Christmas 2012

 

Well, Christmas started prior to our trip to Finland, with us decorating our tree.  Sophie was the main helper, who kep trying to look at me taking a picture of her as well as looking at what she was putting on the tree, hence the funny stance.  She then wanted to take a photo of me too, which I'm rather pleased with.

On our return from Lapland, we had Sophie's nativity play, where she was a sheep.  She has been singing the songs for the  last couple of months, and seemed to enjoy doing the performance, even if her interest did seem to wane after a while!!

 We had done very little in our own traditions for Christmas, mainly due to my busy-ness with orders, but also with concentrating on going away mid December.  Alec mentioned how he missed the advent candle and stories, so we'll definitely do those next year, but once school broke up we were able to do a few activities.  I had spotted these Star Wars snowflakes last year, and thought it would be a good idea to do.  It was still rather fiddly for the children, although Ethan stuck with his Rebel fighter snowflake (the first on the right) and just needed a bit of help with a craft knife towards the end.  I ended up doing the other two, but have printed out more, either for later or next year!

 Ethan was getting festive with a santa hat!!

 We made a gingerbread house (eventually), and Luke had a good idea about melting boiled sweets to glaze the windows.  We managed a couple of windows like this.

 Since then the boys have been discussing how to dismantle the gingerbread house.  It has ranged from putting party poppers inside and blowing it up, to building a lego mindstorms battering ram, to playing catch with it!!

 Christmas eve saw us go to see the hobbit.  What an amazing film, and Sophie was rather taken with it too, and has been watching other LOTR films and trailers on the computer!

 Christmas Day itself saw Mum join us (having stayed overnight on Christmas Eve).  It was a very stress free day, and everyone seemed to have a lovely day.

 There was time to play with Christmas presents (an electirc guitar you can plug into the iPad, for Alec)

 Some wargamer modelling for both Stuart and Luke,

There was the statutory lego building, chocolate eating, for the children and I even managed to do some knitting for myself. 

A lovely Christmas, and looking forward to what the new year brings.

Passing it on

It gives me such a sense of satisfaction when the children show and interest in what I am doing when I'm sat down crafting.  Ethan and Sophie show the most interest, and when I am spinning or sewing, Sophie will often come and sit on my lap and want to join in.  With spinning, she hasn't quite got it yet, but will pretend to draft the wool as I spin, and she enjoys the wool slipping through her fingers. 

With sewing she finds this a little easier.  She has, with help, been doing some blanket stitch on some of the Christmas bunting I have been making recently.  I have a wonderful image in my head of her sat on my lap a month or so ago, as I was embroidering the word "Friendship" onto a blessing bunting flag, and she was sat on my lap helping to pull the needle through.  It just summed up everything about that moment. 

Ethan has shown some interest in sewing, in fact will try to identify the stitch I am making at any one time.  And when they were sewing on buttons in class a few weeks ago (learning about "make do and mend" in the second world war) he ended up going around the class helping others!!  However, for him, knitting has been his proudest moment.  His first completed scarf using some of that frilly scarf yarn.  I thought he mighht give it to his teacher as a Christmas present, but instead he decided to put it in an Operation Christmas Child shoe box.  So he now has his first knitted item in another country.  Such an amazing gesture. 

I would love to think of them expanding their crafting, but only time will tell.