Changed By Love

Changed By Love

Following the Lamb wherever he goes… Revelation 14:4

Little Birthday Party for the Littles

We’re all gathered, anxiously awaiting the blowing out of the candles.  Emma gets to go first since she’s the youngest and will probably scream if we let anybody else go first.

We’re singing so sweetly.  Can you tell?

Emma climbs up on the table to blow out her candles.

Now it’s Garrett’s turn.

It looks like Morgan helped him blow out his candles.

Now we’re opening presents.  We use Christmas wrapping paper for these birthdays.  Can you blame us?  Five birthdays occur between Dec. 31 and Jan. 10.  What other wrapping paper would you expect us to use?

Little Birthday Party for the Littles from Penney Douglas on Vimeo.

And, finally, Fiona gets her turn to blow out the candles.  Her cake was the last to get done.  Three cakes is a lot to bake in one day.  Especially when I just decided in the middle of the day that we were going to go ahead and have the birthday party that night!  That’s after taking Nelson to the airport and little ones shopping for presents and returning the rental car. That was one full day. Fortunately,  Katie made the strawberry cake. I only had to bake two cakes. I never used to make cakes at all, because I don’t like cake. But I found some cakes that are worth the eating, and now I’m pretty good at making them.

Did I say I don’t like cake?  Well, I like my cakes.  We have three different cakes that the kids choose between for their birthdays.  Strawberry 7-Up cake, lemon cake that’s a special recipe from a former co-worker of Gary’s, or chocolate pudding cake.  They are all moist and yummy!  So for this birthday, we had all three kinds.  And, of course, I had to try them all to make sure they were good. 🙂

Sometimes I let them choose an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen.  Those are pretty scrumpdillyicious, too.  But we don’t usually get those for the January birthdays.

Another Sign that Christmas is Coming

IT’S SNOWING!

We’re having a white Christmas. Kelsey was dreaming of a white Christmas. And her dream has come true.

We’ve had a nice homey, family Christmas atmosphere in our house.  It may not be Christmas anywhere else, but it is here!

This house has so many nice elements that make it cozy and homey. The gas fireplace is a big one. I love looking over and seeing the fire burning in the fireplace. It just makes me feel good and warm and secure.

And the windows are so big and beautiful and let us see the outside while we’re warm and comfy inside.

And now we have snow! It snowed quite a bit one day last week, and the kids went out and threw snowballs at each other.

But today the snow was really good packing snow, and there was lots of it. It snowed almost all day. So they went out and built snowmen.

The little stinker came and threw a snowball at me. I wasn't even wearing a coat. Foul!

Each snowman had its own unique personality.

Kelsey and Morgan named this guy Johnson.

I thought Anna’s looked like Cleopatra.

Fiona’s looked a little bit like her.

I supplied hot chocolate for everyone.

Fiona got in some photography practice using the adorable Abby as her subject.

Don't ask me. Lots of strange things happen around here. And nobody did them!

Chocolate Makes the World Go Around – At Least in Hershey, PA

Last weekend, we got to take our first family field trip in a long time. We rented a car so we could all go.

I wouldn’t mind living on Chocolate Avenue!

The streetlights are shaped like Hershey's Kisses!

Untitled from Penney Douglas on Vimeo.

No, we didn't buy it. But we were mighty tempted to!

Those exotic trees have some BIG leaves!
A Geometry lesson?

We had a great time! We took the free tour and found out how they make chocolate for Hershey’s chocolate. We read some things about Milton S. Hershey and were impressed with his philanthropy. He built a town for his employees and gave them public transportation, libraries, schools, a museum, a theater, a stadium and a hospital.

The town of Hershey is known as “The Sweetest Place on Earth”. We certainly had a sweet time there!

We brought home loads of chocolate and enjoyed it to the last bite. With all the chocolate lovers in this family, it didn’t last long. They try to act like I’m the only chocoholic, but I didn’t really eat that much of it. Honest!

Snowflakes

I made my first intricate, elaborate snowflake just now. I may be the only mom who doesn’t know how to do this, but in case I’m not, I wanted to share this with my readers.

One tip I learned from another video is the less paper that shows, the prettier your snowflake will look. The most important thing to know is the correct way to fold the paper to get a six-sided shape.

Here are some more of the snowflakes Garrett and Fiona and Emma and I made.

Snowflake Bentley

If these videos and pictures of snowflakes make you want to learn more about snowflakes, you should read this book about a man who studied snowflakes for 50 years! Snowflake Bentley (Wilson A. Bentley) was the first person to photograph a snow crystal. He developed his own camera, using a microscope with a bellows camera, after years of trial and error. He kept on trying even though lots of people thought it was silly to care so much about snow since it was as common as dirt where he lived in Vermont. He was the one who made the amazing discovery that no two snowflakes are alike.

Here is a wonderful article about a mother reading the picture book, Snowflake Bentley, by Jaqueline Briggs Martin, to her children. She is a very good writer. She also reviews another book about snowflakes in this article.

Here is the official website of Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley.

This site reviews the book Snowflake Bentley and gives lots of ideas for a unit study about snow.

Here is a really neat website that focuses on the art aspect of the picture book, Snowflake Bentley. She gives some neat ideas of art projects that you can do with your children that relate to the book and would make it even more fun.

At the Snowflake Bentley Exhibit you can see the actual photographs that he took and see the camera he invented to enable him to photograph these fast-melting wonders of nature. You can also play a snowflake-matching game. At the bottom of the page you can click on the button that says Snowflake Display and see Original Wilson Bentley images.

Here’s a short biography of Wilson Bentley.

A fun quiz to take that could take you or your child from rags to riches faster than Wilson Bentley did!

“There are several project packs and lapbook packs related to snow at Hands of a Child. Just type in “snow” in the search box.

And there are two snow freebies from Currclick on this page. Just scroll down to the two titles that start with “snow”.