For Unto Us a Child is Born

Merry Christmas from School 4 Princesses!

I have to share a few quick photos.  DH's brother stopped by our house on his way into town from St. Louis.  He brought his dog, Rocky.  The girls just love him!

We have a Santa hat that is traditionally worn by the person who gets to distribute the gifts.  However, when it was time for Princess L to put it on, she couldn't find it.  So she decided to put a Christmas stocking on her head instead.  Isn't she sweet?!

After receiving her gift from her sister (a felt poster with markers from Dollar Tree) Princess M felt the need to give her sister a very sporadic hug.  Since it doesn't happen often, it needed to be captured on film.

I couldn't decide which shot was better for the official shot of the kids all dressed up, so here are the best two.  I'll let you decide for yourself.

May the LORD bless you and your family this Christmas. 

TOG Year 4 Week 22

Princess E - 6th Grade - Dialectic
Latin for Children Primer A: Finish lesson 24
Math-U-See Delta: Finished the book and took Lesson 30 test, Unit 4 test and final book test.  So now she will get one week off before starting in on Epsilon.
IEW: We did not finish this week, but we are working on our final drafts for lesson 8.
Foundations 1:  Suffix -HOOD
MCT Language Arts:  We will continue to work on The Music of the Hemispheres book next week.
Practice Island: Sentence 35-38
McCrabbs: 36-40
Science:  Our Planet Earth.  We took a week off as Dad came home from work early on our science day.
TOG Yr4 Wk22: Timeline; SAPs; AQ/TQs; Reading - My Side of the Mountain, 10,000 Days of Thunder, A Dream of Freedom, Mao Zedong's China, Idiot's Guide, Jim Elliot.  Read Aloud - The Story of the World, Volume 4; So Far From the Bamboo Grove.

Princess S - 4th Grade - UG
Growing With Grammar 4: Chapter 4 review to Chapter 5.2
Math-U-See Gamma: Finish Lesson 29 and start lesson 30.
IEW, MCT Language Arts, McCrabbs and Science: same as above
TOG Yr4 Wk22: Quizlet vocab; important people; SAPs; Reading - All the People, The Cold War, Martin Luther King Jr, Nate Saint; The Hardy Boys - The Tower Treasure.  Read Aloud - same as above.

Princess L - K - LG
MFW First Grade: Lessons 34-39.
Math-U-See Primer:  We have a Primer graduate!  We finished this up this week.  I'm a little disgruntled that she is still writing numbers backwards on occasion, but guess it is normal.

She will get one week off and then we will start in on Alpha.  There are some chapters that she is going to fly through.  There are some others we will camp out on.  But I'm determined this time through that she will not move on to the next lesson until she really does have the facts down.  I think I moved her sisters on a little two quickly with a few chapters.


Princess M - PreTOGger
We're going to have a montage of what has kept this little one busy for the last few weeks.  First, it's taken me a while to post these.  Princess L brought a black permanent marker into Princess M's room one day, unbeknownst to me.  So when I put her down for her nap, the marker was on her bed.  This is what happens in my house when girls find markers.

Now, the border that's missing - that was done a long time ago.  She started ripping away at that when she was still in her crib.  But we had decided that once she was old enough to stop doing that, we would simply get a wider border to put over the top.  This presented  new challenge to that idea.  When my other princesses have done things like this in the past, I have never had the wherewithall to remember to snap a picture.  This time I did.  And right after snapping the photo I spent an hour scrubbing it all off with a Magic Eraser.  It took all the marker off the wall paper, but it still remains on the torn border areas.

On any given day, you may find Princess M dressed in one of her many costumes and putting on a show.  Like this.

The show of choice these days is the song that she sang for her Sunday School Christmas program.  Here are the words:

Glory Glory Angels Sang  -  On the night when Jesus came
He smiled sweetly on that day  -  Baby Jesus in the hay
Glory to God,  Glory to God, Glory to God
And peace to man on earth

And I finally got it on camera.

Merry CHRISTmas 2010

Every year I take the princesses to get Christmas photos taken to give to the Grandparents and relatives.  Here's a slideshow of the best ones.

2010 Calendar Photos

Every year I make a small photo calendar for our relatives.  I thought I'd post the photos here.  And lest you think I don't notice, I do realize there are only nine photos in the slideshow.  I am using three photos that have already been posted.  (Yep - this one's for you, Pam.)

CHRISTmas Traditions

Everyone usually has their own unique CHRISTmas traditions. We do too. Here are two of them.

When I was a kid, my family of four did something that, to us, was very special. Maybe it was so special because we only did it on CHRISTmas Eve. We had fondue! My brother and I used to think we were actually "cooking" our own food. We had shrimp and steak. The side dish was beef flavored Rice-A-Roni (which we didn't have any other time of the year either.) Mom would heat the oil on the stove and when it was hot she'd pour it into the pot with the sterno can under it. We each had our own skewer. I also remember she had these tiny salt and pepper shakers that she put by our plates so we each had our own. My parents usually had a glass of wine and Brother and I had sparkling grape juice. Then we'd open our one CHRISTmas Eve gift (usually a new outfit to wear to church that evening.) It's a wonderful memory.

We still try to do the fondue with my brother's family - though we don't do it on CHRISTmas Eve, but near it. We now have two pots, because there are between 9 and 11 people now. And we each use two skewers so we can cook faster. (Maybe that's why the oil cools down so fast.) Here's a photo of this year's gathering.

One year for CHRISTmas, my Aunt and Uncle sent my family an electric ice cream maker. Mom must have known we were getting it because she just happened to have the ingredients ready and on CHRISTmas Day we made homemade ice cream. We did that for many years. I told my college roommate about it and for my graduation, December of 1994, she got me an electric ice cream maker. We made it a few times when the older princesses were real little. But we've been unable to for the last three years. So it was a lot of fun making it again. We decided to make Cookies and Cream, but the Oreos were a bit too crushed, and the ice cream turned out quite chocolatey.

It was fun to do once again.

I hope everyone had a safe and wonderful CHRISTmas.