the first six days of Christmas....

I promise I have a couple of more thoughtful posts brewing that consist of more than just pictures of my kids....but my plate is very full right now until Christmas season is behind us, so please indulge me...besides, we are doing so many cool things!


First we thought we'd start the season off with a nice head injury. No one really knows how Jack got this. He and Kain were playing in a room together, literally for just a minute as I had just gone to the laundry room to reboot things in there, and I came back to find Jack on the floor beside Kain's bed, bleeding like mad. Kain says he didn't see it happen but that Jack wasn't on the bed. I think he must have fallen against the corner of the bedframe. He probably should have had stitches. It was a pretty good gash. But I couldn't bear the thought of taking him to the ER and having him held down for all that trauma, so I decided to chance a scar. At least it will be pretty well covered with hair. Well, until his hairline starts to go the way of his daddy's of course. John was at work, so Maria helped me fix it up with superglue and steristrips (yeah, really. what do you think they use in the ER? :)). This was the first bandage, the bleeding did finally stop and it looks nice and clean now.


For the Feast of the Holy Innocents, we read a Medieval legend called "The Dough and the Child" in the book, "Hark! A Christmas Sampler". In this legend, the baby Jesus is hidden when Herod's soldiers come to the door in a bowl of bread dough. So...we made bread!


It was very yummy while it lasted. It didn't slice well though, these braided loaves, but just kind of came apart in chunks.


We also read "Country Angel Christmas" by Tomie de Paola and tried to make glitter stars on wax paper as per this unit study, but they wouldn't turn out. The glue kept kind of shrinking away on the wax paper and the star shapes wouldn't stay. We eventually gave up, but if anyone has a solution... This book, though, is just *precious*, and a really sweet way to tie the whole St. Nicholas/Santa Claus thing together. It doesn't tell the story of St. Nicholas, but Santa Claus is called St. Nicholas throughout the book. It's also short...some of the books in this study have been much longer. Since Kain is Adderall free this week (long story), I was glad for a short one.


And here's a couple of New Year's Eve images from last night. John was off...a rarity, he's *always* worked New Year's. So after the boys were in bed we broke out some goodies and sparkling juice and watched that ole ball drop. I barely made it. By 11:30 I was falling over tired. But make it I did, and at midnight (which was actually an hour *after* the NYC ball dropped since we are on central time), we stepped out into the below freezing weather to annoy the neighbors with horns and confetti for a few minutes before finally going to bed.


Today is a holy day, the Solemnity of the Blessed Mother, so I am off to dress kids for mass. Merry Christmas! It ain't over yet people!