Dec Misc

 Some miscellaneous holiday happenings from December...

Neighborhood Events

A gentleman from our neighborhood is part of a men's singing quartet. For the past three years, he has hosted a free concert from his driveway for neighbors. This is the first year we've been able to attend. Andrea and my parents joined us for the little concert. The men's group sang all kinds of traditional Christmas carols. They sounded excellent! Our family even danced in the street to a few of the songs.

Later in the month, another neighbor who is a realtor organized a Santa drive-through event. I almost forgot this activity was happening until we heard a fire truck honking down our street. We all ran outside just in time to greet the little Christmas caravan. Our children received a fireman's hat and waved to Santa as he passed by.

Ornament Exchange

Jason's spiritual formation team at church had a family party to celebrate the holidays this year. The adults had a white elephant gift exchange while the kids watched a movie on the lawn (gotta love how the weather's nice enough in Texas to do that in December!). The kids also had an ornament gift exchange.

3rd Grade Christmas

Jaden's teacher sent us pictures of their classroom Christmas party. Looks like the kids had a great time making a Santa parachute, constructing a real "shelf" for an elf, and playing boys vs. girls stacking games.

Love this festive season!

Santa's Wonderland

 During the holidays, a generous friend from church gifted our family with tickets to Santa's Wonderland--a popular Christmas attraction we've heard so much about since moving here. Our family loved it and was so thankful we had the chance to attend. Santa's Wonderland is most known for its amazing light display. We rode on a hayride tour to see all the lights.

Of course, Texas always has to thrown in a bit of Texas pride! This display of the Alamo even appeared to have firing cannons moving across the battlefield. So cool!

The tour ended with a 3-part display showing Christ's birth, death, and resurrection. The hayride even stopped at this point to give visitors a full view of this display. I didn't capture a photo, but our family loved this great witness!

After viewing the lights, we found Frostbite Mountain where Texas brought in some REAL snow. The kids loved playing in the snow and throwing snowballs at each other. Daddy and the boys waited in a line to tube down a snow hill. Even though their wait was quite long, the boys ended with huge grins and said the wait was "totally worth it!"

We all needed to warm up after our time at Frostbite Mountain, so we enjoyed some yummy hot chocolate.

While finishing up our warm drinks, we found a cozy spot to listen to some live bands playing Christmas tunes.

Then, we visited another light display (this one was a walking tour only) that ended with a nativity scene.

The final attractions we visited were the haybale maze, the jumping pillows, and the "Texas-sized" gingerbread village.

There was so much to do at this Wonderland! We were impressed that our kids stayed happy the whole time, even though we stayed until after 9:00pm. All three fell fast asleep during the hour-long drive back home. What a great way to kick off the Christmas season!

More Letter Fun

Adley and I got on a roll with our letter activities in the fall. It helps that Adley consistently asked me, "Mommy, what letter are we learning about today?" She loves all the special projects we get to do, and I appreciate the focused playtime I have with Adley. It's a win-win! Here are three of our letters from the fall.

 LETTER Q

Adley used Q-tips to decorate her tactile letter book page. Now that her book is quite full of letter pages, Adley especially enjoys placing the completed page in her binder and reading through the whole book.

Then, since the Q-tips were out anyway, Adley tried out painting with Q-tips.

Since Q activities are a little harder to come by, we stretched a bit... This math activity was about the word eQual. Adley learned what an equal sign looks like and set up sample equations with Duplos.

Adley's favorite Q activity was creating a paper quilt with some of my old scrapbooking paper. She was very methodical about placing the squares. Adley liked doing this activity so much, she asked to make a second one the next day!

LETTER N

We saved letter N for towards the end of our letter activities since it's a more challenging letter to write. This page was helpful for practicing that task.

Adley filled her letter N tactile book page with scraps of newspaper. I was surprised at how much I had to carefully glean out which clippings contained appropriate words/stories!

Adley usually asks to do this sound cover activity first. She's getting so good at isolating the beginning sounds of her words.

Our next activity was making a picture with noodles. Adley thought this was a little silly.

Another day, we made a night sky with sequins as stars.

Our last N activity was focused on the nose. I filled several containers with various strong-smelling kitchen items (cinnamon, coffee grounds, vanilla, vinegar, pepper, lemon juice, etc). We smelled each one and talked about it. Then, Adley tried to guess which container was which by smelling with her eyes closed. She thought it was SO funny when I gave her a not-so-good smelling substance. By the end of this activity, she got pretty good at identifying her smells! We practiced quite a bit!

LETTER M

For letter M, Adley cut out clip art images of monsters to fill her tactile letter book page.

Then, she made a monster picture using a blow painting technique.

We practiced creating the letter M using M&Ms and marshmallows.

Continuing with the monster theme, Adley rolled a monster die and graphed her results according to which color monster she rolled. We did a similar activity for another letter, and she loved it both times. She liked trying to predict which monster would "win," or get to the top of the graph first. She certainly has a competitive streak in her, just like her brothers!

Our final activity was playing around with Music. We watched a youtube video that explained how various instruments were played. After multiple times of watching, Adley got pretty good at showing how to hold and play each instrument. It was a fast, fun little video. We also listened to and danced to various genres of music. 

And that's a wrap for QNM! Only 8 more letters to go...