A Krohn Christmas

Here is a quick summary of our month of activities!

At the top, you will see that we have learned to celebrate New Orleans style. We arranged to have Santa come visit at our clubhouse and then we had a Christmas parade. We rode in a trailer right behind Santa. Audrey loved it! She was so excited that Santa was so close to her. During the parade we threw candy and, of course, beads.

Jack's Elf of the Shelf, brought activities and treats for the kids everyday. One day, the kids got a foam gingerbread house. Jack had a lot of fun putting it together, and it was much less messy that the standard gingerbread house. Although we did get a real gingerbread train from the homeschool group, so we did have some real mess in the house. Oh, and I made the shirt Jack is wearing.

The kids and Bryan all dressed up for Christmas Eve service. I went too, but someone had to take the picture!

The kids hanging their stockings Christmas Eve. They are wearing jammy pants that I made.

Audrey got baby dolls and a stroller for Christmas. She just loves taking care of her babies!

Crafting Catch Up

Even though I have been MIA in blogland, I have been busy. I made most of the gifts this year. It has been a lot of fun just seeing what I can actually do. If you want more information, just click on the craft name and it'll take you to the site where I got my ideas. Most of my projects are a little altered, but definitely come from the named source.

I made a walker bag for Bryan's grandmother. It is really sturdy because I made it with an upholstery fabric backed with blackout fabric. There is a large pocket in the middle. The front has two small pockets, and the back has three small pockets (the blue fabric). The four straps attach with buttons.

I made tea towels for my inlaws. I found a basic waffle weave fabric for the body and pretty fabrics for the bottom. I also cut out one of the snowmen and fabric glued it to the towels. I would like to make coordinating wash cloths but my time is kind of limited.

I made a monogram taggie for Bryan's friend's new baby, Alexa.

I have also made some fabric coasters for other people. I have pictures of these in an older post. There are also two other projects that I still can't post because, well, the gifts are still sitting in my house.

Praise The Lord!

First of all, it's been a busy week so I have quite a bit of updating to do. And I still haven't started on my Christmas presents yet! I won't be posting them until after Christmas though, because that would kind of ruin the surprise for everyone :o)

More importantly, my mom called me yesterday to give me the results of my step father's scans. I guess you can tell from the title of the post, that they were good! Let me first say, that the doctors were not expecting to see any progress. Their goal was to just keep the cancer from spreading. But God works in powerful ways, thank you everyone who has kept my family in your prayers. Joe has a 25% reduction in the tumor (he only has one) AND a 25% reduction in almost all of the polyps (these are in both lungs, which is why he is considered stage 4). If they do not see a change in those same polyps next time, they will try an oral chemo that has been effective with breast cancer. Also, the chemo that he is on is very aggressive and is known to have many serious side effects--none of which Joe is having! So, they normally do not allow people to take more than 6 doses of this chemo. If Joe continues to do well, they will allow him to have 8 treatments with this chemo. After that, I am not sure what the options are, but he has only had 4 treatments so far, so we still have 4 more treatments left to go (they are spaced out every 3 weeks).

Once again, thank you for all of your prayers! I will try and update more stuff about us in the deep south soon.

Zoo Field Trip

Audrey and Anna

Jack and Michael

Yesterday, we went on a field trip to the Audubon Zoo. It is one of the nicest (in my opinion) zoos that we have ever been to; plus we are members so every trip to either here or the aquarium is "free."

The focus of the field trip was the dinosaur exhibit. They have "life size" animatronic dinos that move, make noises, and one even spits. The kids loved it! Jack was in constant motion and the sun was really bright, so I didn't get any really good photos of the kids with the dinos.

After we viewed the exhibit with the group, the kids and I explored the zoo with our new friends Sarah (mom), Michael, and Anna. Michael is about 6 months younger than Jack, so they get along great. The pictures at the top of the post are the kids digging for Mayan ruins. They loved it so much that we had a hard time getting them to leave. It is basically a huge sandbox with huge"artifacts" hidden in it. There is a picture posted, showing what artifacts are hidden, so it's a neat activity for the kids to unearth part of the artifact and try to figure out which one they found. (The items are so big that it would take a very long time to unearth the whole thing.)

Cookie Week

The kids and I started making Christmas cookies today. I was inspired by the Pioneer Woman's cookie week, to try some new recipes. And of course, I took the opportunity to tie the cookies in with Jack's Elf on the Shelf/ Advent activity. So this morning, he found Tan holding the advent ornament and a piece of paper awarding him with the honor of baking cookies with mom today. Once again, he was sooo excited.

We started our day super early, and had to be at the doctor's at 8:30 for my monthly checkup and glucose tolerance test. Oh, and surprise of the week--I only gained 2 lbs last month! I feel huge, I guess the weight just redistributed itself. I don't think I'm going to get away with that again, especially if this cookie business persists!

When we came home, we played a little, had lunch and Audie took a nap and Jack and I did school. After his lessons, we started on the cookies. He learned how to juice a lemon and to separate eggs, plus his normal job of dumping stuff into the mixer. Of course, he only lasted for one batch of cookies, coming back just to "clean up."

Funny how Audrey's senses work, because she woke up just in time to help with clean up too!

By the end of the day (9 pm), I made three batches of cookies AND cleaned up the kitchen. I really wish I had a self-cleaning kitchen. All of the cookies are really good and I recommend all three recipes. Even my non-sweets obsessed husband is finding them irresistable. Click on the name of the cookie to link to the recipe if you are interested: Christmas Cherries, Molasses Cookies, and Chocolate Peppermint Crinkle Cookies!

Wombsday Wednesday 27 weeks

Wombsday #2. Goodness, I feel like I swallowed the entire Thanksgiving turkey! How did this happen? Nothing much new since the last post, except my varicose veins are horrible. It hurts to walk if I don't wear my medical support hose. I think I need to buy at least one more pair! Little Ayden is 27 weeks along. That means we have 13 to go! We have an appointment tomorrow, so I will update with the wonderful stats later.

Since that is such a lovely picture, I'd rather leave you with happy thoughts, so here are my other two lovelies, doing what they do best-- reading books together. (They are almost always side by side, and have books in hand more often than toys.)

Advent Tree/ Elf on the Shelf

This is my version of a procrastinator's dream. I have spent so much time looking at everyone else's amazing advent calenders, that I didn't take the time to commit to a actually make one. I woke up this morning with a great idea-- Tan (our elf on the shelf) would bring and "ornament" and small gift for the kids every morning. . . as long as he was able to give Santa a good report! Here you see where Tan chose his first spot, along with a tree and the first ornament. (The ornament is just a part of a Christmas card from last year.) And the gift that he brought the kids? . . . a small pack of Toy Story 2 stickers. I bought about 12 gifts that all cost around 50 cents. I will intersperse little certificates with things like "make cookies with mom" and "watch a movie." Jack was (and still is) sooo excited about Tan's arrival this morning. He has been singing to Tan and talking to him nonstop. Oh, and Jack made breakfast for the three of us this morning. (He planned to do this last night.) He put on his apron and chef's hat, put plain cheerios on Audrey's place mat, and poured bowls of honey nut cheerios for himself and me. He was so cute, and so proud of himself!