Sharing

Despite Hailey's crooked full of food in her mouth smile, I found this moment endearing. She went and got a play fork for her dolly to share breakfast.  She loves that they have matching purple jammies too.  Hailey is really sweet and sharing.  This is one tiny example of that characteristic in her.  

Sterilizing lids

Something I still do, which is probably excessive, is, I still sterilize the girls' sippie cup lids.  Yes, yes, we did get sick this week, but I truly beleive it helps to manage germs. We haven't been sick like this since last February.  Stay away cooties!

New Tile

We are getting there with the renovation of the new house.  You can see in the first pic the horrible, horrendous floor tile that was original to the house.  It looks so much better with it out!  Even the plain cement looks better.  You can see a pic of the new tile we picked which will get installed starting Monday.  Very exciting.  

Back to school = Getting sick in the winter

Both girls were excited to head back to school.  here they are in the outfits they picked.  Dresses that auntie got them for Christmas. 

 

 

Then, our third week back we all got sick!  Just a mild cold/flu but enough to have a fever for 4 days in Paige which kept her out of school...and me from getting anything done.  Just lots of snuggles, way too much TV time, games and reading.  Both are on the mend and should be able to be back to school again on Tuesday.  

Hi Ho Cherry O

Decorating egg cartons. This was a desperation project
 of something new to do that did not involve TV.

They actually both really got into learning time one day and
Paige did this deduction worksheet. 
I was pretty impressed with her listening!

New Year's Eve

For New Years Eve I created a silly countdown for each hour til bedtime.  I started at 4pm and ended at 7pm (bedtime!) with a different task for each hour.  I did make brownies, wear party hats, eat dinner as family, dance in the living room, eat brownies and bedtime!  The girls enjoyed it and it sort of gave them a concept about time.  Happy New year! 

Feeding the animals

pot belly pig

3 sheep

Hailey sweeping out the barn

Hailey filling the outside water trough

goats too!

For Winter Break I signed us up to go open the barn and feed the animals at their Waldorf school.  We would spend about an hour feeding them and cleaning the barn and then walk around campus to explore.  It was a great way to greet the morning and get out some energy for kiddos with no school. 

Christmas Morning

Christmas morning was so fun this year.  Hailey woke up first at 6:15am.  But I was able to divert her into our room with a TV show while Brian & I slept some more and waited for Paige to wake up.  She was up at her normal 7am time and we let them rush down the stairs.  The got new two wheel bikes from Santa this year and were very happy.  Both learned to ride them that morning!  My mom, aunt and uncle came over later that morning and opened the rest of the presents.  I feel so grateful for family and these times. 

Spirit of Christmas Show

Aunite

Nanny

On the stage

In the lobby

Intermission

This was our second year to attend the holiday show at our local arts center called, 'The Spirit of Christmas."  It's put on by a local dance company who does a professional top rate performance.  It reminds me of the variety show that they put on in the movie White Christmas with Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye.  We all love it and this year both girls sat through the entire show!  Growing so fast. 

Christmas Eve Meal 2014

For Christmas Eve it has been tradition for Brian to make his family recipe of Ham Rolls.  This year, he had to work late on Christmas Eve so I got tasked with making them.  The girls helped me grind the meat by hand then mix them up.  It was a fun afternoon. 

On my side of the family, my aunt and mom have always made Swedish food.  Including potato sausage, Swedish meatballs and rice pudding.  It's extremely rich food and some that we only have on Christmas Eve. 

I felt it really important this year for the girls to know and learn about the family traditions of food that we have on holidays so they could appreciate it, taste it, participate in it's prep and hopefully one day continue the traditions in their own families. 

Dressed and so sweet.

Dressed for dinner at Nanny's!

Flagstaff Trip

In mid December we journeyed to Flagstaff to go to the North Pole Experience.  It was a great day.  I don't have any pictures from it on my phone and I already saved them to Snapfish.  It's a really cool "experience" that take you on a trolley through a "portal" to the North Pole and Santa's Workshop.  It's a half day adventure in Santa's shop working with the elves, having cookies with Mrs. Claus and finally getting to meet Santa.  We all really enjoyed it.

 

We spent that night in Flagstaff.  We really do forget how cold the snow and cold temps really are.  We are such wimps to it now.  I was freezing that night!  The next day the girls played in the snow and built snowmen.  Then we headed out of town a bit to go on a horse drawn sleigh ride.  The girls loved it and being around the horses.  It was a really nice weekend and fun to know that we can head to the snow in only 1.5 hours. 

 

St Luica Day 2013

 

The following posts is my attempt to get the blog caught up.   I will make a Christmas 2013 scrapbook, so those posts will be very abbreviated. 

 

We once again celebrated St Lucia Day this year.  It occurs on Dec 13.  I really like this celebration because it recognizes the importance of family, discusses light and is about a girl who was very kind and giving.  The girls made homemade saffron bread and wore their crown of candles to Nanny's house to bring Auntie and Nanny the bread.  This is something that the Swedish girls do every year on St Lucia Day.  I was also fortunate enough to go to the girl's Montessori school and talk about the holiday too in their Culture Class.  

 

Thanksgiving Crafts

These are some crafts the girls did this month.  The hanging we made at home and the hats they did at school.  When I picked them up from school, they both said they were thankful for Woolly.  The teacher wrote "dog" and "pets" on their hats, but the said Woolly.  Made me teary.  All of these crafts are now packed away in the Fall decoration box to treasure forever and pull out every Thanksgiving. 

 

Progress

 

Here's just a couple things the girls did this week:

 

Paige drew this map at school.  I think it's great that she can do this and understand,
but what I love the most is the way she printed her name.  Capital P and the rest lower case. 

Hailey showed me that she can zip her sweater all by herself. 
Huge milestone for a 3 year old. 

New House

 

We have been looking for over two years for a new house.  Our check list included, single story, 3 car garage, pool, split floor plan, cul de sac & walking distance to an elementary school.  Single story was especially important because we are old now and going up and down the stairs is no fun, especially with kiddos.  Here's just two examples:

 

Hailey is doing a workbook on the kitchen floor
because I was working in the kitchen

This photo was taken in the morning.  You can see that a pile as already
started of things to go back upstairs.
 By the end of the day, even with me taking things up as I go, it's packed with crap. 

 Well, we FINALLY found it!  We are in escrow due to close at the beginning of January.  We choose a long escrow so we could get through the holidays without needing to move.  The house has all of our desires on our check list, plus it's on a third of an acre, in our same neighborhood and even closer to my mom!  We are so thrilled.  Hopefully the next week of escrow goes smoothly and I don't have to post a sad note, but things look really good for our move.  We are so happy.  Here's a few pics of the new house:

 



Drawings

These are just a couple pictures that the girls drew in the last week.  They both have such a  fantastic creative side that I really hope they can learn the academic stuff easily and quickly so they have time for what their minds will allow them to create. 

 

Hailey drew people and then applied stickers
that were in the shape of clothes to them. 

Paige created this chalk drawing on a paver we have outside. 
She colored the entire square paver. 

Sky, Grass, Dirt

I've been reading several articles about cursive and writing not being emphasized any more in schools since keyboarding is taking over.  These articles are stating that an aspect of learning and developing the mind to think is not being honed because of this change.  So, I've been making sure the girls are practicing during learning time.  They were both struggling with pushing their pencils up from the bottom to write their letters instead of pulling down from the top.  I found a method that Waldorf uses where they color the lines of the paper blue on the top, green in the middle and brown on the bottom.  This is symbolizing the sky, grass and dirt. 

 

I created a whole lesson for it.  When they were outside in the morning, I talked about the sky being on top, the grass being in the middle and the dirt being on the bottom, way under everything.  Then we came in and drew pictures of the sky, grass and dirt.  Finally they were ready to begin practicing their letter writing.  And you know?!  IT WORKED!  I said we start in the sky and pull down through the grass all the way to the dirt.  They got it!  All of their letters were formed correctly.  I was so excited!  And I know they felt good too about finally understanding how the letters are written. 

 

Practicing letter writing

Paige's picture and name

Hailey's picture and name