folder of these photos off my cell phone, to your home email account. MISS YOU. Wish you were here to have gone with us!