Last day of school...

...before Christmas holidays!

You see, what I continue to learn about home schooling is that:

WE make our schedule!

SO, when I was looking forward to our schedule for next week,

I realized that we were starting 3 new units

 in grammar, science and spelling. 

Then it hit me...

let's take our break starting NOW!

We don't have to take the same break as the public school,

because WE make our schedule!

So this next photo is Noah's LAST work before Christmas break began....

a math test!

He was super stressed and feared he would rush to finish!

INSTEAD, he ended up taking extra time!

I was SO proud...

he ended up getting 18.5/20 on this test!

WAY TO GO, Noah!!!

This next photo is the moment he completed his test!

Onto the video games!!!

So:

here's to Christmas VACATION where I'm sure we'll

play too many video games

watch too much TV

and

eat way too much food!

Let the HOLIDAY'S begin!!!



My favourite gift

One day, we were baking away when Noah left the kitchen.

He said, 'Mom, look at the Christmas tree?', where he was sitting like this! 

What a character!

What could a MOM ask for to beat THIS gift of a child!

Well, I know for me - this is by far MY favourite Christmas present this year!!!

Amazing Grace, by Noah

I can't even say how PROUD I am of Noah's performance at our Christmas church service last Sunday!


Way to go, Noah! Keep up your hard work and lots of practice. PLEASE don't give up because you have great talent!

My little helper this year!

I made a little boo-boo, by starting to wrap the Christmas presents when Noah was still working on school work - BIG mistake!  Geesh, WHAT was I thinking??? LOL 
This year, my little helper wanted to help with EVERYTHING Christmas, including wrapping!

Thanks for your help this year, buddy!!!

He did a pretty good job, for his first year, I must say!

I'm so happy I had help wrapping this year, considering I was at it (or wrapping) for almost 4 hours one afternoon!

Truly Enjoying the Season

I LOVE Christmas! 

Even though sometimes I demonstrate stress while trying to get everything done, I still LOVE it!

I think the part about Christmas that I love the most is: the JOY of GIVING.

It brings my heart such pure JOY to give.  It makes me feel happy and warm. 

When you think about the true meaning of Christmas, isn't this it - GIVING???  Christmas is ALL about baby Jesus.  Didn't God GIVE us Jesus.

TODAY, if you read this will you do ONE thing for me???  Will you GIVE something of yourself to just ONE person?  Pay for the coffee of someone behind you in the Tim Horton's drive through.  Offer to carry an elderly person's groceries to their car.  Make someone going through a hard time a meal and take it to them.  Anything that YOU can do, WILL (I promise) brighten their day.
 

Most years, I have all my shopping done, tree up and presents wrapped by December 1.  Some people make fun of me, while others think I'm crazy - and that's OK because I know WHY I operate this way.

You wanna know why???  Each year, I dislike that December is often consumed by running around, shopping in busy malls, rushing and missing the reason of the season.

I get all my Christmas stuff done, so that in December we can enJOY the reason of the season.  We have time to read from our homemade advent calender each day, we have time to make Gingerbread houses with kids, we have time to visit friends, we have time to deliver our home made presents, we have time to create rice crispy snowmen, we have time to celebrate JESUS.

This year, I hadn't been so sure that I would have it all done in time but I do, I did.  I got it all done.  This Tuesday, I mailed out the last of our Christmas greetings and presents to my family far away.

NOW...all we are doing is enJOYing the reason of the season!  We're visiting, we're baking, we're having lots of friends over to visit.  Best of all, we are finishing our school work up and were done as of TODAY for our Christmas Break.  YAY!

So when you go out there today....enjoy ALL the seasonal happenings!

Merry Christmas Stalbaums 2010

A little memory of our time together in the summer!

To Do List

Since all my craft shows have finished, I've had a MAJOR to do list that I've slowly been checking off! 

I was behind on all my Christmas 'duties' and our house has a been a mess!

Well...I've been working hard on depleting the items on this list and it's finally getting smaller.  I'm starting to feel caught up again, just a few more things to do to finish and be back to complete normal!

We actually went visiting all day Sunday, what a thrill that was for me!  I say 'I feel like I've been so out of touch" this fall with all the craft shows, but truth be told - I HAVE been out of touch.

NOT ANY MORE though...life IS officially back to normal!

The only thing I have left is putting all the jewelry into semi storage, rather than having it all out.

This is the last of it, that I should have done by the end of the week.

YAY!

Life feels balanced again, and I feel great!