Kyrie's First Riding Lesson

The week before Christmas Kyrie had her first horseback riding lesson. I purchased on-line coupons for these lessons several months ago, excited to find out that there was a horse farm so close to our house. I thought that this would be a fun activity for Kyrie to do over our Christmas break (and maybe continue if she enjoyed it). She was very excited to learn she would get to go to riding lessons.

She already looks like a pro in this picture!

Kyrie got to ride a pony named Mama Piña. Her teacher Miss Colleen talked to her about how to approach the horse and use the reins to guide her to the arena. Once in the saddle, she learned how to kick the horse's sides to make her go and use the reins to steer and stop. They went around the ring several times practicing these directions and took some time to trot. Kyrie loved trotting and her giggle echoed in the barn. It made everyone smile!

Practicing steering the horse by herself.

At the end of the lesson, Kyrie was a little cold and hungry, but very happy with how much she had learned and the fun she had. We would have one more hour-long lesson this week and will continue with 30 minute lessons once a month after that. As we were leaving our first lesson we passed a wall of the barn that was filled with ribbons from riding competitions. Kyrie was hopeful that one day she could win some ribbons for riding, too. We'll see!

Santa 2011

Our official Santa photo!

Another Christmas tradition is our visit to the Santa at Easton Mall. We always meet our friends first thing in the morning to try to avoid the long lines. Afterward we go to storytime at Barnes & Noble and look at the mall's outdoor decorations. This year, we added lunch and a movie to our special day, but the highlight remained visiting Santa! Both kids looked sweet in their Christmas clothes, perhaps in an attempt to charm their way off the naughty list! Kyrie asked Santa for a camera and a Lalaloopsy baby. Degen asked Santa for a train, a TV and a Lalaloopsy.

Here are my kids with what they think are their best smiles... oh my goodness!

I love how serious these last 3 photos look. This was after the 'real' picture taking when they were getting down to telling Santa what they want for Christmas.

Too Cool Zoo School!

Kyrie petting a young alligator.

I am very excited that Kyrie has been able to attend homeschool classes offered at the Columbus Zoo this year. Each month there is a new topic that is introduced & discussed via a slideshow presentation. There is an animal visitor, a game/activity and then a visit to an animal habitat at the zoo where the discussion continues. We are very fortunate to have this resource available to us, and I have been very impressed with the instructor and the quality of the lessons presented. Though Kyrie is one of the youngest in each session, she is able to participate and contribute to the discussions and always leaves with new information. I am so sad that I didn't have my camera with me for the first two sessions in which we learned about turtles & tortoises and penguins respectively. Getting to pet a penguin was a super-cool experience for all of us! I've learned from my mistakes and came prepared for this month's session about animal adaptations where the two animal visitors were an alligator and an armadillo.

This armadillo was so sleepy!

LOVE this photo of the kids petting the armadillo!

This session's activity was a lab in which the children learned about bird beaks/bills as an adaptation for food acquisition. At each station, the children were presented with a type of food a bird might eat and given a choice of tools that represented bird beaks & bills (eg. tweezers, tongs, slotted spoons, etc.). The children used each tool to see which one would be the best to get the food and then matched the tool to the kind of bird beak/bill it represented. This was a great hands-on learning activity!

Christmas Cookies

Kyrie helped cut out some stars & dreidels for Hanukkah cookies.

Decorating sugar cookies is a family tradition from my own childhood, and I try to make sure that my kids have at least one batch to decorate every Christmas. This year, I purchased some brightly colored dough from a fundraiser at the dance academy. It made for some fun decorations to this year's batch of cookies (as well as some brightly colored sandwich cookies).

This year, we kept our cookie decorating simple by only using our mini-cookie shapes and colored sugar or sprinkles. The kids had fun choosing just the right decorations for each cookie. Promising them that they could choose & eat a cookie when they were finished helped keep their fingers out of the frosting while they decorated.

This year's batch of Christmas cookies!

Ornaments 2011

Our Christmas tree is a memory tree, and I love that it is filled with ornaments from my childhood, as well as my children's, co-mingling with ornaments from family firsts and adventures. Each year I like for the children to make an ornament to add to our tree and that we can include with our gifts to our family. One day when they have homes of their own, I want to be able to give my children their ornaments for their own trees.

This year's ornament was simple: painted wooden shapes; which was good because as you have probably read in previous posts this year has been a bit more stressful. The kids are always excited to paint, and they completed their ornaments quickly and asked for more (which I didn't have). I have already added their ornaments to our tree and hope that our family enjoys this year's ornaments.

Kyrie's ornaments

Degen's ornaments

Kyrie in "3 Wise Men & A Baby"

Once again Kyrie performed with the Linworth Baptist Church Children's Choir for their Christmas production of "3 Wise Men & A Baby." This was her third performance with the choir since last year's Christmas show. Practices began on Sunday mornings in September and then Sunday mornings and evenings starting in October. The first two Saturdays of December they had dress rehearsals (and a cast party the evening before the show). The kids sang two songs at the morning service the day of the show. It is always a special treat to watch your children perform, especially after so many weeks of hard work!

Kyrie & the children's choir performing at the morning service.

Kyrie's faith and friendships within the church have really grown during her time with the children's choir. The choir director is very committed to her task and spends a lot of time talking with the children not only about their performances, but about what their performances mean as expressions of their faith. A few months ago, Kyrie told me that she had asked Baby Jesus to come live in her heart. I was happy for and proud of her.

The children's choir did a great job with their musical! Though Kyrie was a little fidgety and didn't always pay the closest of attention to the director, she did a great job, too. She knew all the words and did pretty well with the choreography, though I love that in most of these photos she is not quite doing what the other kids are doing. After the show, the director commented that she had improved from last year's performance. We are really proud of all of her hard work and look forward to the next show! (For those of you on Facebook, I posted some videos from the performance.)

This is such a sweet photo!

Elves at Work

We have been hard at work on our family Christmas presents these past two weeks. I am not going to post all of my pics until after Christmas because I don't want to ruin the surprise, but here are a few not too revealing photos of Kyrie & Degen working on part of the gifts. They did a great job!

 Last year, preparing for Christmas gifts was super-fun and easy, but this year was a bit more of a struggle. Last year, I had most of the work done in September and everything was ready to go just right after Thanksgiving. This year... not so much. We didn't decide on a gift project until October-November and then with travel and our usual busyness I didn't get things ordered, gathered and planned for as I should have. I also started to get sick before Thanksgiving and was diagnosed with asthmatic bronchitis. Not feeling well totally zapped my motivation and drained my Christmas spirit. (Weeks later and I'm still not at 100% and all my coughing caused me to pull some muscles in my ribs & back). So, the first few weeks of December saw us filling up all our free time (of which we have little) with work on our gift project.

Still, in spite of my lack of planning and our overall lack of time, we were able to get the kids working and everything organized to make Christmas gifts that we are all really proud of this year! A few busy-busy weeks, work sessions whenever we could fit them in and a few late nights for Mommy to get it all put together and everything turned out great! Check back after Christmas for a description of this year's gift project and pictures!