Duck hunting has infected a few members of the family. Nick spent a good portion of his fall chasing ducks and geese. He and Amber went to the Mead Wildlife Refuge one morning and brought home 6 nice sized ducks. Nick's perfected the art of cooking duck - it only took a few pointers from me and now he's the main duck chef.
Joe attends Friday school through the virtual homeschool program. Just before Thanksgiving he made a turkey head band at school. It didn't make it to Thanksgiving Day; he had it wore out long before that.
Deer hunting takes center stage in November when everyone eats, sleeps, and breathes deer hunting. Conversation around the dinner table often includes talk about deer hunting snacks, blaze orange jackets, sighting in rifles, ammunition purchases, and who's sitting with who. We have so much to be thankful for this hunting season; 7 deer went in the freezer. Most likely we'll eat it up by the end of July or August.
Can you tell Joseph loves hunting season just as much as his older siblings do?
We alternate hosting Thanksgiving with Warren's brother's family. It was our year. I like having a few games ready to play, just in case the electronics are trying to take over the day. This competitive relay race had everyone laughing and cheering and moaning when the ball dropped. Good times!
And more post Thanksgiving hunting.
This year we attended Canadian National's Holiday Train light display. I think it was one of the coldest nights of the year, but we trudged on. I'm so glad we did; the light display was awesome and it was pretty neat to be so close to the train. When it was time for the train to leave there were a group of workers shooing people back and checking in between each car to make sure no one was hiding out. So, it was safe even though we were so close. It happened to be the vigil of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Thanks to the internet I was able to look up a Catholic church and see what time their vigil Mass would be and it ended up working out perfectly. I always enjoy, out of curiosity, attending Mass at other churches. I was surprised by the number of youth at Mass that evening; there had to be at least 100 teens. And to really top off the night we went out for a late supper at Culver's.
The search for the perfect Christmas tree had us all trudging along one Sunday afternoon. We had slim pickings so when someone spotted a 30 foot tree with a beautiful top, we decided it would be perfect.
We all watched as Nick notched and sawed and pushed a little until it came down.
We left the bottom section of the tree in the woods for rabbit habitat; Sam carried the top to the truck.
December is also the month of Peter's birthday. Right away in the morning (when you're the tallest) I measured Peter. Turns out he's the tallest 5 year old yet. I don't know if you can tell by the picture, but the boys' measurements are on the left and the girls on the right.
Peter and Maria love to color, so when I found this over-sized Melissa and Doug coloring pad, I snagged one for Peter and Maria each, plus the crayon sets. Maria got her set for Christmas, but Peter immediately went to coloring. The pictures are big, clear, and exactly the types of things boys like to color: spaceships, dinosaurs, race cars, and tractors.
Peter asked for angel food cake, but also wanted cupcakes. I decided to make mini angel food cupcakes with white frosting, which represented snow and then made white chocolate (tinted green) trees as the decoration. It's so easy to create chocolate shapes. I found inspiration here and here.
Now that was a lot of pictures, so I'll stop here for tonight. I hope to be back soon with more useful posts relating to Catholic life, homeschooling with Down syndrome, and maybe a couple of recipes.
Have a wonderful evening. We're coming off a cold week of below 0 temps and moving into a week filled with freezing rain and increasing temperatures.
