Her books

Happy 12 years

Dinner date at Bern's famous steakhouse to celebrate 12 years with this handsome guy!

It is the largest privately owned wine collection in the entire world!  

There is also a completely separate dessert room where you sit in handcrafted barrels/rooms.

Christmas Morning 2018

I might, possibly, have more pictures to upload from my camera still.

Christmas Eve 2018

Pictures from our annual candle light service and ornament opening in pjs.

Merry Christmas Eve everyone!

Mary Poppins Returns

Oh man this movie was pure magic!  The kids and I have been working our way through the books (did you know there are 8 of them!?)  And we all agree that Emily Blunt makes a better and more true-to-the-character rendition of Mary Poppins than the original.  We still love the original but that didn't detract from all of the wonderfulness of this flick.  WE will be adding it to our library asap.

Crafts & Gifts

This year the kids opted to make gifts for each other all on their own.  

Brielle made an Eye-Spy game for Allie and a game for Mathias.

Allie made an Eye-Spy game for Brielle and sewed a bible case for Mathias.

Mathias made fairy lights for the girls.

We also made our dried orange garland and it went beautifully over our door frame.

Grandpa Dale however managed to exceed our expectations and create works of art and now family heirlooms for each kid.

Allie got a jewelry box per request

Brielle got little wooden people (our family)

Mathias received the most amazing chess set completely made from scratch, each square hand cut and the drawers all felt lined.

Old Lutz School 2018

Continued our tradition by visiting the Old School down the road for their annual Christmas display.  It's simply amazing to see all of the set up and imagining how much work goes into it all.

Soft ginger cookies

*Le Sigh*  My phone has been uploading all of my pictures out of order for some reason and it's bee such a pain to try and fix all of them b/c of how far behind on the blog I am.  So here are the pictures (not in order) of Allie making some delicious soft ginger cookies for the holidays.  Brielle helped- a little bit- in the beginning too.

Flying Squirrels

We rescued 2 baby flying squirrels from the sidewalk.  We left them alone all day to see if they would go anywhere and when it was starting to get dark and very chilly we scooped them into a bucket and put them by a space heater.  Later tonight we put them back under the tree we found them near in a warm box and by morning they were gone.

Luminaries 2018

We had a fabulous time at this year's annual neighborhood luminary event.  We met a ton of homeschool families and tried a bunch of yummy food.

Tree Trimmers

Today we watched the tree trimmers tidy up all of our surrounding trees.  The kids loved watching the huge machines lift the fearless men into the air to reach the tallest branches.

Christmas show 2018

This year we attended the annual Idlewild Christmas production.  It was so fun and my mom and sisters were able to join us after a day of hanging out around the house together.

We got all dressed up and donned our new African clothes (Christmas gifts from my mom) 

Cookies & Cocoa

Hot chocolate and cookies for read- aloud this morning at school.