December Activities - Yoga, Crafts, and Drumming

A day of fun activities with our homeschool group. We started with holiday yoga, then went on to craft classes - mixed up snowmen for Ben and a snowman pot for Julia, and then finished with our first drum circle!

downward facing dog

sequins, glitter, and glue galore!

a sugar plum snowman!

Christmas Fun - GIngerbread Houses in NH

Gingerbread house making has been a fun Christmas tradition for me for quite while. When I was younger there was very specific graham cracker engineering involved and spirited competition to design the most original, most colorful or most outlandish creations.

This year we took our Gingerbread house building north to Portsmouth, NH to share it with Andrew's cousin Sarah and her family, Bettye, Jeff, Helki, Annabel and Finley. Upon arriving in Portsmouth we decided to stop and get a little inspiration from a local gingerbread house contest that was on display. And we were amazed by some of the creations!

a particular favorite!

Our next stop was our hotel where we were greeted with a very welcome hot chocolate bar! And we found the indoor pool!

And then... gingerbread houses and t-shirt decorating with the cousins!

Finley's creation - voted "Most marshmallow" by the kids

Julia's - voted "Most Frosting"

Ben's - voted "Most Candy Covered"

there was lots of this going on!

Christmas Fun - LaSalette

Our yearly tradition of dinner at Bliss Dairy (really just for the ice cream!) and lights at LaSalette with Merrill and Alex continued on a not too chilly evening in early December. There were lots of additions to the lights this year and a couple of noticeable changes in our group activities as well.

First, Alex and Julia! read us the Christmas story out loud together. And Ben insisted that next year he will be joining them! And for the first time, we did not go on the carousel. Not sure why, but none of kids asked to do it and the parents weren't clamoring at the opportunity to wait in line or spend longer in the cold so it was skipped.

But we enjoyed lots of lights and laughs!

Christmas Fun - Tree Decorating

The annual tree decorating at Grandpa Rick and Grandma Les' house kicked off our Christmas season this year!

Julia's year for topping the tree with the star

she could reach!

Benj added the angel

he wasn't so sure about the ladder

the highlight of the night - Grandpa's Ugly Christmas Sweater!