Two days till Christmas!

Due to the girls being sick we haven't done much besides lay around the house and try to recover from colds. But it is now two days till Christmas and since my mom has requested a picture, here is our Christmas tree. This is the first time we have gotten a live tree.

 

 

 

Six Days till Christmas!

Six days till Christmas and we made cupcakes and ornaments.



Seven Days till Christmas!

Seven days till Christmas and Lilly wrote a letter to Santa.

 

Dear Santa,

Hi my name is Lilly. I have been an angle(that means I have been relly good). I relly love Flutterby Fareys. I like robot dogs. I like a phone. I like when it snows.

 

 

 

Well if she is an angle I'm pretty sure she is an acute one. Snow doesn't seem likely and I personally think she is too young for her own cell phone, but there is one thing on the list that "Santa" is bringing. So I think she is going to have a pretty good Christmas. 

Eight Days till Christmas!

Eight days till Christmas and we went out in the cold to view a beautiful full moon.

Nine Days till Christmas!

Nine days till Christmas and today the girls colored wooden ornaments for our tree.

 Lucy made an owl.

 

Lilly chose to make an elf. 

Ten Days Till Christmas!

Ten days till Christmas and we celebrated with family!

Eleven Days Till Christmas!

Eleven days till Christmas and since chances of snow are slim we made our own!

The "snow" is made of shaving cream and baking soda so they made snowballs and dropped them into vinegar to watch them foam up.

http://www.growingajeweledrose.com/2013/01/erupting-snow-recipe.html

 



Twelve Days till Christmas!

Twelve days till Christmas and we used ten year old spices to make ornaments.

http://www.mccormick.com/Recipes/Other/Cinnamon-Ornaments

A morning of fun

 Throwing acorns and sticks into the water.

 

 It is hard to believe that the water used to be so high over this pipe that you could paddle a boat over it.

 

 The water was so still the morning we took this walk.

 

 "Fishing" in the lake.

 

More "fishing". All that was caught was a bunch of weeds. 

Night Sparkles

 

Lilly liked to look at the sparklers but not actually touch them. Lucy loved them, though.

 



Garden Update

 The hot weather caused the spinach to bolt and this is the last of my lettuce.

 

 I have two cucumber plants, this is the smaller one. The bigger one had four cucumbers on it, but squirrels ate them. The squirrels also ate my squash.

 

 The blackberries are slowly starting to ripen.

 

The blueberry bushes are starting to have blueberries. We also found wild blueberries growing behind our house. 

Tea Party Time

 Lilly got a real china tea set for Christmas and the girls have enjoyed playing with it.

 

 April and Panda were invited.

 

Jonas was invited buy after almost breaking a cup he was redirected to another, more toddler appropriate activity. 

What we have been up to..

 Cleaning the camper so we can hopefully go camping soon.

 

 Making yogurt.

 

 Picking peas at grandma's house.

 

Trying to keep the cats from demolishing what is left of my garden.

Honeysuckle Spring

 The honeysuckles have been in full bloom. We have the everywhere and the girls love to pick and taste the nectar.

 

 This is their favorite spot to climb and get some.

 

This red kind is the honeysuckle that is actually native to North Carolina. The yellow and white kind that is seen more often is invasive Japanese honeysuckle.

What we have been up to

I'm still doing the May decluttering challenge, I just forgot to take pictures. But I have gotten rid of a lot of stuff. I've also started the weekly health challenge by the blogger Juggling Real Food and Real Life. http://www.jugglingrealfoodandreallife.com/p/weekly-challenges.html

I'm on the first week. I wasn't sure how my morning coffee would taste without white sugar(I often joke that I like sugar with a little bit of coffee mixed in) but I made a latte using a tiny bit of maple syrup and milk and it tasted pretty good, so I think I will be able to give up the white sugar in my morning coffee fairly easily. Since I'm the only one who drinks anything but water, this first weeks challenge isn't going to be that hard.

 Lucy and Jonas have enjoyed swinging in the hammock.

 

 Lilly is counting down the days till school is out.

 

 On Mother's Day Lilly got me up at 6:30 so that we could spend more time together. It is the thought that counts.

 I finally got around to making beef jerky with my dehydrator. I don't eat jerky so I never think to make it. But other people said it tasted good, so I will probably make some more.

 

 The girls have started swimming even though the water is still pretty cold.

 

 

We made whole wheat flat bread pizzas. The green stuff is spinach from the garden. The girls both love fresh spinach on pizza. Lucy does not care for pizza sauce.

Mornings at the park

Lucy has started having speech therapy at 8 in the morning. I have started taking them to the park afterwards. It is cool that early in the morning and we have the park to ourselves.

 

 This was at the newer part of Lineberger Park. There is a real train that goes in a circle around the park, but it isn't open during the week.

 

 Jonas loves the little bouncy car. They really should have put up more than one, though.

 

 This is at the older part of Lineberger Park, the part that I used to play at when I was a child. Back then it had the most amazing playground equipment; giant metal slides, a merry go round, the coolest metal swings ever, tire swings, monkey bars, and a kiddie pool. They replaced all of those things with newer, safer, but considerable less fun stuff. And I'm not really sure this is actually more safe, just less fun.

 They were both kind of bored so we went and walked the nature trail.

 

All through the trail they have these little boxes. You push the button and it will tell you about trees. The thing is, it takes about 8-10 seconds for it to start talking once the button is pushed, so Jonas and Lucy would push the button, stand there, nothing would happen, and then get scared when it suddenly started talking.