Admittedly, your imagination is required for this one, but I was surprised to find the boys building this instead of Santa and his sleigh. Interpretation: Yellow Playdoh=manger with baby Jesus. Tools/shape cutter=Mary on a donkey and Joseph. (And this time there was no Earthquake!)

I don’t know whether this just shows how bad a shape our roof and gutters are in, but here are the most amazing icicles I’ve ever seen! These are roughly 2 ft long or longer.
We’re still stuck in Duvall buried under 15 inches of snow and we’re supposed to get more tonight, tomorrow AND CHRISTMAS DAY! This will be my very first White Christmas! We’re just praying our heater keeps working.

Making a Gingerbread house is one of our Christmas traditions. We usually do it from scratch and it is a 3-4 day process. Rock n Roll has always insisted on doing the real thing and has looked down upon the store bought kits. But this year I managed to convince him that a kit would be a great time saver at a very busy time of year. Especially since we haven’t been able to get to this tradition every single year because it’s so time consuming. Rock n Roll survived and the experience took a total of about 2 hours even with with kids stopping to eat/trying to eat/asking to eat the candy every two seconds.
It is actually a torturous experience for them because we then give the house away to someone we know he needs it for Christmas. So this year they are looking forward to making graham cracker gingerbread houses with Grandma that they can actually eat! I’m pretty sure the graham cracker houses will become a tradition. Here’s the finished product for this year.

Happy 1st Birthday Levi! We got about a foot of snow today! We’re crossing our fingers that it won’t melt before Christmas.

Our Winter Wonderland. We are once again stuck in Duvall. The hills in town make it too dangerous to venture out. Good thing I got my Christmas shopping all done! You’d think it was Christmas morning for how excited Rock has been about the snow. He is like a little boy! He walks around the house saying, “Snow! Snow more!”

If you’re reading this blog, then you probably know that we have been homeschooling our boys. And if you are reading this blog, then I would want you to know why we are going to put a hold on homeschooling for a while. And so rather than explain myself fifty times, here is a brief explanation of our decision. Mr. President was ready to learn long before school would let him in, and so we started homeschooling and I hoped we would be able to keep going this year and into the future. However, we want to do what’s best for each child and our family. And right now it looks like a regular Kindergarten classroom is what’s best for Mr. President and our family. To make a long story short, now that Go Go is involved in our schooling, the competition and fighting that occurs between them (and me) is interfering with school and is very hard on our relationships. To reinstate peace in our home we’re going to give them and me some space. We’re also hoping that Mr. Pres. will be able to learn some much needed social skills at school like how to work well with others, how to wait your turn, how to respect authority, and that you don’t always get your way. Oh, and how to be quiet and stop talking and… and… and. We have been doing our very best to teach him those things here at home and though I think most kids can learn those things perfectly well at home, Mr. Pres. is not. I’m just going to have to face the facts. I’m exhausted emotionally and it’s taking a toll on our home and family life. He and I struggle so much because we are both firstborns and because I probably haven’t learned those social skills well enough yet either. I’m reminded of that poster “Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.”

“Most of what I really need to know about how to live and what to do, and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sandbox at nursery school. These are the things I learned:
Share everything. Play fair. Don’t hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don’t take things that aren’t yours. Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Live a balanced life. Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. Take a nap every afternoon. When you go out into the world, watch for traffic, hold hands and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the plastic cup? The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that. Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the plastic cup — they all die. So do we. And then remember the book about Dick and Jane and the first word you learned, the biggest word of all: look.
Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and sane living. Think what a better world it would be if we all — the whole world — had cookies and milk about 3 o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or if we had a basic policy in our nation and other nations to always put things back where we found them and cleaned up our own messes. And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.”
~ Robert Fulghum ~

The world would indeed be a more peaceful place if we lived by these principles. And so would our home. I have been trying to teach them in my home and will continue to do so. But for now, this mom needs a break. I’m going to let someone else have a turn at teaching my precocious, extremely intense child for part of the day for the sake of our family relationships. This has not been an easy decision. I’ve fought against it for a while. We had such a great year last year and I wanted so much to be able to keep homeschooling him. Most of you know how strongly I feel about homeschooling and it’s benefits. I hope that we can try it again in a few years. But this does not mean that I will stop teaching him all together. We’ll keep exploring all the things he wants to learn as much as we can outside of school. I have a feeling Mr. Pres will be bored in school in a few years anyway and hopefully he will have gained some maturity and learned how to get along with others better by then. And hopefully his mother will have done the same!

Mr. President brought this wood helicopter set home today and when I told him I couldn’t help him with it, he built it all by himself. It was pretty darn complicated and he did it anyway. Quite an accomplishment! Way to go, Pres!

Christmas is here at last. This is how I know.

The Nature of Nativities

Yesterday we put up our nice Nativity set and did the whole singing of songs and reading of scriptures and “This is why we have Christmas” Family Night. I thought we were off to a great start on our holiday season. Until this evening when I pulled out our stuffed “play” nativity set. I walked out of the room as the boys set it all up placing the baby Jesus just so and the Shepherd just right, congratulating myself on having taught my children the true meaning of Christmas. Ten minutes later I hear from the other room, “EARTHQUAKE!” and walk in to see Mary and Joseph flying through the air, the wise men falling down the stairs and who knows where the baby Jesus was. Oh, and the Angel? She was hanging on the door knob-Heavenly Host indeed.

Before and After the Earthquake

I don’t know, I think last year’s Angel placement was better….

The Advent of the Advent Calendar
I’ve been looking for an advent calendar this year so the boys could count down to Christmas. I was so excited about the one I found as I pictured their cherubic faces running to the calendar each morning to open up the next door that would bring them one day closer to Christmas. Let’s just say there were no cherubs at my house this morning. When I pulled out the calendar World War III broke out over who was going to get to open the first day and eat the candy. This possibility SHOULD have occurred to me before I put it up, but I’m a little slow sometimes and forget to anticipate the nature of small children. But I wanted this to be a lesson in taking turns and eventually we were able to reach a truce. Go Go gets to open all the green doors and Mr. Pres gets to open all the blue. Go Go got the first day and Pres gets Christmas Eve AND Christmas day which both happen to be blue. (oh, and visitation rights on Thursdays and Fridays every other month) But, everyone is happy. Sigh. Next year I will be more prepared when I pull out the advent calendar. I’ll have my lawyer present.

It did get better. Go Go spent the entire day analyzing the advent calender, opening every single door to make sure there was candy in every one. My word was just not good enough apparently. He had to see it. Then we had a great math lesson as he figured out exactly how many green doors there were and how many he had left to open. 12 doors-1 = 11 doors left! We even got into multiplication. “Mom! There are 4 rows of 3!”

It’s only December 1st. I’m just dying to find out what the next 24 days will bring.