Weekly Recap: The End of the Year

Last week I forgot to include a little about our last homeschool day of the year. It was a science lesson and we learned about magnets. It was fun to experiment!

Ring magnets

On Christmas Eve, Saturday, we got our house cleaned and ready, as we do every weekend, but especially for Christmas! I made our Christmas breakfast - a sausage, pepper, and egg casserole, and butterscotch sticky rolls. We discovered our tub still leaks.. LOTS! It turns out that we needed plumbers putty to put the new part in the drain. Now that we've learned that tidbit of info we're good for any other similar leaks. Thank goodness it didn't cause any damage to the house! That night we attended our annual Christmas Eve dinner and family party at my father-in-law's house.

Christmas brought a lot more fun with family and a great sacrament meeting at church. We were glad to visit with so many of our family members afterwards. We've discussed traditions in a few school and church lessons this year, and somewhere in there I recall a comment about how as families grow, traditions should grow and change with them. Never hang on to a tradition because "It's what we've always done." Change them as needed for your family. That has never been more clear to me than it was this year. We had a great Christmas snowstorm this year! My husband says this is not an official measurement because it is on the balcony railing, but it's good enough for me to remember that it was a nice storm!

On Monday I decided to rearrange our food storage room and install a new set of shelves. I was tired of things being stored on the floor. I wish I had taken a before picture but I didn't even think about it! You can read about that adventure here. We were so tired after all that work that we had Chick-Fil-A for dinner.

Tuesday brought more reorganizing for me, a first attempt to use our new ice cream maker, and a sad day for our youngest. One of her Christmas toys disappeared. We racked our brains thinking of every time it was used or moved. Baby brother panda twin is in Christmas pictures, he explored his new home on Monday, and he was in my youngest's hand when she carried her box of toys downstairs Monday afternoon. She dropped the box on the stairs and he hasn't been seen since.  We've searched everywhere, even through both the trash and recycling bins, and can't find him. I hope he turns up soon! A pair of scissors disappeared that day too, but we're less worried about them.

(Guess what... about 10 minutes after I published this post I had a thought about something my youngest was doing around the time baby panda disappeared. I love when the Holy Ghost speaks to me. Baby panda has been located and is safely tucked in with his family!)

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday have been the days that all the holiday sugar caught up with us. Everyone except my son has a cold to some degree, and the girls don't have anything more than a little sniffle. I was in such bad shape the first two days that I stayed in my room hoping my headache and fever would pass. Thank goodness we're all feeling better, and hopefully we're back to 100% soon! My husband's second job ended as well, it was seasonal but with a possibility of lasting longer. That didn't turn out but we hope he'll be able to get back on if they have openings soon. During the time I've been sick my kids have been making dinner. I'm really glad I've let them work in the kitchen frequently!


Tonight we're having our New Years Eve party. It's a day early but none of us wants to stay up late Saturday night because we have church early in the day in 2017. Not that we ever stay up too late anyway, but party for us means stay up later than usual, watch a movie, and eat finger food. Maybe a game or two.

Until next year! ;)

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