Advent Day Two

Advent Chain Day Two: make Christmas gifts for great-grandpa and great-grandma Young.

A week ago I took the kids to Michaels to pick out a "homemade" present for the great-grandparents as a thank you gift for having such a great Christmas party every year and inviting us! They used to sort of have to invite us because they didn't have all that many great-grandkids, but now they a whole slew of them so we're less important overall. But, they still invite us!!

Maybe it is because I take fudge and homemade chocolates.

Maybe it is because of Eli. Great-Grandma loves babies.

Just playing--they love all of us and we love going to their Christmas party.

And my children love making them a present.

This year Cowen picked out a nutcracker to paint, Miriam picked out a bobble-head Mr. and Mrs. Claus to paint, and Emeline picked an assortment of ceramic figures to paint. Eli painted a piece of paper. I'm cheap like that.

We'll wrap them tomorrow.

My favorite gift the children are giving: singing "I Want a Hippo for Christmas." They sound so AWESOME.

We made another craft today. A porcupine fish. It was a lot of fun. If I forget to mention it sometimes, let me state it here for the record: I love homeschooling.

We interrupt the fish (because blogger still baffles me) to bring you a picture of a bird using the bird feeder Timothy made with the kids for a homeschool project. We are all SO EXCITED that the birds have found it and we can watch them out the window.

Back to fish making. Eli is a pain. But, that's okay. In order to help the other children, I sometimes have to leave him to his own devices. This time he took out all the crayons and piled them neatly on a paper plate. I can handle that.

My fish. I'm very proud of it. That is pretty much the greatest work of art I've ever created. You know, without food.

I told him to smile for the camera.

And for all you people who like the name Adelaide--get over it. I already VETOED the name (although I do really like it, and as Kammers pointed out--maybe I'll change my mind when I see the baby). In the meantime I asked for SUGGESTIONS.

Here's what has already been vetoed by Timothy:
Harriet
Finley
Harper
Georgia
Clare
Nell
Adele
Anabel
Bernice
Juliet
Jane
Charlotte
Ada
Faith.

If you can think of any other old fashioned names that we might like, I would love to hear them. I've been spending way too much time on name generator sites lately without seeing anything new that I liked to add to my list or run by Timothy. Maybe you have an ancestor with an especially pretty/intelligent name?

I hate not having a name picked out. It keeps me up all night.

So does blogging.

Good night!

And merry Christmas!