My word for 2009

The homeschool forum I belong to introduced the idea of choosing a word to focus on during 2009.  As I focus on this word I have chosen, I will spend one day a week studying it along with my devotions.  I will keep a notebook for the truths I discover through my study.  I will update my blog to let you know how things are going - but I probably won't be consistent.  So the word I have chosen is:

 

patience

Along with this study I will look into contentment also.  I need to be more patient with my family and I need to be content while I'm waiting for change.  I need to be patient while I wait on the Lord to do His work in our lives, and content in what we have while I'm waiting.

Yummy Christmas snack!

Quick and easy!  Very Christmasy!

This is the larger tree - used 2 tubes of crescent rolls.  And below is after putting on a glaze.

Here is a smaller tree we did, with just 1 tube of rolls.  Applied the same glaze.

Here are the instructions.

Unroll a tube of crescent rolls and seal the perforations.  Melt about 1 Tbsp of margarine and brush it on the dough.  Mix cinnamon and sugar and sprinkle over the butter.  Reroll the crescent rolls and cut.  We cut each tube into 10 sections, but they could be cut a little narrower if you wanted.  Arrange them into the shape of a tree and bake until brown.  Let cool and apply a powdered sugar and milk glaze. 

We colored the glaze green and sprinkled some red sugar on the top. 

My mom applies a thin glaze (uncolored) and puts jarred cherries in the center of the sections for red balls. 

You could get very creative with the decorating, or leave them plain.

On the twelfth day of Christmas...

... my true love gave to me, 12 drummers drumming.

We talked today about the 12 points of the Apostle's Creed.  The boys then finished up their 12 Days of Christmas books by coloring a nativity picture for the last page of the book. 

Then we began reading this book.  Since it goes through the alphabet and gives history and background for each subject, we are going to stretch out the reading throughout the rest of this week.  For example, the C stands for Children, Chimney, Candles, Cookie Crumbs, Christmas tree, Christ Child, and Cards.  The book then explains that Christmas was originally written Christes Maesses in the Old English, meaning Christ's mass.  Candles symbolize the Christ child who is called "light of the world" and what tradition the candle has.  There is some background on carols that were sung around the year 129 and by 1200, monks sang carols to reenact the nativity story.  Then it tells a little about Charles Dickens who wrote A Christmas Carol in 1843 and finally that Louis Prang printed the first Christmas card in the US in 1874. 

We are now officially on Christmas break!!!!

My gingerbread house

We were finally able to get to the store today and get more powdered sugar to make a final batch of frosting so I could finish my gingerbread house.  And since the weather is bad, we cancelled scouts tonight, so I had time to finish it up tonight.  Here are pictures of mine:

I used cereal for the roof, beans for the chimney, marshmallows for smoke, gum drops for bushes, pretzel rods for logs and  lifesavers, peppermint candy, M&Ms, candy canes, and twizzlers for decorations. 

On the eleventh day of Christmas...

... my true love gave to me, 11 pipers piping.

The eleven stands for the 11 faithful disciples of Jesus.  We made trading cards for each disciple to put in a folder book.

Then we read this book:

On the tenth day of Christmas...

...my true love gave to me, 10 lords a leaping.

You guessed it, the tenth day stands for the 10 commandments.  After talking a little about what each one means, they made this tablet with the commandments on it.

Then we read this book about the real Saint Nicholas.

On the ninth day of Christmas...

... my true love gave to me, nine ladies dancing.

In Galatians, Paul talks about the Fruit of the Spirit - of which there are 9 - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self-control.  They boys are very familiar with these because they spent several months talking about it at the kid's program during our midweek services at church.  They still remember the song.  Nicolas and Alex each did a different kind of book with this day.  Nicolas did a simple accordion book, while Alex's is a little more intense.  Alex's book is a lift the flap book.  He is writing something about each fruit - he's not quite finished with it.

We read this book:

Very good book - many lessons to be learned from it.  Ours came with a CD, but we have not listened to it yet.  I have also seen that there is a movie out based on this book.  We may have to get our hands on it sometime.

Gingerbread houses

Well, yesterday the teacher wasn't feeling well. so we did nothing.  Tonight we were able to finish the boys' gingerbread houses.  Mine is still unfinished because we ran out of icing and no more powdered sugar to make more - so mine will have to wait until next week.  Here are pictures of the boys as they are finishing theirs.

We helped with the icing, but they pretty much had free reign of what they put on.  You will be able to tell :)

Here is Alex's finished product.

The back:

The front:

The side:

Here's Nicolas's house.

The front:

The back:

The side:

The pretzel rod on the top is a telescope.  There are several snowmen lining (guarding?) the house.

And the proud builders:

On the eighth day of Christmas...

...my true love gave to me, 8 maids a milking.

8 stands for the 8 beatitudes found in Matthew 5.  Daddy talked about what each one meant and then they glued them onto the bees.

Then we read this book:

Gingerbread houses

So we finally started our gingerbread houses today.  Instead of the Royal icing that has been recommended as the best thing to use - I mixed a very stiff powdered sugar and milk icing.  It has worked well.  The main reason was that the boys wanted to be able to eat their houses later and I didn't want to make another trip to the store to get the egg white substitute.  We used graham crackers instead of making gingerbread.  I'm not sure what would've been better - most of our graham crackers were broken in one box and about 1/2 in the other box.  VERY FRUSTRATING!

We were able to get the walls built and that houses put up today.  We plan to decorate them tomorrow.  With other schoolwork and my dentist appointment today, we have not been able to get any further today.  Nicolas is not all that interested in it yet.  Hopefully the decorating will be more fun for him.  Not sure this will be something they will want to do again for awhile - we'll see.

Here is Alex getting his house put together.  I ended up doing Nicolas's for him - so no pictures.  I have also made one for myself that I will wait and show a picture of later.

On the 7th day of Christmas...

... my true love gave to me, 7 swans a-swimming.

From Romans 12, Paul lists 7 spiritual gifts of the Holy Spirit. 

Then we read this book:

On the sixth day of Christmas...

...my true love gave to me, 6 geese a-laying.

Because Nicolas was sick yesterday, we were not able to finish this day until this morning.  The 6 geese stand for the 6 days of creation.  The boys each drew a picture of what God created for each day of creation.

Then we read this book.  Not the best Patricia Polacco book - I was a little disappointed.

We also watched a video from the library that tells the story of Snowflake Bentley.  It had illustrations like a Reading Rainbow video, but also had live footage of a man acting the part of Mr. Bentley and showed actual photographs that he took of snowflakes.  I was impressed with the video and the boys enjoyed it.

 

On the fifth day of Christmas...

...my true love gave to me, 5 golden rings.

Nothing too special about today.  5 golden rings stands for the 5 books of the Torah, or law.  Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.  We had no guesses for 5 today - but there were guesses for 10 and 12 as we were talking about 5.

Luminary Walk

We went to Muncie for a Luminary Walk Friday night.  It was COLD - about 15 degrees F.  We bundled up and had a good time.  The luminaries were lit up along every walkway and leading up to the decorated mansions.

There were carriage rides, but they were a bit pricey, so we just walked.  Each mansion was decorated.

And there were fun activities to do for the kids - like making candy ornaments.

They had a real reindeer for the kids to pet.  Her name was Jingle Bell - very fitting.

Inside the main building, they had gingerbread houses to look at with a bell choir from a local church playing in the background.

We will use these pictures this week to prepare our own gingerbread houses.  Ours won't be near this elaborate since it's our first attempt at something like this.  We are hoping to start ours on Tuesday - so watch the blog for pictures of the different stages.