Cherishing Christmas Memories with Family

We made our annual trip to Baton Rouge for Christmas to spend time with both families.  It is a blessing that Stuart and I have families in the same town so we only have to travel to one place and not trade off which year we go to which family.  It makes it easier for the kids to see both sets of grandparents a couple of times a year.  It's a long drive though that takes a full day on the road.  We are always delighted to cross the Mississippi River bridge though because that is the landmark that lets us know that we have finally arrived.  I'm pretty sure I take a picture from the bridge every time we go to Baton Rouge.

It was nice to spend a lot of one-on-one time with mom.  

And of course Uncle Steve!

Before we left Texas, we bought a tiny little Christmas tree and a few ornaments so we could have a tree set up in the hotel room for Christmas morning.  Even though we are away from home, we still like to have Christmas morning just for our family.  Stuart and I usually have a gift to exchange with each other and we give the children their gifts from us.  And Santa always leaves a few unwrapped gifts under the tree as well.  Yes, he even finds us in the hotel.

Then we head over to my brother's house for Christmas lunch and a gift exchange.  Steve and Nicholas played guitar together while we waited for my parents to arrive.  I love watching these two on guitar!

You can just see Stuart shaking his head as Rachel opened a slime making kit!  

But she did get some new figure skates as well.  She still loves hockey and figure skating.  I hope that she will soon choose a favorite to pursue 100% because buying gear for both sports gets expensive!

Nicholas was excited about several upgrades he got for his drone.  I was most excited for the laptop he got because he will use that a lot for school.

I don't get pictures of my family nearly enough so I'm excited to have this picture of us all together on Christmas day.

After lunch we eventually waddle our full bellies out the door and head over the Stuart's family where the kids get to spend time with their cousin Jessica.  Jessica pulled out her ukulele for Rachel and taught her a few tips.

Then there were more presents to open!  Lots of excitement!

After dinner, we all gathered in the living room to play the Saran Wrap Ball party game.  It's easy to prepare and surprisingly fun.  I bought trinket toys, playing cards, candy, lottery scratch off tickets, etc plus a roll of Saran Wrap.  I started wrapping each thing up in the Saran Wrap, one at a time.  You start with just one thing then wrap Saran Wrap all around it.  Then you add one more item to the ball and wrap it all up while making sure it is all stuck together in the Saran Wrap.   Just keep going and watch the ball grow!

To play the game:  The youngest player goes first and starts unwrapping the ball.  They get to keep anything that falls out.  In the mean time, the person to the left of them starts rolling a pair of dice as quickly as they can.  As soon as they roll doubles, the ball gets passed to them and they can start unwrapping.  To make an easy version, wrap everything without ever tearing the Saran Wrap so it is one long strip.  This makes it easier for the players to just shake it and unroll it all.  To make it more challenging and make the game take longer (which I did), tear the Saran Wrap every now and then and start a new strip.  Players now have to spend a little extra time finding the beginning of the Saran Wrap.  It seems like a silly idea but you watch the video below and see how much fun we had.  

The kids had fun on their day trip to New Orleans to go to the Insectarium!  They found a giant earthworm!

This is a picture of Rachel sticking her hand into a blind box to see what she feels inside.  I love how Nicholas looks like he is going to jump up and protect her if she gets scared but look at the excitement on her face!

A tour of the Insectarium can leave a kid hungry so they stopped by for a bite at the Bug Buffet!  Salsa with mealworms, anyone?

How about a Chocolate Chirp cookie made with crickets?  Yes, both of my kids ate bugs!

And they posed as beetles as they learned about their hard exoskeletons.

The Insectarium has a wonderful room where the butterflies will just fly over and land on you.  There are beautiful exhibits of moths and butterflies but also plenty of creepy crawly exhibits that aren't so beautiful.  There are also some non-insect exhibits like this tarantula!

The kids also spent some time together at the roller rink.  It is one of the usual activities we do when we come to town.

Look at this picture.  I love these three!

More good food and fun times with family....

This cute couple is tying the knot in a matter of months.  I'm so excited that I'm going to have a sister!

Of course, the trip wouldn't be complete without a few games of One Night Ultimate Werewolf.  It is a bit hard to explain but essentially you have to try to guess who at the table has the werewolf card and lying is encouraged.  It is a sneaky fun game and some people have figured out how to hide their "tells" by simply covering their entire face!

We had a wonderful visit in Baton Rouge and made some sweet memories with our families whom we love and miss so much.

Capture the Fun, Not the Pose

There is a time and a place for posed pictures.  I take lots of posed pictures.  But don't limit the pictures of your kids to just perfectly posed portraits.  You will miss the fun and miss the memories.

What do I mean by that?  Rachel and I were playing at a park while her big brother was at a hockey lesson.  She decided to play hide and seek.  I tried oh so hard to find her but eventually she had to give away her hiding place.  

I love that I captured her expressions that seem to say, "Oh mom!  Surely you knew where I was!" and then "That was fun!  Let's do it again!"

I caught those two pics with a quick shot from my cell phone then I went back to playing.  I love those pictures 100 times more than if I had her pose with a fake smile in front of that tree.  Those pictures captured the fun we were having and will remind me of that fun morning with her each time I look at them.

Rachel and I were each exploring the area and I called to her when it was time to go.  She came running across the bridge and I saw her pretty hair shining in the sunlight so I caught this quick picture.  Look at the happiness on her face!  That isn't from a boring posed picture.  This picture is alive with movement and joy.

Finally, when I commented to her about having taken some cute pictures of her, she decided that she wanted to pose for me to take her picture.  She came up with the location and pose and this is what I snapped.

It's a cute picture on a bridge with some nice trees in the background but it is sterile to me.  There are no special memories attached to this picture and it doesn't let my daughter's personality shine through.

Keep this in mind next time you are taking pictures of your loved ones.  You have to take the obligatory posed picture from time to time but remember that candid and unposed pictures are so much more rich with life.

Home School in the Woods: A La Carte {Review}

I sometimes get questions from friends about the fun activities we do in our homeschool.  It's no secret.  Many of our history games and projects are from an amazing company called Home School in the Woods.  They are a great resource for homeschool families.  We have used many of their products including the big Time Traveler series that is a stand alone curriculum that covers a few months of material.  But I love that Home School in the Woods has pulled out some of the games and activities from their bigger products and are now selling them A La Carte PDF downloads so we can pick and choose what we want to use without having to buy the whole curriculum.

The Homeschool Review Crew gave us the opportunity to try two of the A La Carte products.  I chose A Trip to Town File Folder Game and the Taxation Frustration! Game.  We love playing games as a family so it just makes sense to incorporate some games into our homeschool.  It makes for a fun review of what we have been studying.

We enjoyed A Trip to Town File Folder Game the most.  This game can be found in the Time Travelers: Colonial Life.  It teaches children about the vocabulary from Colonial Days including medical diseases, food terminology, and different artisan jobs from those days.

I began by printing all of the pages.  This game is a file folder game.  I love these because there is a game board printable that gets glued into a file folder.  There are also game markers, store cards, and question cards.  The file makes suggestions as to whether to print on regular paper, cardstock, or different colored paper.  This is a picture of everything I printed for this game.

While you don't have to do this, I love to add a pop of color to the game so I colored the game board and the game markers.  I think it makes the game look more appealing.

Each child starts with 5 artisan cards.  They have to work their way through the game board to each artisan shop they have a card for in order to get a matching card.  The first player to match all five of their cards wins the game.

However, before you can roll the dice to move on the board, you have to pull a question card and be able to define the vocabulary word.  Some of them are pretty gross.  My kids actually love the gross vocabulary words the most!  Here Rachel pulled the card for Grocer's Itch - a cutaneous disease caused by mites in sugar and flour.  Ewww!

There are a few special cards in the deck that cause you to lose a turn or that let you advance to the artisan shop of your choice.  This is a fun game and a great review of vocabulary and terminology from Colonial Days. A Trip to Town File Folder game can be downloaded for just $4.95.

The other game we reviewed is called Taxation Frustration!  It demonstrates the frustration that American colonists would have felt at the unfair difference in taxes that they were forced to pay to Britain versus what the British citizens had to pay.  This game can also be found in the Home School in the Woods Time Travelers: The American Revolution.

This is also a PDF printable but it does not have a game board.  It uses play money which in those days were shillings.  Look at the beautiful printables that this game comes with!  The file is formatted in such a way that you can print these double sided.  This way you have the real picture of the various shilling denominations on one side and then you flip the card over to easily read the amount.  I just love this realistic touch to the game.

The game is played by choosing a card for an item you would like to buy.  In this case it is a barrel of gun powder which has a tax of 8 shillings.  Next you draw an orange card to determine if you are American or British and the corresponding tax you will have to pay.  If you are British, then you simply pay the 8 shillings tax as noted on the card.  But you can see that some of the other orange cards might state that you are an American colonist and therefore you have to pay double or even triple the amount of tax for an item.

Taxation Frustration! is a simple and quick game to play but it demonstrates the frustration that the colonists felt.  This printable sells for just $3.95.

As a homeschool mom, I simply love using Home School in the Woods products for history.  In case you are interested, here are a few other products of theirs that we have used:

• Home School In The Woods: Make-A-State Activity Pak

• HISTORY Through the Ages World History Study Project Passport: Renaissance and Reformation

You can connect with Home School in the Woods on social media:

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If you would like to read additional reviews on the A La Carte products by Home School in the Woods please click on the banner below:

Turning 9 Years Old Really ROCKS!

Rachel wanted to have fancy tea party at home for her birthday party this year.  She had great plans for activities, games, crafts, etc.  I got exhausted just thinking about it.  Sometimes Mom just needs to hit the "Easy Button" and pay to have a party somewhere else so there is no planning and no clean-up necessary.  So Rachel had her party at Summit Climbing Gym in Grapevine.  It is a fun place covered with walls just beckoning to be climbed.

At Summit, there are several walls that can be climbed with auto-belay.  Auto-belay meaning that there is no need for another person to belay the line for the climber so the kids could climb all by themselves after a brief training course.  The auto-belay takes up the slack in the line as the climber ascends the wall and the counter weight gives them a slow and controlled descent.  

It was really fun watching the kids climb the walls.  They were helping each other and speaking encouragement when needed.  It was sweet to watch.

The more challenging walls require a human belayer.  Stuart belayed for kids who wanted to try some harder climbs.  Of course Rachel wanted to challenge herself and she did great!


Nicholas is a great climber too.  He likes the auto-belay walls but he likes the more challenging climbs the best.

There are a few other things you can climb on besides walls.  There is a big net and also this tall rope ladder.  The ladder is challenging because it twists and turns as you climb it.  It does require a person to belay for the climber.  Rachel made it up to the top!

There is also a line that they let the kids just swing on for fun.  Wheee!!!


It was time to take a break so we stopped for cake and presents.  Rachel wanted an ice cream cake with a Dallas Stars hockey theme.  The cake turned out really cute.  However, I had not had an ice cream cake before.  I was so worried about it melting before it was time to eat but I shouldn't have.  We got the cake out of the freezer a few minutes early and it was still a hard frozen block when it came time to cut it.

So we told Rachel to open presents first to give the cake a little time to defrost!  She didn't mind at all.  She was giddy to open her presents!

Although I felt bad for not having the birthday party at our house like Rachel had wanted, it turned out to be a really fun party and Rachel had a great time!  Sometimes you just have to let the Mommy Guilt go and find another solution.  An just maybe it will turn out even better than what you had to say no to.

Basket Case Game at AHG

Each week, Rachel looks forward to getting together with her American Heritage Girls group.  They get to visit with their friends, work on badges together, maybe have a snack, and usually play a game or two to help get the wiggles out. Their newest game is Basket Case.  

One of the leaders found it locally but you can also get it at Amazon (affiliate link).  The idea is simple.  One girl wears the basket headband while another girl throws ping pong balls into the basket.  There are a set of white balls and red balls so you can divide up into two teams and have a fun little competition.

The headbands were slightly too big for the girls' heads so they had to hold them on but they had so much fun playing this game!

Note: This post contains an affiliate link which means that if you purchase the item through this link then I will receive a small percentage of the purchase price.  This does not affect the price you pay for the product in any way.

The Ultimate Nerf War Birthday Party

Nicholas wanted another Nerf War for his 13th birthday party.  He did this for his last birthday party and so we already had the perfect spot at a local park to hold the battles.  It was a really easy party because there isn't much planning to do.  He invited his friends and we stocked up on Nerf darts.

We also charged up all of handheld radios we have.  We set them on walkie talkie channels and let the boys use them to talk to team mates as they run around in the woods during the Nerf War.  Stuart also keeps one on him so he can hear both teams' communications and know if anyone gets hurt and needs help.

We dumped all of the darts in a bucket and set it out on the table at the park.

The boys brought their own Nerf guns and loaded up on darts.  The darts are off-brand and we get them for a great price on Amazon.  It's just easier than having the boys try to keep up with their own darts and worrying about losing them.  We just buy a bunch and expect to loose a few along the way.

The boys lined up to hear the safety talk from Stuart.  Buddy system, boundary of play, how to use the radios, etc.  Then they got put into two teams.

The boys run out into the woods and try to hide so they can ambush the other team with a spray of Nerf darts.

There is a lot of excitement!  The boys are hiding or looking around or running the whole time.

Did I mention that there is a lot of running? 

Stuart and I just hung around in case we were needed but it was so fun to hear some boys shout things like, "We've been seen!  We must move out NOW!"

Some team mates would call to others on their team over the radios and ask for backup.  Their team mates came running!

Meanwhile, these sweet girls were hanging out quietly decorating the sidewalk with chalk.

The teams took a break and then regrouped for a different kind of game out in the field.  They played Capture the Flag and some kind of Zombie Infection game.

There was lots of laughter as boys ran around shooting at each other.  I think they all had a blast!

They stopped for a while to rest.  They had cupcakes and edible nerf darts.  Nicholas opened his birthday presents from his friends.

Time for another game out in the woods.  I love how this friend is loaded up with four Nerf guns!  He is prepared for anything.

I captured an awesome ambush in pictures.  One team is approaching a mound.  They are a little cautious because they know it is a good hiding place.  Did they just see someone back there??

Suddenly heads start popping up from behind the mound and start shooting at them!

Now more boys come out and they all start running after the approaching team! 

Everybody is running now!  Aaahhhhhh!!!!!!!

I love seeing those happy faces as they run for their lives!

The other team is still chasing after them as they are trying to get close enough to shoot them.

What a fun party it was!  Nicholas had a great time with his friends and said it was the "Best. Birthday. Ever!"

After the party we headed to Red, Hot, and Blue for lunch to refuel.  With his actual birthday on Monday and his party on Friday, he has kind of had two full days of birthday celebrations.  He's a happy boy.