Annual Homeschool Christmas Wrap

I can't believe December is almost over. Boy have we been busy! I have a lot of catching up to do here. Over the next week, before school ramps back up, I am going to try to get caught up on what we've been up to lately.

For the past few years in December our homeschool group has organized a Christmas wrap. This is where we wrap gifts for a donation. We then take the proceeds to support a needy family for Christmas.

Early in December, on a Saturday, we gathered at the church and waited for the gifts to start arriving. We were excited because we had more people sign up this year than we've ever had. We found out that the family we were going to buy Christmas for was a single mom with four young kids. I really hoped the families that signed up to let us wrap their gifts would be generous so that we could really spoil this family with lots of gifts.

Hey Seeeth!!!!!!!!!!!......

The first gifts arrived and all the kids were excited to wrap. That is once they woke up... we had our first drop off appointment at 8:30AM, but since we had to help set up we were at the church by 8AM.

I love this service project because at a time where my boys are tempted to focus on what they want, it reminds them that there are some kids that might not be getting anything for Christmas.

Some how this is the only picture of Joshua that was taken. He had just gotten back from an overnight lock-in with the church. He was exhausted! All the kids worked extremely hard, even the sleep deprived ones! I was so proud of their efforts. Wrapping presents is hard work.

Sometimes they worked together with friends.



As the day was coming to an end all the presents beautifully lined the gym walls.

Now all that was left to do was wait for our families to come pick up their presents decorated with love. We couldn't wait to see how much money we had earned.

Then out of nowhere came the unexpected... SNOW! What a great treat for the kids after a full days work. One mention of the word, snow, and they were gone!

What a special blessing. It was really starting to feel like Christmas!

Another blessing... we ended up with almost $500 to spend on our adopted family. Thank you Lord! A few days later we divided the family members amongst the group and we went shopping. The boys and I chose to buy gifts for the 3rd grade boy and a few gifts for the mom. I thought it was really sweet that the mom did not request anything for herself. But we made sure that we spoiled her too. We bought her a gift card to a clothing store, a bible, jewelry, and some awesome smelling soap. I wish we could have seen them open their gifts. This service project is one of my favorites. Can't wait til next year!

Operation Christmas Child

It's that time again! Time for Operation Christmas Child. We always look forward to November for several reasons, one of those being Operation Christmas Child. Every year our church is majorly involved in the collection of shoe boxes that later will travel across the world and be delivered to a child. In most cases this will be the only gift they receive for Christmas. More importantly than the shoebox stuffed with gifts is the little booklet they receive that tells them in their own language about Jesus and His ultimate gift.

Our home school group always picks a day during the collection week and volunteers to help collect boxes.

While we wait for people to come drop off their boxes we inspect, fill, and wrap other boxes. Here is Seth wrapping a shoebox.

Noah and Chloe finishing up a box that needed a few more goodies.

Seth is ready with the cart. They love it when someone comes with a car full of boxes. This was only the second day of collection week and you can see the mountain of boxes behind Seth.

Yea! Boxes are here. Everyone is ready to help out.



More boxes!



While we were there we decided to go ahead and finish our boxes.



The boys really enjoy picking out toys for their boxes.



Most of the time we purchase way to much stuff and end up trying to cram it all in.



Rearanging, trying to make it all fit.

Okay. I think we managed to get it all in and with the help of rubber bands manage to keep the lids on. The one thing I always like to include in our boxes is a personal letter from each of the boys. They write a short (or long in Seth's case!) letter telling their kid about themselves and asking them questions. One year we actually received a letter back and that was really special. His picture is still on our refrigerator and every time I notice it I try to stop whatever I'm doing and pray for him. I hope we get letters again from these boxes.

Seth with his finished box.

Noah and his box. It's really sweet to see the things they think of to put in their boxes. Joshua was in class so I wasn't able to get a picture of him with his box.

Oh yeah, we can't forget about the pizza. Another favorite part of Operation Christmas Child. LUNCH!

Mrs. Hanes' Cookie Factory

This past week we went to Mrs. Hanes' Cookie Factory with our home school group. I have to say this has been the YUMMIEST fieldtrip yet!

Mrs. Hanes' cookies company is one of the last Moravian cookie companies that still roll and cut their cookies by hand.

Here is one of the ladies rolling out the cookie dough. You can see the cookie cutter sitting there on the table. They make around 100,000 pounds of cookies in a year. There are at least 100 cookies in a pound sooo that would be somewhere around 10 MILLION cookies!

We got lots of samples along our tour.



It's really amazing how thin those cookies are.

This guy operates the huge mixer. I can't remember exactly how much dough it holds, but trust me when I say it's a lot!

See the guy in the blue shirt... his job is to crack eggs. He cracks more eggs in a day then I crack in a year!!!... and we eat a lot of eggs!

This barrel is full of molasses.

We got to see some of the original baking pieces that were used long ago before the company was in existence. I'm not sure what this pot was used for. I liked it because it was rustic.

One of the original mixing bowls used to make the cookies.

And the oven! The tour guide pointed out that there are no windows on this oven. Mrs. Hanes mother would know the cookies were done because of their smell.

yeah... my cookies sometimes have a unique smell too... burnt!

Our tour guide showed us several inventions the owners came up with to make packaging the cookies easier. They are all packaged by hand as well.

This is another tool they invented to help with packaging.



Here is where they package the tins.



Boys will be Boys!





Outside the factory they had a flower garden along the walkway.



The sunflowers were beautiful!

I don't know what kind of sunflowers these are, but I really want some like these in my backyard. They are so happy!!!

We had a neat time learning about how these cookies are made. Joshua is going to hate he missed this one. He's at camp this week. He is greatly missed!

especially by seth and noah, cause they have to do his chores while he's gone!

Field Day

Last month our home school group had field day.

i know i'm really behind. i have about four posts worth of pictures waiting patiently on my computer to be blogged.

The boys LOVE field day!

Balloons for the three-man slingshot.



There were lots of events that involved these innocent looking hula-hoops.



The Hula event. Who can hula the longest with their your arm...



ankle...



and around...



your neck!

Here is Seth in the Carpet Square race. You pick up a carpet square. Turn around. Lay it down. hop onto it.

Repeat those steps until you get to the finish line.

This event was the Cup Race. It was fun to watch Noah be SO determined to win this race. You start at one end with a bucket of water and a cup. Dip the cup into the bucket of water, run across the field to the next bucket, and then dump your cup into that bucket. At the end of time, whoever has the most water in their bucket wins. The thing you can see here is that the cup has holes in the bottom of it. You can see Noah trying his best to cover the holes!

This was a fun event. I don't know what to call it, but anyway... You have a plunger attached to a small rubber ball and an obstacle course. The kids had to start out by spinning 10 times then running through the course while holding the ball to their chin. Seth did very well on this event.

Noah on the other hand...

had a little trouble with this one. This really is harder than it looks. They had to run between these cones and jump over those totes. If you dropped the ball... Ahem, Noah ...then you had to spin around 10 times again and start where you left off.

The Soccer Race was more Noah's thing. He's got his game face on. I have a feeling someones going down!

Look at him watching his opponent.



He did really well in this event.

In this race you had to roll the hula-hoop down the field and around a cone with a noodle. Much harder to do than you would think.

Monster Golf!



The hole was a bucket!



Field day just wouldn't be complete with out Tug-of-War.



I don't think I would mess with him if I were you.



This has been Noah's favorite event ever since he first participated in field day.



That's all I heard about for days before field day.



SAFE!



After all the events were over there was one last group event.

The three-man sling shot. Or in this case... just-see-how-high-you-can-get-the-balloon-into-the-air, event.

All the kids lined up and tried to catch the launched water balloon.

There's no better way to end a hot and sweaty field day... then by being WET, hot and sweaty!