How's the Weather?

I don't know about where you live, but up here in the upstate, we're into the hardest part of winter.  That's the part when we don't ever see the temperatures above 20.

We pretty much just get used to switching out the chicken's water several times a day because it doesnt last but an hour and it's frozen solid.  

The snow is here to stay until the beginning of March.

Snowstorm-wise, we've had a mild winter thus far.  But the temps have been in the negatives and single digits now for three weeks straight with the occasional 17, 12, or 20 degree day.  

The sun has shone clearly about 3 days in the last month.  This was one such day.   

We take our daily dose of Vitamin D to make up for the lack in the sunshine.  Even if it was shining all day though, it'd still be too cold to benefit from it. 

A newer lady at church who moved up from Tennessee asked me "Is it always like this???"  

I said, "No, it's usually much worse.  This year is much warmer because of global warming." 

(that's a joke.)  :-) 

Despite the freezing cold temperatures, constant chapped lips and cheeks, and cracked and bleeding hands, I love the upstate weather.  The four seasons are beautiful.   

School for the very young

I've always believed strongly that children shouldn't have open-ended play times, or free times.  With too much freedom, and not enough structure, they become naughty, begin fighting, and it leads to a day of disasters.  

One of the ways I combat this is by being structured myself.  Of course, children need freedom too.  Of course, they need free time, and of COURSE, they must learn to have fun too.  

But from a very early age, I begin my children on "school".  If this is something as simple as getting out a coloring book, and teaching them to color.  

I'm learning more and more that each child is sooo different.  But they CAN all be trained to enjoy school.  Perhaps they won't enjoy every single subject of school, but they can still enjoy SCHOOL. 

That is my goal at this early age.  Teach them to love it, and teach them some basics while I'm at it.  

I'm in now way an expert in this matter.  But these are a few of the things I've learned to implement in our school time. 

1. Phonics cards.  

We go thru the entire alphabet and all of the sounding out.  The girls love finding "their" letter and replacing that card with themselves.  Ex.  "G says g-g-g as in Gwendolyn" 

I just use the mini phonics cards from Abeka, since someone gave them to me.  

Be wary of dollar tree alphabet cards...often they will have weird pictures that aren't easy for little kids to figure out.  Or cartoon looking figures.  Also, often they are WRONG.  

example: a picture of a giraffe on the letter G

My dear friends in Maryland bought us these posters.  There are a lot of them we don't use (yet) and still others that are more simple than we need.  

We go thru the months of the year, chanting them.  The girls tell me who's birthday is which month.  Also, they tell me which holiday is in each month.  

Then we do numbers.  Right now we're counting to 30.  

For Bible time, I borrow these Sunday school Bible story cards from the church (since they arent being used there) and I read them a Bible account.  We've gone thru several of these packets so far this year.  

I ask them questions about the story after.

I kept these small bible verse flashcards from when I was a child, going thru the Bob Jones Bible workbooks.  Sometimes we just go through them all, other times I play a "game" with them....lay them face down and each girl picks one and has to say that verse perfectly for a "point".  The girl with the most points gets a skittle... 

anything like that.  So far they have about 15 verses memorized and 1 longer passage of scripture.  

These are more things I kept from my childhood.  They were in a small Dover book...wildflower flashcards.  The girls love learning about flowers (or ANYTHING), so we've memorized 10 of them, usually 1 or two facts about each flower.  I'm thinking we're ready to move on.  Maybe to mushrooms since we have lots of those that grow around the house and they'd be fun to identify.  

Lucie is only 2, so she has a small tracing the numbers book she uses, one brand new pre-k book that Mr. Jon (from church) gave her for Christmas, and one random coloring book.  She is learning to color the WHOLE picture, not just scribble the tiniest bit and say she's done.  :-)  

She LOVES her new workbook.  She traces letters, finds and circles the letters in a big jumble of letters mixed together, and also there are sometimes little mazes.  

Gwen finished one pre-k book.  I wasn't a fan of it.  It was from the dollar tree and the cartoon figures (like I already mentioned) were hard for her to recognize.  For example:  There would be a large scene and it would say "circle everything that begins with a C"....but the carrot didn't look like a carrot, it looked like a human with legs and arms, and face...hopefully you get the point.  I like SLIGHTLY more realistic pictures.  :-) 

The book she is doing now is better.  I get annoyed sometimes because they have lots of "color this picture" pages.  I feel like coloring pages should be in coloring books.  Gwen doesn't love coloring, she loves dot-to-dots, mazes, patterns, find the differences, all of those....

Another one of the posters we've memorized is the world map.  I know it's simple, but the girls know all of the continents and small facts about each one.  They're learning the oceans now.  

We have a States poster too.  They love to go thru and point out where we live, where Grandma and Grandpa live...where Mimi and papa live, etc.  

The girls have all of the shapes memorized, which is more than I had memorized in like, 2nd grade (or whenever we had to have those memorized haha).  They're favorites are Hexagon and Trapezoid.  

It's been soooo handy teaching them the days of the week.  Every day they ask me "What day is today?" and I make them figure it out by giving them hints.  "Well, yesterday was a day that starts with a T-H....tomorrow is the day Daddy doesn't work...so what day IS today?" 

That might give you an idea of what all we do.  We also have Piano lessons, which I started last month.  

and we do singing.  

I read them books about five times each day, since it's understood now...when I sit down to feed the baby, I read Gwen and Lucie a book or two as well.  :-)  They remind me EVERY time.

Dan has begun teaching them Spanish as well.  They love running around the house saying the spanish words for things.

The girls beg me each day to do school.  Some days I have a lot of other stuff and we don't get to it.  But yesterday it was almost 9pm and Lucie started crying because I had said earlier that we might do school and we still hadn't.  

I remembered why I started school for them so early.  

So you can guarantee we went downstairs and did school time before bed.  If I can squeeze it in to the day, I will make that extra effort to do so.  

 

Jam-making tutorial- just kidding. :-)

 Since Dan got a deer about a month ago, I thought maybe I should try to free up some freezer space a bit.  One of our freezers is plugged up with frozen fruit a neighbor man gave us.  

Well, I looked through my cupboards and found one package of suregel, for jam-making.  

I tried jam one other time back in 2018 one week before I had Gwendolyn.  It was a disastor and tasted so gross and I was so discouraged to have wasted all of that fruit, that I didn't try again.  

That might seem appalling to those of you who are jam-making pros.  Whenever I've said to people "I've never made a successful jam", they say "WHAT?   How was it unsuccessful if you followed the directions...it's a foolproof recipe."  

Well, I must be the fool that proved the foolproof recipe wrong last time.  ;-) 

This time however, is a different story.  

At first, it seemed a little runny...

But after I gave it a water bath, it seemed much more normal. 

And by the next morning on my breakfast toast, it was perfect!  I was so happy!

So yay!  I can no longer say I've had only unsuccessful attempts at jam-making. 

All you people like me, who have been to scared to try again, go give it a whirl!  

Christmas 2021

I hope you all had the merriest of Christmases this year! 

Our Christmas was different and quiet, but I had so much fun watching my girls enjoy their day.  

We had such a wonderful time on Christmas Eve with our church, celebrating the birth of our Savior.  It was so nice to have visitors in church, and a very full church.  We had a candlelight service which was very nice.  We stayed rather late, so by the time we came home, we were all very hungry and didn't get a chance to get a family photo by the tree, which has become a sort of a tradition.  

I snagged this photo of the girls though, before they had a hanger fit.  

One of the dear ladies at church gave Gwen and Lucie gifts: these new dresses!  When they woke up Christmas morning, they begged to wear their new dresses.  Another lady at church gave them the fuzzy, Christmas socks they're wearing.   

I made a crescent roll/cinnamon sugar breakfast with scrambled eggs.  We ate, and then I had the idea to do a scavenger hunt for Gwen and Lucie to find their presents.  

I remember when I was growing up, my parents would do elaborate scavenger hunts (which could include hiding spots on the entire 5 acres) and we would hunt for our presents.  Sometimes there was a present with each clue...other times your present stash would be at the end of the hunt for clues.  

I loved it so much and each Christmas I have fond memories of them. I had Dan draw some clues

Then I went and hid the presents at the locations. 

We explained what they were to do, then I went with Gwen while Dan went with Lucie to find their presents.

Here's Gwen, looking for a present under the piano.

And Lucie found hers under the rocking chair!

Gwen, at the manger scene.

Gwen even had some in the bathtub!

This is Lucie, finding her final presents.

Then we let them open the presents they found.  

This year, I found quite a few nice things (keep in mind, my kids are 3 and 2) at the dollar tree. Don't think I'm a cheapskate.  I just know my girls and I know that they'll enjoy something that costs $1 just as much as they will something that's $25.  Plus they get overwhelmed with too many new things at once.  So we got them about 10 dollar tree things each.  Plus I got them some things they'll share, like new hair bows and baby doll bottles with the disappearing milk and orange juice.  

Gwen, opening her pretend jewelry.  She loves it so much.  

 

These are $1 dolls from dollar tree.  I got one for each of the girls.  Each doll comes with a purse, comb, shoes, and necklace and outfit. Sidenote: has your local dollar tree raised their prices yet? Ours is $1.25 now for every item.  I did my Christmas shopping for the girls before that happened though.  Whew!  hahaha

One of the guys at church got Dan this present!!  It's a remote controller backhoe!  Yes, Dan is 34 years old.  But Dan LOVES remote controlled toys...I attribute it to the fact that as a child he didn't get many gifts like this perhaps?  Whatever the case, he thought it was a fun gift and enjoyed driving it around, trying to pick up wrapping paper and bows off the ground with the bucket (Of which he was unsuccessful). 

Mimi (my mother-in-law) made and sent these hats for the girls!  They love them and wear them each time they go outside.  Okay, Eliza does not love hers...but she never loves hats.  :-)

After we finished wrapping presents (We have not actually finished FINISHED yet- we are saving a few of the girls gifts from friends for later when the "new toy" fascination has worn off of the $1 items), we drove to Queensbury and ate lunch at the Asian buffet (of all places!)  

The price was very steep...I suppose because it was Christmas, they gauged their prices because they knew they were the only place open.  

But it was nice!  I enjoyed eating the food on the buffet!

Hope you all enjoyed a lovely Christmas!!!  Did you do anything special?  Please let me know if you have any neat traditions!  I'd like to implement some new ones next year and need fresh ideas!

  

Family Photos Fall 2021

I was glad that we could have our family photos taken before we went on our vacation.  We were able to take them before the leaves officially changed color completely.  Peak season as they say here.  But our photographer did a fine job of still making them look nice.  

A fun thing about these photos is that they were taken on our latest real estate purchase.  An abandoned, let-go, run-down (etc. etc. etc.) farm.  

The back of the barn made the perfect photo backdrop for the girls.  Any higher and the camera would have picked up that the entire back of the barn is literally missing.  It's gone.  :-) 

Fun fact 2: The railroad tracks run through the farm! So while the rails do not belong to us, it's fun to have them there and hear the trains.

Fun fact 3: The farm has a creek as well.  It's dubbed "mud creek", rightly so, since near the bridge, it is very very murky and brown-looking.  

Fun fact 4: Dan has gotten several breeds of wildlife so far on it!  

Venison for the freezer...

Fox pelt because...well, they're fun to hang up and because there are a million foxes around here.  

And still others...which Dan caught on trail cam photos, but has yet to see in real life.  Hunting season ends on Saturday, so the last opportunities to see him are less and less.  There's always next year though!

 

So there you have some of the photos from our family photo shoot as WELL as some significant news!  Hope you all enjoyed a lovely Christmas with your families.  I'll be posting about our Christmas at some point...but I still have lots of fall news to catch up on.  :-)  Keep posted!  I'll make every effort to post again in the next week.