Baby it's cold outside...

We've been doing A LOT more inside activities of course. With temps in the single digits I've been driving the girls to school every morning rather than letting them ride bikes. The boys don't ask to go to the park anymore. I've had to come up with different things for them to do inside rather than listening to them ask to watch TV. I found a fun little activity for them. I taped different shapes onto a clipboard and let them use the side of a naked crayon to do shape rubbings. They thought it was great!

Tyler and Ren are best friends. They play together almost every day. I like how they are checking the shapes under the paper...

And now rubbing the crayon and watching the shapes appear on the paper. We went through quite a bit of paper with this activity. :)

The first week of December was my turn to teach preschool. The boys waited patiently for the other students to come. They liked practicing their letters and name writing on laminated name tags. 

Aidan has found a new hobby. He LOVES puzzles. All we have are a bunch of princess puzzles that are at his skill level. Can we say easy Christmas gifts? YES! But he doesn't care that they are "girl puzzles" because he's just happy to put them together, take it apart, put it together. He spent 2 hours one after noon doing the same three puzzles over and over. He's very good at it. 

On this particular day I helped him put together a 300 piece Cinderella puzzle. After we finished it he popped a bag of popcorn (his favorite snack) and he and Tyler snacked and visited while they inspected their work of the puzzle. It was so cute. 

Tyler still has a major obsession for trains. We put together a gingerbread train.

The kids did a great job working together. 

After this picture was taken they took apart the tender and ate it. I am surprised the engine is still intact.

I've been working on multiple projects still. I have finally finished 5, almost 6 of them! Here's my Christ centered advent calendar! I love it. I have scriptures that correlate with each picture to tell the story of Christ's life. The kids enjoy turing a tile over every day to see the picture. 

Olivia likes to bake and asks to help whenever I'm in the kitchen. She helped me make some chocolate peanut butter balls! I will be making a lot this year. I finished one batch today, which fills 3 cookie sheets but I will need to make more. I'm sending a bunch of them to work with Jaime to give to employees along with some other goodies. Yes, I'm keeping busy, it helps to keep me warm during this cold season.