Guard dog

Widget must have heard something outside.  When he went to investigate, he discovered this snowman hanging.  I am pretty sure he thought it was out to get us.

Merry Christmas to Me

So, not the best way to spend the week of Christmas.  Sigh.  My car would not start.  

Had to get someone out yesterday to tow it.  Turns out the starter went out.  

That was kind of the cheapest, best case scenario.  Should be able to pick it up

Friday or Saturday.  Not the way I wanted to spend money right now, 

but so grateful that we can get it fixed.  Eric was very fascinated with the whole process.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

For the past three years, we have spent Christmas at Petit Jean.  We adored our

time there, but it appears that season has passed for now.  

It was fun to hang our stockings at home this year.  

Walk through Bethlehem

We have always thoroughly enjoyed the drive thru nativity in Searcy.  We were delighted to go with a group to a walk through tour of Bethlehem today.  They had dozens of market stalls set up.  Here are a few of our favorites:

At this one, you had to sign the census.  They talked about the 

census a lot and about paying taxes.  

We watched this woman make a clay pot on a pottery wheel

that she worked with her feet.  It was very cool.  

Eric getting stamped to show he had paid his taxes.  

There was a games booth set up.  He, of course, loved that one.  

Playing tic tac toe with a girl from our group.  

Petting a live dove.  

At the end, they acted out the nativity. 

When we talked to the innkeeper, he expressed concern over how full

he was.  He said he had to turn away a woman the night before that was expecting.  

He was also concerned about his animals, as he was so busy he couldn't go to feed them.  

After he watched the scene, Eric went back to tell the innkeeper that his donkey, Ebenezer, was fine.  He also gave him a report on baby Jesus.  The innkeeper gave Eric a shekel for his help.  

Here's a video of one of the games they had in the game tent.  

Christmas Parade

We had a great time at the parade Saturday night.  It was fun to do something so simple as a family.

                                                                       

Of course we were a little early, so what did kiddo want to do?

Read a book.  That boy takes a book with us everywhere we go.

He is getting a little too big for my heart here.  

I much prefer this picture.  He doesn't look nearly as big standing next

to his Daddy.  

The parade was really long and had lots of fun floats.  So glad we went!

Book club

Let me start by saying I love Pinterest.  And I loathe Pinterest.  It has made my life infinitely more difficult and infinitely more fun at the same time.  We had our first book club monthly meeting with a homeschool group yesterday.  I wasn't sure what type of moms these were.  Are they organic, grow your own everything, grind your own flour and make all natural homemade treats?  Or are they run to the store and get a package of cookies?  I decided to spend a few hours making a yummy, sweet, Christmasy chex mix.  (I made about 4 times that many hats.  I just put some on top of the huge bowl, and put the rest in a bag to replenish as they were eaten.)

So cute!  And so yummy!  But so much work!  I learned that they are the latter group.  I was the only one that had made anything.  Everything else was store bought.  Big relief for next time.

The book club was very fun!  The theme was bedtime story, and the kids wore pajamas.  Eric shared his favorite book right now - Mystery of the Missing Map.  There were 12-14 families there, and it was held at a bounce house.  The kids jumped for an hour, then they ate and broke into appropriate age groups for discussion for an hour.  Then they bounced again for another hour.  The younger groups didn't last the full hour, but Eric's group went the whole time.  E had a blast!  He saw another boy there about his age, went right up and made friends.

I didn't take many pictures.  But here is one of the room once the children were divided.  Before they began their group discussions, the leader went over Plot and led the children in discussion of some basic plots in stories.  She was very impressed with how confident Eric is.  She couldn't believe that he was not afraid to speak up and share his book.

Our elf

Jiggy came back this year.  We started the elf on the shelf last year and LOVED it!  So, of course he had to return on Dec 1.  Here are some of his antics so far this month.