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

Questions

I got the following questions from Joshua today.  (They came all in a row.)

*How far away is Pluto? 

*What was the first sea animal made?

*How many blood cells are in the body?

I got the following questions from Isaac today.

*What is the moon's name?

*How many moons does Jupiter have?

*What are they're names?

*Why do they have names and not our moon?

*Is it snack time yet?

Monday: flat gingerbread

 Joshua's teacher sent him a flat gingerbread to take pictures with.  He really got into it today.

Joshua learned to draw a reindeer for school.  He then proceeded to draw three more, cut them out, and hung them up on the wall.  Isaac proceeded to get into it and now there are six lights, four candy canes, three reindeer, two snowmen, and a snowflake on the wall.

The weekend

 Friday was hat day for Isaac.  He wore it for the initial call and immediately took it off.

Friday Isaac didn't quite finish teeth and pajamas before reading bedtime books, so he did them afterwards.  (This isn't all that uncommon.)  As Joshua and I were heading to the basement Isaac said, "but I'm going to be lonely!"  "Right now?" I asked.  "Yes."  I think I rolled my eyes.

One of the shepherd activities was dressing up as shepherds and finding stuffed animals.  They let me put the towels on for a picture, but didn't really want to and took them off quickly.

Isaac hit the jackpot with his advent calendar!

The next day he hit the anti-jackpot.

Today we made graham cracker houses.  Well, Ben ended up making a graham cracker hospital.

Thursday

 The shepard is still nicely helping the boys find all the animals.

 

Joshua was going to make a sandal for people on Golden Snake's team.  This was just a prototype.  He quickly found it didn't work well.  (I'm not sure why he was making these.  I'm not sure about a lot of things.)

I was attacked by both boys after nap by Lego items.  I told them to look into my eyes so that I could hypnotize them since I'm on the snake's team.  Joshua fell for it for a moment and then realized that I couldn't hypnotize him.

Wednesday: CAH, date

We packed a box for Community Action House today.  I expect that donating money would be more effective, but this way the boys get to participate.  They have to look through all the groceries and find the items from the list.

 
We had a small date night tonight.  It was definitely a 2020 date, but nice all the same.  I dropped the boys off with my parents and picked up the food.  While I was doing that Ben surprised me by getting the table ready along with some decorations. :)  I especially enjoyed his clothing choice. :D

Tuesday

 The sheep escaped outside last night!  At least there was a Shepard to help the boys find them.

Joshua has decided that his Lego set from this season should watch all the Ninjago episodes. He came out well before dinner (and was put away afterwards!)

In other news, it was a disjointed day.  Laptops weren't working well.  The children needed more help than normal.  I had a hard time getting anything done, although things did get done.  They also decided to put a Lego train track on the stairs.  It seems like a bad plan, but we're going with it.  The train isn't strong enough to climb the stairs though, so they're doing ...something else.

Monday

 We take a picture for Cheryl every day, and sometimes it tends to be the only picture of the day.

Nothing else interesting happened.  As normal.

 

Saturday: God

 We had promotions today.  Joshua is now a green stripe ninja and Isaac and I are red with yellow stripe.  However, the school is leaving their parent company so that might change.  (I don't think the move will effect us too much, and probably only for the better in the things that do change.)

Joshua: Hey Isaac, I know how God got created!
Isaac: How.
Joshua: I'll tell everyone after praying.  I figured it out as a six-year-old while going poop.  It's crazy!  As a six-year--old!
Fast forward to after prayer time.
Joshua: God was born!
Amanda: Who was his mom?
Joshua: uh, he was just born!

Friday: pirate

Isaac is still enjoying his Advent calendar.

Joshua was a pirate today.  I'm not sure why, but he was for "most" of the day.  He told me he was really Joshua, but that I couldn't tell Ben.  So I tried to civilize a pirate by making him learn to read.  He mostly did it in his normal voice, but when Ben walked by he switched to his pirate voice.

Grey Bear also got a disguise: Grey Box.  I had no idea what Joshua was talking about until I actually saw Grey Bear in a container.

 

Thursday: cake

 Isaac got some jagged block in his Advent calendar.

A bit ago Joshua got the idea that he wanted to make a cake with icing on the side.  I told him we didn't have a spinny thing to do it properly, so he made one out of Lego.  It didn't work all that well, but it turned out that the frosting didn't apply nicely anyway, so we skipped the sides.

He also wanted to put a Pikachu on it, so I mixed up some yellow frosting and he put a vaguely animal shape in the middle.  I wouldn't call the whole project a success, but he was pleased and I think it tasted good.

Wednesday: in pictures, again

 Joshua looks like he's holding ice, but they're just ice colored Legos.  He was not impressed by the Advent door he opened.  I think he's going to be underwhelmed with most of the doors.

Isaac, however, was excited and made a little sculpture.

The Christmas decor seems to have gotten a little out of hand this year, but...it's also rather fun.

Here's the 3rd grade science question that stumped the whole family: should the tiger or banana tree have a woodlands forest habitat?  (Vs a tropical rainforest habitat.)  I looked it up on-line...the tiger had multiple habitats, but woodland forest wasn't one of them and rain forest specifically was.  The banana tree didn't have to be in a rain forest, but did need a lot of rain.  We ended up asking the teacher.  She said the tiger could be in the woodland forest.  (I was underwhelmed with this assignment as a whole.  I know, trust me I know, it's hard to have every assignment be a good one.  This one gave a two random facts about an organism and then you were supposed to place it in it's habitat.  But the facts didn't always line up with helping the student figure out the habitat.)

Isaac lost a tooth!  He lost it during rest time, dealt with it, and then forgot to tell me for about five hours.  Luckily he told me in time for the tooth fairy to still show up.