A Personal Touch

 I've been working on using my dad's old flannel shirts to make ornaments for my family.  It has been a labor of love - full of roller-coaster emotions.  I'm pretty sure I lost a lot of my fingerprints from super gluing them all together.  My dear friend, Linda, came over with ribbon and helped me put it on all of them with some bells as well.  She had a bow maker that was a lot of fun.  I love how the ornaments turned out.

Sidekicks

 I pulled out all of my dad's flannels to work on a Christmas gift for my family.  The cats immediately felt they should be a part of the project.  The cats used the suitcase as a scratching post, so it's completely shredded and will get thrown away once I've used all the flannels that were housed inside.

Chinese New Year

We always love a good Chinese New Year celebration.  It's become a yearly tradition with the Altmans.  Don't let Little Guy's expression fool you.  He ate more that most of us combined.

Exploring Holidays

Little Guy learned about 5 different holidays that occur in December.  He had quite the number of crafts this week.  His favorite was Christmas in Germany.

A Winter Tablerunner

I bought fabric to make a Winter table-runner last year, but I never got around to making it.  Little Guy's carving into my side table gave me the lacking motivation to piece it together.  Unfortunately, the pointed pattern makes it so only part of the carving is covered.  I'm going to have to. make a rectangular table-runner for Valentine's Day and see if that works better.  It's still pretty though.

Little Guy didn't have school on Friday when I made it, so he wanted to use my scraps to make his own creation.  He sewed together the scraps to make a cat blanket.  I'm not sure Stella knew what to do with it, but Little Guy was very pleased with it.

Happy Thanksgiving

We had a quiet Thanksgiving with Grandma and Grandpa Thompson.  It was lovely.  Joel smoked the turkey and the stuffing and both were delicious.  The boys enjoyed some Thanksgiving crafts as well.

Little Guy did a Macy's Thanksgiving parade project in school, so we watched part of the parade as well.  The boys loved it.

Winding Down

 Everything's trickling home from school and they're basically on all fun mode.  Monday was field day and I'm not sure what else they're doing.  

I liked BB's fractions robot and Owl.

Little Man's Gifted teacher sent me a picture of him presenting a project in class.  I was glad for the little glimpse into his day.  He mostly talks to me about side anecdotes and not what he's learning about.  I hear a lot about the random songs he sings in class.  

Final Projects

Little Lady had a big project she's been working on for a couple of weeks.  They had to pick a book, and read it at home.  They had to create a box with a bunch of different requirements for it and then present it to the class.  Of course, Little Lady wanted to add some bedazzling to the box in organized rows.  

BB has been loving his recent art projects. 

I love that he wrote his name twice, because he's in a phase where he wants to write everything in cursive.  He's been teaching Little Guy how to write all his letters in cursive. 

Mother's Day

 I still enjoy the cute homemade gifts from the kiddos.  It's probably the best part of the day.  Well, and not having to cook or clean anything at all.  That's rather nice as well.

School Art

 Little Guy's theme at preschool was Z is for Zoo.  He loved this theme.  What's there not to love about a lot of animal art projects and coloring?

Little Lady was particularly proud of her last two art projects.  The first is her interpretation of Surrealism.  (Think Salvador Dali)  Her favorite though is the single point composition.  She says this is the best she's ever done at art, and she was really proud of it.  

Big Boy on Campus

Today was Kindergarten Roundup.  Little Guy got to meet all of the Kindergarten teachers, do stations, and make a craft.  He's really excited about going to the same school as his older siblings.  He thought it was pretty cool that he gets his own desk.

For his butterfly he said he wrote the names of Emma and Ben, but that he didn't know how to spell Nathan's name.  Then he apologized for not writing my name and said he'd write it on there when we got home.  He had a great time, and he's definitely ready!

Easter Crafting

 

Little Guy had a whole week of Easter theme at preschool.  He loved it!

We also had some crafting fun Easter weekend.  

We dyed Easter eggs while listening to Music of the Spoken Word Sunday morning. A bunch of the eggs were cracked, so we're going to have some very colorful egg salad this week.

The kiddos also did a bunch of activity pages while during General Conference.  We had a couple over for Easter dinner.   It was a lovely day.