Fancy Pink Fairy Cocoa

Adrienne helps me out in Eli's school library every week & the Librarian gave her this cookbook as a way of saying thank you for helping. She actually helps me alphabetize & shelve the books and also puts some books away according to their reading level. It's giving her good practice with her numbers & letters. She is so proud of having her very own cookbook. It's called Fairies Cookbook.

She wanted to make something out of the cookbook so we chose the Fancy Pink Fairy Cocoa.

We opted to not make the pink part but did make the "fancy" part.

She got corn starch all over the place & all over her face.

The proud chef!

Our cocoa creation.

Petting zoo at...Church?

What's a visit to church with stopping off at the petting zoo? As part of the New Year's series at church they brought in animals that might be found in Israel. They kindly even provided hand sanitizer. For the adults, there was also an iron forger, a weaver & a man creating clay pots on a potter's wheel. This last week we got to sample dates & figs. Yum!




Adrienne, of course, does not care where the animals are from or why they are there, but just wanted to pet them all.

Notice the little jumper Adrienne is wearing. She picked out the pink kitty fabric for me to sew her a dress & helped me lay out the fabric. It's reversible & has an "A" embroidered on it, but we made sure it wasn't scarlet.

A few random days in January

Here are a few other things we did in January.

Adrienne playing balloon games at Jill's birthday party. She won a prize for keeping the balloon up in the air the longest. Way to go girl!

Ahhh, yummy cafeteria food. Adrienne and I always have lunch with Eli on Mondays and this particular Monday Tony was able to come and meet us. Eli was thrilled.

We recently read the book Snowflake Bentley about a man who spent his life photographing snowflakes. The kids wanted to see if we could capture a snowflake on film so there you are. Here are some others if you want to see the professional version.

http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/photos3/photos3.htm

Believe it or not I actually had a few tokens left from our visit to CEC in California so I decided to take the kids one morning so Tony could get some sleep. Crazy fun.

Does anyone know what this is? I think it's an elephant or a vacuum cleaner but it has to be one of the strangest kids rides.

What's a visit to CEC without a hug from the main mouse himself?

Eli's Baskeball Game

Eli was on the honor roll for school & received a free ticket to a MTSU basketball game. The rest of the family was able to go too, at a discounted rate. Even though it was after church that night, we went & had a good time & saw several people we knew. As a bonus MTSU even won !

My smiley guy.

Eli decided to take some photos of the family enjoying the game.

Then of course Adrienne wanted to take pictures too.

Adrienne's photo of Eli.

The Discovery Center

My monkeys up in the tree.

Showing off their climbing ability!

The world of the tiny object is so fascinating. Adrienne could have stayed here the whole time.

A nod to Uncle Dusty. Just imagine it says Ford instead of Nissan. :P

She really had fun replacing the muffler, changing the oil, trading out the license plates & rotating the tires. We may have a future mechanic on our hands.

This was one of Eli's favorites of the day. Using levers the kids can make the bowling ball travel up & down the course. They would try & see how fast they could make it through. It required teamwork & it was neat to see them figure out how they could best work together to make it happen.

Transportation galore : cars, trucks & trains

Bringing coal from the mines to the train.

Bass face

A short clip of Tony playing in one of the sanctuaries at church.

Tony got to play at church for the Christmas Eve services & also for the weekend services. (One bonus to having the week off.) It was fun to watch him play again as his work schedule hasn't allowed it for a little while now. On Saturday & Sunday he played with David Northrup, the drummer for Travis Tritt. David asked Tony where he played & Tony told him "Just here at church when I can." He was surprised & told Tony that he thought he was a good bassist. (He, David, actually brought it up more than once over the weekend.) It's nice to have someone who knows what they're talking about compliment you & I think it meant a lot to Tony. Plus Tony said it was fun to play with him. :)

Christmas Morning

Jingle, jingle, jingle. Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas!

Santa came to our house & dropped off a few things for the kids. When he left he woke up the kids with his jingle bells & his "Ho, ho, ho"-ing. They came downstairs cautiously & woke us up whispering, "Santa was here and there are things in our stockings!" Too cute. They got to open the Santa gifts right away. After breakfast we sang Happy Birthday to Jesus and then opened up the rest of our gifts.

Opening gifts.

Now I can read in the tub!

Eli bought us all gifts with his own money by himself at school & had fun handing them out. He bought Adrienne a toy car in purple (because there were no pink ones), Tony got a tape measure & I got a very pretty necklace.

The kids with their loot.

Trying out their new skates. Makes me want to get some of my own!

Christmas Eve

The kids put together their plate for Santa & the reindeer.

Don't they look tired & ready to go to bed?

I'm too excited to sleep!!!

Cookies for Santa

Our neighbor Tracey had the kids come over to decorate cookies for Santa.




Adrienne enjoyed using every color of frosting & sprinkles.


Eli was very specific about what he wanted on his cookies & he placed each chocolate chip with care.

I had to post a photo of Gracie & her cookies.

As you can see, she loves sprinkles. I think she emptied at least three bottles on her cookies!