Miss L's Birthday and Baptism Day

 Miss L's baptismal program was on January 13th.  We celebrated with grandparents visiting and some of our closest friends from church. 

It was a wonderful day. Both Grandmas shared experiences and stories about baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost. 

On Lili's birthday we went to a Science Museum and Planetarium. 

They had a lot of interesting exhibits to observe and also touch!

We saw lizards, snakes, turtles, birds, crabs, and fish.  They also showed a movie in the planetarium about sharks. 

Baby A found Nemo and Dory.  He was so excited to see them. 

We went to the Chinese buffet again for Miss L's birthday dinner. This time we brought along our friends and Grandmama and Grandpa J.  The food was not quite as good as the first time we went, but we still found a lot of yummy things to eat.  The kids gave themselves tummy aches with all the ice cream and candy they ate.  Big sister A was sick to her stomach that night. 

Miss L had her birthday doughnuts and present opening  party a few days after her birthday. 

She also had ice cream sundaes!

Christmas 2022

 We celebrated the return of the light with a Winter Solstice feast on December 21st.  The kids love lighting all the candles and eating a candle lit dinner. 

Stuffed squash from our garden with herbs and seeds a plenty.

Homemade Challah.

We celebrated Christmas Eve with our traditional appetizer feast.  This year we watched "Jingle Jangle".

I made PJ pants for all the kids.  Baby A refused to wear his and all of them were big and comfy. 

We had a nice breakfast of crepes on Christmas morning and then went to church at 11am.  We came home and opened presents for a couple of hours. Baby loved the whole experience.  So many delicious candies!

We used 5 small potted trees this year instead of one large cut tree.  Each child decorated their own tree.  This way we can use them to plant for our privacy fence between our new post and wire fence and the road. 

We each got candy in our Sabots from Pere Noel. 

I used a lot of my cloth Christmas bags for wrapping this year.  There was so much to do on Christmas Eve and the cloth bags are much faster. I was afraid that I would fall asleep on the couch before I finished the wrapping around 2 am. 

Daddy received practical presents like socks and underwear.

The kids bought each other gifts at the thrift store.

Baby received a firetruck Mater and a Lightning McQueen.

Most of our family was super excited to go ice skating for our family Christmas activity (We do memory making activities instead of big gifts).  Baby A was NOT willing to even put his feet down on the ice. 

He spent a lot of time watching the rest of us. 

And also being carried unwillingly around the rink. 

Our other kids, experienced skaters, had a blast.  It didn't hurt that their best buddies came along to keep them company. 

Brother S and Little miss L were their usual speedy selves. 

Brother M spent some time practicing and improving his spins. We also practiced skating backwards together quite a bit. 

After ice skating we went to a yummy Chinese buffet for M's birthday dinner.  We stuffed ourselves with delicious food and then went home to relax. 

Birthday Season 2022

 

Brother S kicked off our kids birthday season with pizza and root beer floats for his birthday dinner. 

He received some very fun birthday cards and wishes from the grandparents. Thanks all!

We went to Cafe Rio for big sister A's birthday dinner.

Baby A tasted soda. 

She also received a lot of cute cards and gifts from grandparents and siblings. 

She had a "late-nighter" with her besties the Saturday before.  They ate pizza and watched a movie.  She wanted two dozen doughnuts for her birthday dessert -- one dozen to share and one dozen just for herself!

Brother M decided to postpone his birthday dinner until after Christmas since we had done so much partying already for Abi's birthday. 

We sang to him over the leftover Cafe Rio desserts. 

Field Trips and Extracurriculars Fall 2022

 We had several wonderful field trip experiences this semester. One was this World War 2 reenactment at Ike's farm.  Brother M was dressed up as an authentic Canadian Paratrooper.

Baby A visited with his favorite storybook character "Tractor Mac". 

My friend Sarah had an incredible booth about sugar rationing and life on the home front during WWII. 

We visited the National Museum of Health and Medicine, but the kids really had a hard time with it.  They did not like seeing actual organs in jars or the results of war wounds.  It was pretty overwhelming and scary for anyone under 14. 

It is near the Washington DC temple, so we checked out the latest exhibits at the visitor's center as well. 

We have some great Civil War historical sites near us, so we went to check out several of those. I loved this Field Hospital Museum.

Mostly, I loved that they had a garden of medicinal plants. 

We were the only ones there that morning. 

The kids found what looks like an old root cellar entrance near the house. 

We looked at a lot of old grave markers at Antietam National Cemetery. 

We had a wonderful tour of the Howard County Living Farm Museum. We toured the old farm house and saw all the useful tools of life in the "olden" days.

The kitchen had pieces from different time periods.  Here's a hoosier cupboard from the turn of the century.

They had several types of cook stove, both wood burning and electric. 

There was an old one room school house, original to the county, but moved from another location. 

The kids pulled the bell to call the kids for class. 

Baby A's favorite part of the experience was riding in a real school bus!

The school room.  Apparently there were several one room school houses in our county until the 1960s. 

Miss L attended and showed at the Baltimore Howard County rabbit show.  Her first time as a Youth exhibitor. 

Our 4H Club did a community Outreach event.  They showed rabbits at Chick-fil-a and answered questions about them from customers. 

We did a bunch of clean energy experiments with our Power House laboratory kit. Brother S is especially fond of cooking things in the solar oven that we built. 

We have some new penpals in Hungary and the kids have enjoyed mailing letters back and forth. They sent us a lovely Christmas package with treats to sample. 

On a very cool and rainy day in early December we helped the Homes For Troops project lay sod for our new neighbor's yard.