Posts Tagged ‘holidays’

We are so blessed to have such great homeschooling friends to get together with!  This Valentines Day, Stacy invited the Mashburn family and our family over for a party.  I have very fond memories as a child making my Valentine Box and picking out little cards and treats to carry to school.  Just because you homeschool doesn’t mean you have to miss out!  These are a few of our homemade creations…

After we swapped our valentines with our kids at home, we headed out to the Witcher’s house.  The kids jumped right in and started playing with all their friends, they had a lot of catching up to do, and so did the mommas!  It was sweet having two little babies there.  Stella has a new little friend, Felicity, who is just a few weeks younger.  I’m sure they will be great friends one day!  After a wonderful lunch, we passed out our goodies and Valentines.  Next year I’m going to be smart like Stacy and only fill in the FROM: and not the TO: ! It took me forever to “deliver”  all the Valentines!!!!  It didn’t help that we only have 2 readers in our family!

Happy Valentines Day 2014!

Valentines Day is a fun time to show your kids just how loved they are!  We always get them a little box of candy and a small “lovie”.  This year we added a card for each child in which we both wrote them a letter.  These letter’s, believe it or not, were our big kids favorite thing!  Kids love to hear you say how precious they are to you.  In a family, big or small, we need to take time to let them know every day just how important they are to us and how much they are loved!  A good rule of thumb is to praise them 10x more than you correct.  Some days this is harder to do than others, be diligent!  You may have to praise something that seems so small, but in the end you will have the heart of the child and they will smile ear to ear for that “little thing” you noticed!

 Cupcakes for breakfast isn’t such a bad idea either!

Valentines Day is all about LOVE and when our family thinks about “love”  we think about Jesus!  What better way to show the world where our heart is on Valentines Day than making and wearing our John 3:16 shirts!  The kids had a ball painting their hands and deciding how they wanted to make their heart shirts.

The little ones did a more simplified version.

Clara just did her feet.  She wouldn’t open her fist for me to paint her little hands!!!

I think they turned out really well!  We received lots of compliments on Valentines Day!

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.  John 3:16

One of our family traditions is to make Christmas candy and deliver it to neighbors and family.  My mom and I have done this as far back as I can remember and since we now have little girls, they join in on the fun!  We start the adventure by checking our the sales at the stores to get the best deals on the ingredients we need.  Mom watches the kids and me and Don go gather all the supplies.

Grady has always been our little “sweets” lover!

We used to make the candy at moms house, but logistically with all the kids now it works better to do the cooking at our house.  We have been gathering at our house for the last few years and its much easier on the kids having their stuff to occupy them.

We spend 8 to 10 hours one day, just baking!  When you make over 75 pounds of candy, it takes a while!  Jo Anna was a big helper this year, and the boys were our candy samplers.  By the end of the day we are exhausted, and sick of candy, but the smiles on faces makes it all worthwhile!

Stella even had to help a little!

If all these pictures make you hungry, and you have already broke your New years resolution to loose weight, check back over the next few days for a few of our Christmas Candy favorite recipes!

White Fudge

Peanut Butter Balls

5 Layer Bars

We have never had a real Christmas tree before. We have always been saving the real tree for the first year in our new home.  Needless to say, us adults were just as excited as the little ones!  I think our next yard sale will probably have an artificial pre-lit Christmas tree in it!  We bought our tree the night before the big ice and thought we would spend the next day shut in, making ornaments and decorating the tree.

The kids were very excited  when daddy brought in the tree.  Lee likes to take every opportunity he can to use his knife, so he helped his daddy cut off the plastic while the other kids hauled water to give our thirsty tree a drink.

The next day I made a big pot of stew and we started working on ornaments.  We thought it would be fun this year to make our own ornaments and I really didn’t want to try to  find ours in storage!  A few weeks before I bought several packs at Hobby Lobby 40% off and we also made up a few on our own (the snowflakes and angels).

We had already made several ornaments in the weeks before but they really got in a hurry while they were looking at an empty tree!  The kids really had a great time with all the glitter, glue and stickers!  I sure hope they did anyway, I think it took 4 sweepings and 2 moppings and there is still a sparkle of glitter that catches the eye every now and then!

We made the angels out of paper plates.  We cut them in half, made a cone shape out of one side and stapled the other side to the back for the wings.  We punched a hole in the top and added a string for a hanger and the kids glittered them up.  They thought the angels needed heads, so I dug our some cotton balls and they glued them on.

I tried to stay as hands off as possible this year!  I wanted this to be their tree.  In the past I have always been such a perfectionist and shamefully didn’t let them help too much!  Lee helped me string the lights and then I tried explaining to them how you wanted to spread out your colors and try to make a pattern of sorts, then I just put hooks on and let them go. They really did a beautiful job and were very proud of their work.  Momma is very proud too!