Ever so Clever:: December 2010

A Spontaneous Trip to the Field Museum

Welcome to the Field Museum! Hope your brain doesn't turn to mush from looking at all the wonderful exhibits here! This place is amazing!

First stop: be greeted by Sue, The T Rex. Isn't she a beauty?

Of course posing in front of Sue is an absolute must. Even I get my picture taken! (by the way, I'm wearing my very lovely Christmas gift from Mark- the turquoise head wrap. It's lovely and warm and he got it from an etsy shop. Love etsy!)

I think those ladies in the back are whispering and wondering where I got my pretty and warm head wrap. LOL!

Then, be happily surprised to see your cousins! Hooray for cousins! (it wasn't actually a surprise to see them; we'd planned on doing this visit together. However, it's Happy Time Anytime the cousins get together.)

Next stop: Underground Adventure!

Gregory is reading the signs. The fourth sign is funny! It says, "Hold onto valuables and small children to ensure simultaneous shrinking."

Here we are....Beth, Henry, Mark & Ava, Gregory, Annika and Lily. Uncle Ray and (obviously) myself are MIA. Look at the size of that grub! Yikes! We'd better watch out!

The girls playing in an empty cicada shell (or so I think that's what that is).

Let me just say this: the lighting is HORRIBLE in the museum. It's nearly impossible to take great photos with my camera and abilities.

Read all about The Ancient Americas. Or...more likely....rush through them so that children don't become bored. Especially when the kids are tired and starting to get cranky. Make a mental note to hire a babysitter for a day and come back without children so that you can actually read all the signs. :-) (and then remember that you do have the attention span of a ten-year old and that you're actually not all that bothered by the picked up speed. Did I just say that? At least I'm honest!)

Lily, Annika, Mark and I split off from the others to visit The Hall of Gems, The Hall of Jade and other various mineral exhibits.

Annika in front of her favorite rock: Peridot! (it's her favorite because it's her birthstone.)

Lily and Annika enjoying the beautiful gems to be seen.

This is totally cool! Mark and I were discussing (on the nearly four-hour drive to the museum) about the meteorite that came pretty close to us- we saw a flash of light and heard a big boom. They have a tiny exhibit on the meteorite that landed in southwest Wisconsin.

Pretty cool!

Love turquoise (the color) & teal! Just had to take a photo of these lovely colored minerals.

One last look at Sue. The Magnificent Sue!

We are now Field Museum Members! Since our little weather hiccup (we'd bought tickets to see the museum on a previous date but the roads were impassable at that time) we learned that we could use the money we'd paid towards those tickets to an annual membership. Honestly, an annual family membership is an awesome deal- we paid $50 for the four of us to go once....but the membership was only $100 (an extra $50). So, just going twice in one year will have made this membership well worth the money. I'm sure we'll be back several times this year- we've just barely scratched the surface of this magnificent museum! Just don't freak out at the $19 per day parking price tag!

Gift Opening Competition. aka Christmas Day Morning!

After all the waiting...the letters to Santa....wishing....hoping....

Christmas Day Morning is finally here!!!!

Now, get this: the girls didn't get up until after 7:30am! Isn't that crazy and weird? We figured they'd be up by 5am at the latest.

After a nice, simple breakfast of eggs and toast the gift opening competition commenced!

Wow! Look at all those lovely gifts! Ava noticed that even Mocha (our yellow lab) got a gift.

Annika is modeling two of the no-sew fleece scarves I made for her. I made a pink one for Ava.

Ava was so excited to open this gift from her Tante Kirstin- she got a pretty necklace featuring her birthstone (amethyst). She's been wanting such a necklace "forever".

Tante Kirstin sent Annika a matching necklace. She even sent me a lovely necklace, too!

Isn't it lovely?

Now, the ONLY thing the girls actually requested from Santa this year were "zoo zoo" pets (zhu zhu is the correct spelling). Santa must have gotten those little hamsters several months ago as they're nearly impossible to find in the stores now!

And yes, the girls were SO excited to get those hamsters! Ava called her hamster Hiccup (have you watched "How to Train Your Dragon"? If you have then the name might make more sense to you). Annika called her hamster Mickey.

Ava's class made these lovely and very special ornaments as gifts to the parents.

One of the coolest gifts (I think anyway) the girls got from their Uroma, Uropa and Oma is this microscope:

SWEET!

Santa also brought the girls a maple syrup tree tapping & collecting kit. While it's not much fun right now I can't wait to try it out later this winter! We marked our maple trees for potential tapping this fall BEFORE the leaves fell. Good thing, too!

The girls got many lovely, wonderful gifts from their aunts, uncles, cousins, grandma, grandpa, Oma, Mommy and Daddy and Santa. Lots and lots of fun craft projects and science kits and other lovely gifts.....

And Scooby Doo DVDs!!!!!

So....this is what we did the rest of Christmas day.......

we watched Scooby Doo!!!! We {heart} Scooby Doo!

Mocha also got lots of treats....including this peanut butter filled stick. She LOVES it!

FYI- Mocha is a stick dog. She'll carry around giant logs or small sticks. But only sticks. Playing with balls isn't for her, thank-you-very-much. She'll play fetch the stick with you all day long but she just ignores any balls you might have to toss (even if you have an awesome ball flinger that flings the ball far, far away). Yes, that's our Mocha!

Mocha wants to say THANK YOU, Oma!!!!!

I hope you all had a Merry and Happy Christmas!

Decorating the Tree!

This Christmas Eve Day we changed things up!

The girls decorated the Tree all. by. themselves! Seriously!

(okay, Mark strung the lights and helped with hooks and placing ornaments up high)

I think they did an awesome job (even if it ornament heavy on one side)

Isn't it beautiful?

What? No smile, Ava?

What kept me so busy that I didn't help with dressing the Tree? I was making Christmas Caramel Popcorn...you can find the recipe HERE. I followed the recipe as is and it comes out perfect! I did add chopped almonds to the popped corn and added Christmas candy corn (I've not seen that before, have you? candy corn that is red, white and green.) after the caramel popcorn had cooled. These boxes of caramel corn were gifts for friends... I'm bummed that I didn't take a photo of them all prettied up with bows and tags. Oops.

I also made a cookie-in-a-jar gift- Cranberry Hootycreeks. Don't you just love that name???? We tested the cookies before making the gift (don't want to give a cookie that stinks!?!) and they are AWESOME! We were pleasantly surprised by how yummy these cookies turned out. And, as a bonus, they make a pretty cookie-in-a-jar gift.

Any guesses what Mark has caught?

It's a black-capped chickadee that had found its way into our garage and was frantically trying to get out. Mark quickly showed the girls and then quickly let it loose by our bird feeders.

I goofed up this year....I forgot to take photos of our tree-getting adventure! We always get a tree from our friends and neighbors who own Dutch Hollow Tree Farm. This year we found ourselves wading in knee-deep snow to find our perfect tree. I didn't feel like "running" back to the car to fetch the camera!

Also, I just wanted to mention that having the girls take over the tree decorating came as a strange relief to me. Every year I feel as if I take over the tree decorating business and that every ornament has to be in a perfect spot. Which ends up being not so much fun. So, I can now erase Christmas-tree-decorating-nazi from my resume!

Since we put up the tree on Christmas Eve day it will stay up for a few weeks into January. It'll certainly brighten our dark, dreary, gray days here at Bristling Acres!

Hope you have a bright and cheerful January 2011!

Christmas Concerts

I can't believe that 2010 is about out of breath!

I'll be posting lots of photos today (you've been warned! LOL!) to get you all caught up on our Holiday Adventures.

Christmas Concerts

As most of you know, Annika is in the Apprentice Singers in the Platteville Children's Choir. Every year they do a free concert at the Rollo Jamison Museum. This was our first visit to the museum.

We had no idea they had fun, zippy model trains to watch!

Annika is in the bottom row, wearing a cream-colored scarf.

It was a fun concert! It's fun to watch & listen to children who are actually interested in singing.

The part of the museum the concert was held in had examples of how families in the past might have decorated their living spaces for Christmas. We learned from the lecture before the concert that Christmas trees came to the USA via German immigrants. Their Victorian "Ice Cave" was quite interesting and unique.

And now we come to a different kind of concert...

The Elementary School Christmas Concert. The music teacher (this is her first year at this school) explained to us that all the songs she had chosen had to do with bells.

Annika's class (Multi-age: 2nd & 3rd graders)

The concert included grades Kindergarten through fifth grade. The children (for the most part) sang with lots of enthusiasm- even if they were off-key or off-beat. LOL!

Here, Annika's class played a song using Boom Whackers.

Annika is in the red dress with red pants. She didn't want to wear a dress and the only way I could talk her into wearing one is if she could wear it over her pants and shirt she was already wearing.