finally an update!

I've been terrible at updating the last month or so!! Life has been a little crazy, my husband was on 4 straight weeks of afternoon shifts leaving me alone every night of the week, but one, with a very fussy baby and Aurora who was acting up because Gideon was taking so much attention (teething I think). Basically I've just been trying to survive and not go completely insane. Some day I was more successful than others. ;) 

I got Gideon a Healing Hazel necklace that is supposed to help with teething pain, eczema and many other things. I haven't noticed a difference with his eczema yet (poor baby has it so bad only adult steroid cream seems to make a difference. :-/ I'm going to try flax seed oil and see if that will help without the harsh cream.) but he is at least sleeping a lot better, only getting up 2-3 times during the night instead of every hour or more. That alone has greatly helped my sanity. He's also been less fussy in the evening. 

This week we are all trying to, get over nasty colds again but did manage to get a few things done today. We baked buns and cookies, gave all the bath toys a good cleaning. did some painting and worked on Aurora's verses and some new songs.

Here are a few pictures from our week. 

 Aurora usually comes into our bed sometime in the morning and cuddles (goes back to sleep) Gideon often will come into our bed after his morning feeding and usually falls back asleep too o this was them snuggling Sunday morning

 Gideon is getting so big! He says "da" now which is pretty funny, especially when he is really mad and yelling it. Of course he wants mama then not dada but oh well.

 He's not crawling yet, (Aurora was crawling everywhere by his age) but he's mastered rolling

 Here is one of Aurora' paintings from today. She looked at a picture of a sunset and painted it. I talked to her about what colors went where. She did a great job! (This is the picture she looked at)

Art Day

Yesterday we spent most of our school time doing art. We always have some coloring with each lesson but this time we went all out painting in our art journals. 

Aurora learned a bit about the color wheel and what colors shouldn't mix. 

She started with a white crayon. then a layer of watercolor to see that the watercolors resisted the crayon. 

Then added some acrylic paints, then finished with modge podged pictures she liked out of an old magazine.

 (waiting for the gesso to dry so she could start)

I didn't take any picture of it finished yet because we were so busy painting it started to get dark and I realized I better get supper going before Caleb got home! :) (He's been working pretty late this week so he hasn't gotten home before 7:15pm) 

Today Caleb is off (since he's worked four 14 hour days already this week) so we are taking the day off school and hopefully doing something fun. Perhaps taking Aurora to her first theater movie (Beauty and the Beast) if we don't do that today though we will try for Sunday probably. She's been pretty excited about it. 

In other news. I have been checking out some different artist and their techniques for art  class next year (not for Aurora for the missionary academy- see previous post about it) and I've found one that is just so interesting and really cool and he has videos of his painting (sped up) So i was checking out his website this morning and it looks like he might be a believer. I have to do a bit more digging because I don't like to just assume based on one sentence but I thought that was pretty neat. I was definitely not expecting that, it's just an added bonus!

Christmas and Art Class

Christmas has come and gone. I hope yours was wonderful. Our was pretty busy so I have to say, I am a little glad to be past it. I love Christmas but all the long days not at home were a little hard on the kids. Today Aurora was under the table and I asked her why she was hiding, then I realized she had fallen asleep!!

I have something exciting coming up, I will be teaching art at the missionary school here next year. I am pretty excited (but also a little freaked out) I taught art there for a year 8 or 9 years ago and loved it but then moved away, got married, had kids all that. The school is pretty small, it's the school I went to from 4th grade all the way through high school. The teachers are all missionaries most have been in other countries for many years before coming here. The students are all children of missionaries or of people training to be missionaries. The teachers all genuinely care about their students too, actually that kind of drove me a little crazy when I was in high school because if (more like when)  I was slacking off they would call me on it or talk to my parents.

Tomorrow is also a big day in our house. Miss Aurora is turning 3 tomorrow.!!

it's starting to feel like Christmas!

Today Aurora did some finger painting. I've seen a ton of those hand print pictures on Pinterest so I thought we should try doing a Christmas tree one. I am sure someone has probably done this before but oh well.  Nothing new under the sun right?

So here is her hand print Christmas tree picture. The dots below it are presents.

 Yesterday we woke up to snow, so we played in it for a while.

 then Aurora and Gideon snuggled a bit.

Yes, he has a pink bumbo seat, that is what happens when you have a big sister... LOL :) He looks pretty funny sitting in it, he's still so little but he really like it.

Leaf Crafts

Today we did some art and nature study with the kids. I am doing some of A's classes together with her cousin. My mom watches my sister's two boys a few days a week while my sister works. Her older son is a year older than my daughter and they get really well (most days :) )

My nephew is VERY smart and can read already (he just turned 4) very well so obviously they can't do all their classes together but art and science we can.

 Gathering some pretty leaves

 Dipping the leaves in the melted wax

 Here is our collection (before dipping them)...

 after dipping them in the melted wax we hung them on a little "clothes line" to dry. They looked pretty cool hanging there

 My mom decided to try out some flowers too...

 Then we did some rubbings in the kids new art journals

 And A practiced drawing circles