An Advent Update

Merry Almost Christmas to my Family and Friends!! 

I just thought I would share a little of what we have been up to this month:

We made "sock snowmen" which I DID NOT get the idea off pinterest. A friend gave me the idea. Aren't they cute? Jacob's has all green buttons and Daniel's has a suckie.

We ate watermelon... BIG.

We made crowns (and lots of other things) out of these cool toys from the Camrose Toy Lending Library.

We played pictionary, which turned out really fun! The boys even got in on the drawing action.

We made chocolate pretzel bark, which was lots of fun, and delicious.

The Sun Always Rises...

... But not the bread. So my struggle to find the perfect loaf of homemade bread continues. I think I have a really good recipe going now. The boys requested PB&J today but we were out of bread so I promised to make some this afternoon for sandwiches tomorrow. I went to check on the bread one hour into the rise... Looks the same. Then I had a sudden realization I forgot to put the yeast in. So I threw the dough back into the mixer with some yeast. I don't know if it will work, or if it will taste good. Seriously, who forgets to out yeast in their bread? Me.

At least I know the sun will rise tomorrow, even if my bread doesn't.

The Boys Got Pet Turtles...

... Sorta. We read a book about Blue getting a pet turtle named Turquoise. And then we made our own pet Turquoise. We even made her a tank just like the books. And then of course we had to have a water dish and carrots and celery and lettuce. It was fun.

A closeup of Jacob's Turquoise. He drew the happy face himself!

Daniel's Turquoise. She's cute. And apparently she doesn't like lettuce.

Halloween Continues Giving

So Jacob actually wanted to be a monster for Halloween. But I had the whole easy iPad thing planned and a monster costume seemed like an awful lot of work. So we compromised and made these CUTE monsters out of milkjugs. They carried them around and collected their candy in these instead of a plastic bag.  Jacob's is the green one with lots of eyes and scary teeth. Daniel's has "Mater" teeth. 

FYI- Painting milkjugs with kids acrylic paint is impossible and doesn't work. After getting really annoyed after the second attempt (the first was to put a little paint inside the jug, shake it up, and let it dry... it never dries) I just took Jeff's advice and wrapped the peeling painted jugs in clear packing tape.

So Halloween is now long gone. The monsters have been well played with... but now are not recyclable... 

Last week we made toilet paper roll bird feeders and they were a HUGE hit with the chickadees. We could stand right under the tree while the birds were eating. It was cool. 

So this week I cut the mouths of the monsters open really big, filled them with bird seed and hung them in the tree. The birds aren't too sure yet, Jacob says they think the monsters are scary. 

Neat eh? We have now spotted chickadees, blue jays, some sort of sparrow, and woodpeckers in our little tree.