December. A busy month indeed. I am to thankful for my families enthusiasm in gathering, celebrating, feasting and spending time together! And in this month we couldn't go without a visit to Santa and Mrs Clause. Cedar and Orien we ready to give their lists and say hello to the old Elf! The list this year was Lego's, playmobils, and babies!

Truthy decided Santa was not for her and stayed away! "I don't like Santa" is about all I got from her! BUT Mrs. Clause was a treat!

                                                      We had our 3rd Solstice Party up at our place. We gathered with 10 families. Ate, drank, warmed ourselves around the bonfire. The kiddos had a blast with the BRIGHT sunny pinata. Cedar and Jackson helped to make the yule log for the fire.Here they are a pine, with pine cones for prosperity for the new year ahead.

We have taken the last couple weeks off of school. We had time to gather at Hidden Valley with our Wednesday Woods families. SLEDDING!!!!! This was also a bit sad as it will be the last time we gather with Julie and Jackson until next summer. Change is tough, but we always love our time with great friends.

The Manzella's, Hurley's and Eamonn's! in the great SNOW

Jackson and Cedar playing in the deep snow

Christmas Morning!!!!! We celebrated with a few families on Christmas Eve....rushed home to put out the milk and cookies for Santa, leave the carrots for the reindeer's, out on our new PJ's and crawl into bed!!!!! The kiddos we soooooo excited on Christmas morning! Here they are ready to head down stairs and see what happened while they were sleeping.

Truthy quite content with all her new baby gear! She didn't open a present. I just kept handing her new baby gear and she was busy playing Mama!

Cedar was busy building all day with all the new Lego's! The city bus that goes with his new city Lego's!

Orien happy with his new Fire Truck set from Playmobil

With the holidays underway....a great time for all we have left on our first Eammon West Coast Road Trip!! hoping to post along the way....We left a couple days ago, have already visited Zion National Park in the snow, played in Las Vegas, toured Hoover Dam and are now headed to Big Sur!!!

Todd and Evan

Our last week of Math Enki is coming to an end! We have been enjoying a story names "Todd and Evan" about a Kings 2 sons who have grown old enough to begin to help in a battle on the kindoms land. The story goes over and over from Birth how to the sons are very different. Evan born first has always loved to play with lots of people, loves animals, and continues to make a group that all fit intogether! On the other hand Todd, the second son, born with red hair has been more of a leader..he likes to beout in front with others trailing behind! The idea Evan (even) and Todd (0dd) numbers! It was fun to recal this story for Cedar. Right away he was like "I am more like Evan, I like to include everyone and be a team," which is right on for Cedar play when were with friends!

                                                                          To make this concept ring true, Cedar follwed my led drawing of Evan showing a pair and Todd showing a single person...we used the 2 colors Todd with red for his red hair, and green for Evan (hey its the holidays!)

This is Cedars work the next day recalling Todd(red) and Evan (green) he quickly caught in between the odd nymbers and even and noticed the colors going side by side!

He wanted to do a little more so we did a dot odd/even. Again is was a simple transition for Cedar

 

Our snowflake cut outs from a Advent night!~

Yesterday the boys and I got the lights up...they were so excited!

Truthy showing off her first day with started dreadlocks!!!

locks begun

Cedars journal about ice skating over the weekend

Papas Advent Calendar

Jody began a tradition last year when he made his own advent calendar to count down the days until Christmas. He again has been planning a family activity to do each day or evening...here are a few we have done so far!

The kiddos made a wreath

The boys made cork boards!!!!

A sunday of ice skating and horse and carriage rides

The boys skating

Truth ice skated for a little bit before being over it!!

The have also made bath salts, lotion bars, and candles!

The 3 littles by the fire before ice skating!

This holiday season keeps the kids excited for the next family day to come! Besides these they have docorated the house with cut out snowflakes, made collages, made personal place mats, strung the christmas lights!!!!

Our 4th Block Math!

So I couldn't help but post some pics of the kiddos during our last couple weeks of schooling! We have been having fun with our digits..and then moved on the the Miss Many More. We continued with the story making our first number chart. Cedar finished with 0-100 on his chart. he loved writing the numbers but liked counting berried even more!!!

WE decided to count blueberries all the different ways Miss Many More counted her fruits for her pies...1-10, 2, 4, 6, 8...3,6,9,12,.....10,20,30,...and 5,10,15

by the time we counted enough berries to fill the pie pan we had counted 450 in many ways. 

 The pie before the toppings were added....

Orien and Cedar love baking!!!

                                                              Happy kiddos eating pie before bed. By the end of the week Cedar had prepared his pie, packed his bags and we heading to his first sleepover at his friend Benjamin's house. Only seems right his first sleepover would be with his oldest friend!

The is Cedars journal about sleeping over with Benjamin. They slept on the bottom and Annalise, Ben's sister, slept on top!!! He had a blast and keeps asking when we can do this again!!

 Our next week with Enki Math was a story called " A Contest for the Crown" a great story that lightly played with greater/less than..

Cedars led drawing from the story. You can see the "greater true King" was able to open the magic box to retrieve the box. The false king on the other side of the box we left trying to open it. Cedar added horese and the King in the castle as well.

After we worked with the drawing we got out a greater/less than piece and talked about the 2 kids. Cedar quickly caught on which way the symbol should be facing...He still caught on when I asked him things like what if I said Mean, selfish he quickly switched to show the false king would have been greater in those.
We also played a game throughout the week with a cardboard symbol and I would lay out 2 things from "which stuffed animal is more red, to which set of dominoes has more dots, which sibling is oldest, tallest...he loves games!

We ended that week with numbers and again he knew right away which way to write the symbols.

a great week it has been. We are ready for our last week of Enki Math before taking a break for holidays and travels.

wonderings

I keep wondering how to fill in the gaps. To write the did's and didn't of our daily lives...to blog daily, weekly...to try to capture the families every move, breath, or to take a deep breath and catch the moments that are like Fire...Like the little voice in the room right now " humming, singing about where to jump.....saying Mama....I can do it" these are the moments that keep me breathing in that rhythmic, crazy, breath of life.

I could say another week has passed. I could talk about the "contest for the Crown....." story that Cedar and I enjoyed drawing, chatting, playing with all week, how he grasped so smoothly the concept of greater/less than...
 I could tell of the cold that caught Cedar by surprise and held him to sleep during a rest time( which is all too rare). ..Or how Orien eats up the cheerleader pieces of life....who needs endless encouragement, a strong voice that leads and then he BLOOMS..like today when he ice skated all by himself with a smile I couldn't capture.,but can see right now when I envision him on the smooth ice. Or the endless "is cedar going to do that? Is cedar wearing that? Is Cedar ???" that is true love. To follow one like he can never do wrong,,,how does that feel????

I could try to grab the silly Mama in Truthy who dresses, undresses, giggles, talks to, feeds, bottle fills, her babies every move. She sleeps like she is a mother of a new born....rarely! She chatters, insists on being heard, wants to be a BIG sister, but in the end still cuddles up with her bottle of milk and her Mama.

 Or the sadness that fills my heart when a friend travels a far leaving an empty place in my son and our families heart,  knowing that all return at the right time, the ribbon Cedar earned at his last climbing class adding "right Mom it doesn't matter how many points you get it's just for fun".....or the time this week Cedar insisted on buying and wrapping a buddies Christmas gift, and the joy when he watched him open it!!!!!  The grin he gave and received from a friend during his music recital that said love so simply.... or the goal from across the indoor gym at the last soccer game of the season.  Oriens words after a family art project, " Cedar you did a good job," How I joined cross fit, how Jody finished the insulation in the mudroom....

And so I still hope to share more often...but if I can't I am ever so thankful to live this life daily.

back in the swing of things

It feels great to have taken a mini Thanksgiving break from school and activities BUT we were ready to find our rhythm again on Monday! The kids were ready for some play, movement, and morning lessons. We have started our 4th block a short Math block full of great stories and the lessons of digits, doubling, tripling, greater/less and odd/even. I am so thankful for kids excited with life!

Here is Truthy trying out her water colors. She prefers to use 2 brushes!We were working with red and yellow!

The boys love wet on wet water coloring. Orien tends to like the wet never brushing off the paint brush between water and color. Cedar is slow and patient always starting with an idea and ending with simple color!

A friend introduced us to this simple holiday craft! Perfect for a cold day with negative wind cills. We wandered out land and found these pinecones. Then made an assembly line: Orien picking the pinecone, I hotgluing the spot and Cedar pressing the pinecones. The boys enjoyed it so much we made two. Cedar loves crafts and other ideas would be helpful!!

We started the week with "The Story of the Sun Dance" a native story easily used for a nice re-intriduction to the numbers we worked with during our first math block. We did a led drawing Cedars is the top and mine the one below. We chose to draw the lodge, scarface by the fire and the 4 animals that helped him on his journey as well as the big dipper.

This is my drawing from the story

After drawing we played a simple digits game. Cedar picks on card from each pile and then has to tell me the name of that number combination. He loves games, and numbers, does well unless it is a teen number.

We then read the story "Miss Many More" about a girl who wanted to bake a pie. Her father told her make a pie put of strawberries but she soon decided counting strawberries 1, 2, 3, 4 to 100 would take too long. She decided cherries in the yard would be easier 2, 4, 6, 8...but then got bored of that as well and went looking for something sweet in the garder. Man more decided that sweet green peas would be great 3, 6, 9, 12, etc...but after baking such a pis she found it disgusting and wanted to try again. She headed back outside and noticed grapes and liked the bunches 10, 20, 30 and came in and again baked a pie that didn;t turn out. Finally her father asked her to go to the pond and pick the fruit out there blueberries 5, 10 ,15, 20 and she baked a great pie. This above picture is Cedars from the story

Here is my led drawing from the story...tomorrow well experiment with different ways of counting blueberries and hopefully end with a great pie!

Today was our first woods day. We meet with the usual crew in 40 degrees and 40MPH winds and played on the ice at our favirite place, goose island. I love hos kids are so adaptible. The never once complained about the winds but boot scated and crashed for hours!

Cedar and Orien cruising across the ice on Lake Estes

We also finished up our Nevember poem by Elsa Beskow with a led water color painting mine on top Cedars on bottom

NOVEMBER

"Grey is November,

cold as cold

Stormy November,

wind and rain.

No snow.

No ice.

No glittering sun.

Grey is November,

except

by the bright fire

with a story,

a cushion for the cat,

the dark shut  outside

and

the light in the flames

where mysteries lie

and

we dream"

Cedar has also been busy with a boys knitting class. He is making his own hand mitties, here he is knitting during rest time.

I am so thankful for full days, wamr nights and happy kiddos. Welcome to December!

my family

My family. This summer.

The True name of the King

"The true name of the King must endure from Birth to Death"

"Watch my child, the path of heart, For Darkest night will soon depart.

Then sparkling sun will touch his wand As red and gold fill path and pond."

AH

"We are busy little fellows, Working way deep, down below,

Crystals, jewels, gold and stone,

We tend with care our earthly home"

O

"I am a stream so swift and clear, As down the rocky rapids steep.

I sing my song for all to hear, Watch the gleaming tears I weep."

E

"Bloom and root, Root and Bloom. Bright and True. But gone so soon"

U

"Then with all is might and main. The blaze rose high in raging flame. It rages and blazed until the day, and then the flames did fade away"

A

""with Royal cloak I stand on high.

And raise my spear to pierce the sky

The Answer does within us lie

The True name of the King is, I"

I

Cedar and I have been finishing up our third block of Enki. We took a break from consonants to enjoy a story all about the true sounds of vowel letters. It was a nice change of pace. We read a 5 part story, stopped daily to re-call and water color paint about the story and the letter came out in the name! A fun way to introduce vowels!