Holiday Bliss~ December 31st

The last Holiday Bliss post. How very bittersweet. I have very much enjoyed it this month. Thank you, Brenda, for hosting this for us all month long. I have sure enjoyed visiting everyones blogs and seeing what everyone is up too. I have some catching up to do this weekend though. I have gotten behind on visiting blogs this week.

I still have a few Christmas things to share but wanted to share today about our New years Eve tradition. We do a countdown party with the kids. We started it in 2005 when I saw the idea to do clock bags from the Family Fun website.


Here are our clock bags for today. Starting at 2pm today the kids will open one bag per hour. Each bag contains a surprise for that hour. They also have a few wrapped gifts to open that were too big to fit inside the bags. On the outside of each bag along with the clock that tells them what time to open each one, is a riddle that the kids need to read first and then they try to guess what the surprise/activity is for that hour. We always have so much fun with this. I won't reveal to you just yet what all of the bags contain. I will post about that this weekend or Monday along with the pictures of the kids opening each one. I can tell you though that I am really excited about what is in our bags this year. I think the kids are going to have a ball with our hourly activities.

I will also give you a sneak peak at the cake that I made for the party to surprise the kids with.


It's certainly not professionally decorated by any means, but I am happy with how it turned out. I think the kids will love it!

I hope each of you have a wonderful New Years Eve today/tonight! Check back this weekend or Monday if you want to see how the party for us turned out.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
~Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1850

Holiday Bliss~ December 29th

Today I just wanted to share some pictures of the kids from Christmas eve/morn. I have put them all into an album HERE.

I hope you are each having a beautiful week. My posting has been a bit sporadic but Bryan is off this week and we are enjoying the last of Christmas week and gearing up for New Years Eve. I will share more tomorrow about our New Years plans and hope to get a few more pictures from Christmas fun posted this afternoon if I can find the time.

For more Holiday Bliss, visit Garden of Learning.

Holiday Bliss~ December 27th

Merry Christmas family and friends! I hope you all had a beautiful Christmas. Despite the fact that we had a few lingering colds here, our celebration was wonderful.

We received an amazing surprise on Christmas Day! I have dreamed my entire life of having a white Christmas but never ever dreamed that it might happen here in Alabama. I always thought it might in North Carolina or Tennessee but never here. Yet, on Christmas Day, here in the deep south of Alabama, it snowed! It had rained a lot before so it was too wet to allow any heavy accumulation but it snowed for us for close to 4 1/2 hours straight and pretty heavily at times. It was soooo beautiful to watch and it just made our Christmas Day all the more special. I still can't believe that I finally got my White Christmas dream come true. It continued to snow yesterday as well and we had a light accumulation yesterday. I sat for several hours yesterday just watching it fall as the kids played out in it.

Giving thanks to God for pouring down His beautiful snow on us this Christmas season!

I have a lot of pictures to share from Christmas Eve/Morn but today I wanted to share some fun we had with GINGERBREAD last week!


Annie decorated this foam gingerbread house.




We decorated gingerbread ornaments.




I just had to make one myself.


Aren't the boots and hat on Natalies, cute!




We made some really large gingerbread men out of foam too.






Natalies


I couldn't resist these when I saw them.


We decorated gingerbread cookies too.








Emmy made this edible Gingerbread house.



Want some more Holiday Bliss? Visit Garden of Learning.

Holiday Bliss~ December 23rd

I completely forgot to share something yesterday that the kids did during our "snowman" day. They painted snowman pictures with large marshmallows.


I thought they turned out really cute.







Since the start of our homeschooling we have used Five in a Row (literature based unit studies) with our kids. We have been apart of the Fiar message board for years now and every Christmas we participate in an ornament exchange with other fiar families all across the U.S. and sometimes in other countries too. We typically have 8-10 other families (different families each year) that we make and send an ornament too and they in return do the same for us. Our family has always loved receiving the ornaments in the mail. You can buy ornaments or hand make them and they can be anything you want though most families make ornaments that represent their favorite fiar book that they "rowed" that year in school.

Here are the ornaments that the kids made this year to mail out.


If your not familiar with the books used in Fiar, our ornaments represent the book Owl Moon by Jane Yolen.

Here are the ornaments that we have received so far this year....


A microscope to represent "Snowflake Bentley".


Mrs. Katz and Tush


Pumpkin Runner


Snowflake Bentley


A Pair of Red Clogs



For years now our family has enjoyed making cookie trays to give out. Here is what we made this year for our cookie trays.




Ritz cookies


7 layer bars


Minty Middle Treasures


Orange Molasses


Thumbprints


Peanut butter blossoms


Chocolate crinkles


Gingerbread men


Peanut butter cup brownies


The trays that we gave out


Here are some of our favorite Christmas books from our book basket.















And this has nothing to do with Christmas but I just have to share it anyway. Our 6 year old, Ally, ran into the living room yesterday dressed up like a super hero and declared that she is "SUPER ALLY"!







For more Holiday Bliss visit Garden of Learning.