Christmas traditions and activities 2015

I'm gonna break my Christmas posts into 2 different posts. Here's part 1.......

I didn't  feel well during the Holiday season. I had a few things going on, but I pushed through it. I wasn't the happiest and probably didn't make Christmas as special as I usually do. I did the best I could though with my circumstance. 

As promised, we decorated for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving. I let the kids have at it until they were bored and then I rearranged it. 

The boy's tree in their room. 

Amelia's masterpiece. Can you see the green boot ornament on her tree??  It's her favorite. Ha ha 

My tree starts out beautiful and by the time Christmas is over it looks horrible. 

My favorite tree was this little tiny one in the kitchen with their handmade ornaments. I need a bigger tree next year for these. 

My theme is Gingerbread men. I have too much invested to change it now. 

Gene and Ginger. I had them longer than I had my own kids. 

My parents and sister Melissa came in on a Friday night to go to Christmas on Main. I haven't been taking lots of pictures like I normally do. 

 Here's one of my Dad eating his favorite kind of popcorn. Everything else was dark or too blurry. 

We went out to eat at Frisches afterwards for ice cream sundaes and hot chocolate. 

The next day we did a bit of shopping with the family. We even ran into Santa Clause. 

That will teach them not to complain about never getting their picture taken with Santa. 

"HEY, SANTA!"

Let's see.....

The kids also made their annual Gingerbread man cookie. Except this year it was a brownie. 

And every year it looks more and more like an alien. 

The elves finally made their appearance. I felt like they had been coming too early every year before. This year I held them off as long as possible. Amelia started crying every morning because she didn't think they were ever going to show up. 

I told the kids for every sock I found laying around, it was minus one Christmas present. So of course the elves would throw socks all over the floor their first night back. 

The elves were kinda lame this year and Amelia told me they wasn't that funny. So I had to step things up a bit. 

Here's a few collages of what the elves did. 

I'll be glad when they out grow the elf thing because it's not fun anymore. 

Some other traditions, new and old, we participated in as as well. 

We went to a Walk Through Bethlehem in Corbin. The weather was so warm I had a Christmas shirt on and flip flops.

  Short sleeves and no jackets. It was pretty nice. 

Another tradition was gingerbread houses at school. 

Even though Amelia is in Kindergarten she has made a gingerbread house every year when the boys have made theirs. 

I allowed her to get blue frosting without really thinking about it. 

 They all had a good time partying in their 

Classes and exchanging gifts with their friends. 

A few traditions from church was we had a Christmas Worship service. The Millikan and Harris family came and sang Christmas carols and played horns. It was really nice. 

We also attended the Widow's banquet which I loved. I loved having a special dinner set aside and celebrating widows and making them feeling special. 

We also went Christmas caroling to the nursing home and to the elderly and shut-ins. 

Afterwards, we went to our last house and they had hot chocolate and treats waiting for us. It was a lot of fun. 

We also had Christmas programs at church for the children.

 Amelia sang "Away in a Manger" with her little friends. 

Josiah done an awesome job on his solo and Titus did good on his speaking part. Even though he said it super fast to get it over with. I'll include their YouTube links in case you want to watch clips of their parts. 

http://youtu.be/h5m_V-P2noY

http://youtu.be/UublRWvZqhc

http://youtu.be/zG9IK04WckE

Rebecca Gilpin and I are the teachers for Pre-school children's church. We came up with the Little Drummer Boy program. They decorated their own drums at home and they had a lot of fun. 

http://youtu.be/SHCRConnkek

I was proud of them and it was a lot of fun. 

Another church function we participated in was shopping for children who have a parent or parents in jail in Laurel County. 

We got to shop for a 4 yr old boy and a 3 yr old girl. 

We went home and wrapped our gifts and left to deliver them. 

It was an experience that was great for my kids to be involved in. Christmas isn't about what they can get, but how we can give to others. 

We stayed super busy, and tried to have a lot of fun. Christmas is a fun time and I enjoy the busy time of the year. I like keeping my kids involved. 

I'll close this post for now. Next post will be about our Christmas Day!!

Thanksgiving 2015

I just realized I hadn't written my Thanksgving post yet. I did about their school program and somehow forgot about the actual Thanksgiving festivities. 

The Saturday after their Thanksgiving program, we left and headed for Elizabethtown. We always have thanksgiving dinner with the Harpers' the Saturday  before Thanksgiving. It was the first time having Thanksgiving at Mom and Dad's new cabin. 

The spread of food looked amazing. 

Brian is always in charge of carving the turkey. 

Dad always says the blessing. 

And sometimes you have to tell your sister to close her eyes so the picture looks like everyone is praying. Ha Ha

Titus made sure he got a turkey leg, as he does every year. 

Everything tasted wonderful and we all enjoyed each other's company for the rest of the evening. 

Soon everyone left and it was time for bed. The kids had been looking forward to the day they got to sleep in Mamaw and Papaw's loft in their cabin. 

I think it was everything they had hoped for. 

On Thanksgiving Day, we didn't have any plans. Every prior year we had always spent Thanksgiving with Parkers'. Since the passing of my Mother in law and Tara moving, we found ourselves with no where to go. So we had to make new traditions and make sure the kids were happy. 

We woke up early and went to Frisches for breakfast. Then we went back home and worked on crafts. 

The first craft was a thankful tree. 

 

They went outside and gathered sticks and put them in a mason jar. Then They wrote on their leaves what they were thankful for. 

Here's what they were thankful for:

Amelia

Titus 

Amy(she likes writing my name)

Dad

Josiah

Jesus

God

Food

Bed

Clothes

Toys

PETs

Mrs bowman

Lca

Friends

Cousins

Mamaw

Papaw

Bible

Church 

Josiah

Mom

Dad

Mamaw

Papaw

Amelia

Titus

Jesus

Josiah

Titus

Jesus

Ed begley(he let us fish at his pond like 2 yrs ago) lol

Bible

Big brother 

Mom

Dad

Christmas

Titus

As you can tell....Amelia took this craft very seriously. 

Then we made tie dye Turkeys. Titus was done with crafts by now so he didn't make one. 

 After crafts, Maynard took the boys metal detecting at old houses. They loved it. 

While they were gone I made supper and then a special dessert. 

I asked them what they wanted for dessert while at Frisches that morning. I guess you can tell that they scanned Frisches dessert menu because this is what they chose. 

Even though our Thanksgiving didn't turn out like we've always had, we still had fun and made new memories and traditions. 

LCA Thanksgiving Program 2015

The holidays are already among us. My kids had their Thanksgiving program last Friday night. They had been practicing so hard for this and their practice paid off. 

After high school sang a song it was time for Kindergarten to their program. Amelia was so excited. All the prior years my boys have always been the Indian. This year I finally had a Pilgrim. She did NOT want to be an Indian like her brothers had been. She made that clear. Ha

They quoted a poem about pilgrims that had motions. Sang a song about Jesus loving the little Pilgrims and Indians. Then they quoted Psalms 100. They did a really good job and it was so cute. 

Now it was time for 1st-8th to do their presentation. 

They presented a musical called Donkey Tales."

Josiah was one of the main characters named Spencer. He was a "city slicker". I was proud of him. He done so good. 

Titus was a member of the Hillbilly band. Maynard fixed him up his instrument. 

He got tickled over something during the play. He played his little heart out on that bass. All of them did good. It was hilarious. I have to say my favorite part was when Bro. Jarvis sang a song at the very end and the hillbilly band accompanied him as well. Ha ha

 They all done a great job!!

I always look forward to their Thanksgiving program. It's one of my favorite things all year. 

A few collages from the prior years. 

Also if you are interested I'll leave a few YouTube links for snippets of their program this year 

http://youtu.be/GoHhtJvWtXY

http://youtu.be/NmhdaVle4y4

LCA Spirit Week

Last week at school was Spirit Week. Every day the students had something to dress up as. They had contests, games, activities, and prizes. 

Well, you know my kids are going to participate. Anything to get out of wearing the regular school uniform sounded good to them. 

For their first day they just had to dress up as a character. Whether it be fictional or nonfictional. 

Amelia said she was going to be Dorothy again so I got her costume washed and ready to wear. Come Monday morning she had changed her mind. She wanted to be a princess instead. 

She decided she wanted to be Pharoh's daughter. I think I heard that there ended up being 3 of those. There was also Miriam and Moses' mother. Hilarious. Of all the bible people they could be and they chose Moses. 

Josiah chose to be a karate boy. He went to school as comfortable as anyone there I'd say. 

Titus was a little more hesitant to dress up. If you remember in my last post he changed out of his DR costume before the fall festival even started. He decided he wasn't going to dress up at all.  So I told him the rule was he had to wear his uniform then. I suggested him wearing his baseball costume. That was a winner for him. 

Tuesday was crazy/whaky day.  I thought it meant just crazy hair day, but apparently that's not what the letter said. There was lots of crazies at school that day. I subbed for Josiah's class so I got to see everyone in costume that day. I loved seeing all the participation. 

Used a water bottle to fix Amelia's hair. She crushed the bottle trying to get out of the car at school. I never cud get it to straighten up after that.

 This kid though. He definitely looked crazy. 

Titus wore his favorite T-shirt and I gave him a shaving cream Mohawk. (He ended up having an asthma attack later that night from everything I put in his hair to get it to look crazy.  Plus kids at school were spraying hair color on their hair and it made the whole school smell.) oh!  And this was immediately after I got home from ER with Josiah after he slammed the van door on his hand and almost broke his hand. I didn't want to have to go back to ER. After trying several things to help him, I gave him a breathing treatment. If that didn't help I was gonna have to take him, but he got better afterwards. 

Class representatives. As you can see, Amelia's hair didn't last, but Abby rocked hers all day. 

Moving on to Wednesday.....

Wednesday was old fashioned days. It could be any historical time. 

Well, when you have more than one princess costume you just do what you have to do. She decided to be a queen this day. So I told her she could be Queen Elizabeth. She loved that until I showed her a picture of her. 

"Mom!  She's so old!!!"

"Yes she is, but she's also the longest reigning queen."

"Does she still dance in the rain?"

"Ummm...Do what?" Ha ha ha

Apparently Amelia thinks Queens dance in the rain as part of their job. No wonder she wants to marry into royalty. 

Titus chose to dress up in Western gear. He liked this one about as good as the baseball costume. 

Josiah couldn't make up his mind what he wanted to be. He wanted to be a president, but he didn't know which one. He ended up deciding that he just wanted to be Billy Sunday instead. 

Thursday was throw back Thursday. They had to dress up as a family member in the past. I drug out my memorabilia box and found a few things for the kids to wear if they wanted too. 

Amelia wore my project grad shirt and my school jacket. She even tied the end of her T-shirt up like I used to do 20 yrs ago. I didn't have time nor the heart to curl, tease and poof her hair so I just put it in a French braid. 

Titus wore my senior Shirt and sweatshirt. It was blue so a boy or girl could wear it. 

Josiah wanted to dress up as Maynard, but we really didn't know what to do since he didn't have any memorabilia type things for him to wear. I remembered that I had my old Harper's Electronic shirt he could wear. So we quickly put together  a "Don Harper" outfit for him to wear.  

He looked perfect. This boy looked just like his papaw. All he needed was glasses and a Veteran's cap.  

Friday was School Spirit day. They could wear their school logo shirts or wear school colors. Poor Amelia didn't have a school shirt yet so she had to wear red, white, and blue. 

The night before she worked hard on her poster for the poster contest. She was super proud of herself. 

She did have some help, but everything was her idea. We just helped as needed. 

This was Josiah's poster he made at school. 

Titus didn't show interest in doing one, but his class all made one together. I didn't get a picture though. 

Friday morning they each got dressed and then gave me special orders for face painting. 

Can you tell these kiddos had a blast?!?!

It's good to have routine and structure, but sometimes it's also good to just change things up a bit. 

We are thankful for LCA and was proud to show our school spirit.