Late nights, early mornings...

Hmmm... I'm thankful that I went to bed early last night.  I fell asleep while Scott was doing school with Elyssia and woke up when Caleb made his way into our bed and found Scott putting Kiersten next to me:). Scott proceeded to put Caleb to bed, but ended up putting him on the end of our bed, where he'd just taken Garrison from.  Caleb then proceeded to scoot himself up next to us again:)))).  I finished feeding Kiersten, put her back to bed and checked the clock.  Yikes, Scott will have to get up in another half hour!  He gets up at 4 and I usually try to sleep til 7.  Energized by the sleep I'd had I thought I'd check for a message I'm waiting for.  Of course, facebook had way too many updates, but two exciting ones, which kinda makes it worth it.  One friend got married unexpectedly and another is pregnant:).  Soooo excited for them! Now I'm feeling a bit cold, so I'm going to head back to bed and see which child(ren) I have to snuggle with... I'm actually not complaining about this.  Some nights I get frustrated if I don't sleep too well, but I'm enjoying getting all the snuggles while they're little.  I foresee a time in the future when they'll be too big.  Although, I could be wrong about that.  In that case, I'm going to have to move to a secret location to sleep and hope their radars can't detect me.  Who knew kids have these detection radars when they're sleeping.  Our kids go to sleep in their own beds just about every night.  There's just this middle of the night thing where they're inexplicably drawn like a magnet to our bed. Maybe it's the electric blanket?  Nah, just kidding.  Elyssia and Garrison have stopped coming in as much as they used to. I'm thinking it's too much trouble for them to climb down from their top bunks:).  It's back to bed for me.  Morning or wake up time will be here before I know it and I really should do some baking.  I need lots of energy and some Christmas music for that. Good excuse not to do it right now...

Great Galloping Gumdrops!

That is Garrison's newest phrase:) He has a thing for rhymes and loves to make up his own.  I added "Gasps Garrison" and he thought it was hilarious.  So now the game is afoot.  Garrison's latest accomplishment is finishing up the ABC's Learning to Read Program.  He loves the stories, so we might read some of them again, but our main goal will be working on his handwriting and increasing his reading skills.  Amazing how fast we zoomed through it.  It really helps when all the children love the stories.  Elyssia is at the halfway point or close to the end in most of her subjects.  Caleb is improving his coloring skills, so maybe we'll try some of the preschool stuff with him next year.  Work on him coloring inside of the lines, etc...  Thankfully Kiersten is learning to be content in her little corner of the room with her box of toys and books.  It makes my job a bit easier.
  Today has been one of those stay inside kind of days.  The weather has warmed up a bit, but there is a large amount of snow outside.  We might venture out tomorrow if I can get a good night's sleep tonight.  I can hardly believe that Scott's parents will be here in a week!  I really should finalize the meal plans and bake a bit more. Thankfully the younger two are almost done with their colds and the rest of us don't seem to be coming down with it yet. If only I had the kids energy...

Decorating cookies

I've had a lot more to blog about lately, perhaps a little too much:).  There are so many activities around Christmas time that it's not hard to find things to write about or pictures to post.  This morning we started our homeschooling with a mix of art work and home economics:)  A lady from church actually gave us this pack of cookies with all the stuff to decorate them included.  The kids did make bannock with Scott though, so that counts for a kitchen credit in school.  Here are the results of the decorating:

no real explanation needed, eh?

Garrison's snowman

Caleb had some help:)  He also took a bit off the end before I could take the pic!

Elyssia's

Superman wasn't feeling too excited.  He got a paper cut under his eye, so he looks extra tough:)

Who's been sampling the icing?

Happy grin!

Compliments of Elyssia

With the string. (We're going to hang the uneaten ones on the tree).

My second cookie.  I ate part of this one.  He looked a little scary with the yellow eyes. There weren't any white balls.

 

  

 

     Well, it's back to work we go.  More homeschooling excitement to finish before the day is done.  Garrison might finish up the letter "Z" today.  Very excited about that!  We still have half the year left for review and reading progress...