Wednesday: snow, Christmas, and Birthday oh my!

 We got a little bit of snow before some rain this morning.  I shoveled some of the driveway and mentioned to the boys that it was good snowman snow.  Isaac was out immediately, because he was prepared for this!

He had made all the snowman accessories out of Legos ahead of time and was itching to actually use them!

A little bit later there was a science program that involved making some snow.  We saw Evelyn and JJ on too, which was a happy surprise!

After the show the kids continued to play with baking soda and vinegar, making a small mess.  I drew the line when they asked if they could use all my vinegar though.

While they were doing that, I kicked the cats off my puzzle and finished it.  Horizon has been rather unhappy with the puzzle, so it's had to be covered up a lot. :(  I might do one more puzzle before the table gets too messy again though.

Dad and Pat came over for a Christmas celebration and to watch us open presents.

It's also Isaac's 9th birthday today!  We didn't do much, although he had a few presents to open and we sang Happy Birthday to him.

Tuesday

We ran a few errands today.  These were the "you have to go inside" errands.  The boys prefer staying in the car, but they enjoyed getting out in the end.  Isaac was our leader (and only did an ok job) and Joshua was the pusher (and did a lot of jumping to see better) but it worked.

We started our winter cookies this afternoon.

 

Monday

 Isaac made a creation, took a picture, printed it out, and put it in his creation.  Repeat a few times...

While I was making dinner tonight Isaac talked my ear off about "the most rare fruit" that he made out of Lego.  Oh my goodness, he wouldn't stop talking about it.  To my credit though, when we were talking about it right before dinner I was able to give a really, really good review of everything he had said and could show that I was listening.  Phew.

Saturday

 

Christmas

Peace.

This Christmas, as the Prince of Peace appeared to the world, my heart was peaceful.  I'm sure the things around me contributed: snow on the ground, not going anywhere, and a happy family.  But there was a deeper peace too.  The world is rather crazy right now, but God is not.

Anyway, the boys had to do two things today before we opened presents: play outside and play with Mario Kart before the floor got messy.  Joshua wasn't really excited about either, but then finally started to enjoy sledding...until he tipped over to not hit a tree and face planted in the snow.  Isaac proceeded to actually hit the tree a minute later, but there were no real issues.  Isaac and I stayed out a little longer and cracked a bunch of ice.  There were many air bubbles under the ice and I wasn't expecting that.  We let a whole bunch go free.

Then presents! Joshua made Ben and I boxes out of Lego and put special pieces in them.

Isaac made me some dispensers.  He had a whole idea behind them and executed his plans well.  I'll admit though...I'm not sure how to use them well. I suppose they will be used poorly for a bit and then they might disappear.  There was love behind them for sure though.

We collect loose lego throughout the year.  Isaac ended up with a ton.

Time to play!  The boys got out their Lego sets.  (Ben ended up doing more troubleshooting than normal though.  In an odd change of pace, my back was hurting more than his.  Once I started moving it was ok-ish, but I was moving slowly.)  

I set up my Lego puzzle (still Lego themed!) at the table.  Joshua was super cute with his.  It took a bit to get the instructions up, but he looked thoroughly at the box and bags and told us everything.  Then he looked at the first pages of the instructions and called out what bag when to what building.  Then any time there was a completed part or just an interesting single part it showed it to everyone and explained why it was interesting.  He was a chatterbox, but in a fun way.

The rest of the day was relaxing.  We did a zoom call with Ben's family and opened a few more presents.  We had plenty of screen time.  It was an excellent day.

Thursday: Christmas eve

 Isaac made some more Christmas decorations.  I was quite impressed.

It snowed!  We're going to have a white Christmas!  I feel like it's been quite a while since we've had a white Christmas.  There have been a few white Thanksgivings, but no white Christmases.  A bird finally found the bird feeder that Isaac built in cadets last year.

We moved the Lego building back down to the basement because the tent was put away.  It meant we could turn on the fireplace, which we haven't really done much of.

We also watched Into the Spiderverse with the boys.  Ben and I remembered the movie as being more scary that we thought it was this viewing.  The boys really liked it.

Wednesday: this and that

 I found a 29 year old letter while I was looking through my stationary that had never been mailed.  Since I finished it and kept it this long I finally mailed it.  She just got it yesterday.  Oh!  The date was even perfect.  I didn't do that on purpose.

Isaac wrote a spirograph program.  Oh!  It changed.  It's still a spirograph program but he experimented with different colors and sizes.  https://studio.code.org/projects/artist/ejF24xBP8BZqXdDp9a6Q-cXwC7nn76OwQ0WDpyuUeUk

I had several bad dreams today.  (The second involved Ben putting broken Rock Band guitars in the toilet and then wondering why I was mad.  Then Liz told me their new mask wearing plan, which didn't really work at all.  Something like if they were exposed to the virus they waited two days before wearing a mask because they weren't contagious yet, wore a mask for one day, and decided they weren't contagious on day four.)  (I have a lot of dreams about mask wearing.)  Anyway, Joshua made me this rocket with rockets to keep the bad dreams away.  The whole thing spins.

We gave the boys one of their presents today while we had a clean floor.

I made fried plantains for the second time.  I thought the first time was a bit better, but they were still good.  However, getting the skin of a plantain is terrible!  I thought it would peel like a banana, but it needs to be cut off.  Cutting that banana shape is difficult.  I'm not sure if I'll purchase more or not.

Monday: no school

 The boys did an awesome job today, but I still found myself done at 4pm.  I think it might have been the assumption that I wanted to play one too many make-believe games.  I said "later" several times, but it annoys me.  (I annoy myself and I'm annoyed by the games.)  I finally played one with Joshua right before karate.  It wasn't bad as Joshua tends to progress the games along much better than Isaac, but it was also nice to have a firm stopping point.

Saturday: Christmas 1, piano recital

 We had Christmas with Larry and Cheryl today.  It was lovely to see them.

We had a nice breakfast.

The boys went a little crazy.  (To be fair though, they had also channeled some of that excitement into cleaning up before Larry and Cheryl showed up!)

The cats were being especially friendly.

The toys were played with well for the rest of the day!

Isaac also had his first piano recital.  

Friday

 Why does he have tape on his mouth?  I had no idea.

The boys are now on Christmas break!  Hopefully we don't drive each other crazy over the next two weeks.

Wednesday: shepherd and bank

All the animals from this nativity set are moving now, so it much be getting close to Christmas.  The shepheard was wanted to ride the camel for a while.

The other stuffed animals tried to get in on the action, with assorted results.

We all went to the bank today.  Before we got out of the car I said, "ok everyone, put on your masks."  Ben then made a snide remark about putting on masks to go into a bank. :D