from the home front

This lady came to our home to train her pet falcon, Solo. We have a ginormous amount of starlings here that eat the left over grapes and this falcon takes off and goes in for the kill. The trainer spent time teaching the boys about her pet and it was really neat to see the falcon up close and learn about its different behaviours.
She had all of the equipment of tracking and recording the flight of the bird. She even breeds quail to feed her falcon!

The boys had their first piano recital at an old age home. They were so small behind the grand piano and they had a room full of seniors cheering them on. The bad thing was that this was the only picture that turned out. I had my camera on the wrong setting:(  I asked Nate before hand if he was nervous. Yep, he was. He wanted his bus to blow up on the way home from school so that he wouldn't have to go to the recital!

Caroling at an old age home with some other families. Actually between two of our families there are nine boys and one girl. Lets just say that there is a lot of running between rooms and up and down the hallways, but these kids were good and gave the singing their very best.

Tyler wanted out the whole time, but thankfully our loud singing drowned out some of his wails.

For our little Christmas we made a gingerbread house and then each boy got a book and a small present. When I was a little girl I remember with fondness the book "The Princess Who Never Laughed." For years I have looked for it at garage sales and at second hand stores. I finally gave up and bought it off of amazon and we gave it to Tyler for Christmas. After reading it I put it in a safe place away from little boys who like the excitement of tearing pages out of books.

On Christmas Eve we always get together with my side of the family but this year my mom was in the hospital. So after lots of phone calls we came up with another date and tried not to worry about my poor mom who would be stuck in the hospital. Thankfully she got discharged and suddenly the get-together was on. We scrounged up some food for supper and everyone came over to our home. We were all happy to see mom feeling a lot better and our time together was even more special.

With the weather being so warm, it was easy to spend time decorating the outside and making it all cosy.

We made lots of these bird seed ornaments to give away to teachers and friends. Our tree was full of thankful little chickadees.

When you get sick of making urns, get a big evergreen branch, drape it across and put a birdhouse on top.

My camera lens was foggy from being outside so when I took this picture I was pleased with its effect and then I noticed Andrew's grinning smile on the side. The boys love to decorate their rooms for Christmas and
it is always interesting to see what they will come up with. Going to bed isn't as bad when you have Christmas lights strung up across your room.

Notice that we don't have too many ornaments. As the days went on the ornaments got thrown, smashed, and tossed by a certain little toddler. In the end I moved the remaining ornaments up higher on the tree so that it looked like we started something,and then just gave up with a half decorated Christmas tree!