Yesterday we had the privilege of going to the Lerner Theater to listen to an Anna Hagen concert. She plays harp, but not necessarily “harp music”. Anna shared a wide variety of genres and many hymns. My favorite was the baroque flamenco!
While grocery shopping, I discovered nuts on sale for $.99 a pound. I bought a few bags of almonds and hazelnuts for us to enjoy. Just for fun, we decided to make home made Nutella. It was super easy, once the nuts were cracked, and better than store bought!
When I went shopping a week later, I bought the remaining two bags of hazelnuts. Maybe this batch will be shared a little better with the whole family.
For Christmas this year, the family was surprised with an envelope from Santa on Christmas day. In the envelope was a candy cane seed kit!
It was a pretty neat kit. There were six seeds, but only five came up. There was also white and red fertilizer and soil. The seed packet said that the seeds were very rare and only grew in perfect conditions, so I am glad that Santa shared some with us this year.
We supplied our own bowl and used the bag the soil came in to cover the seeds like the directions said. If we receive candy cane seeds again, we would use a deeper bowl since the full grown candy cane plants all fell over so we do not know how tall they would have grown if they had the chance. We were hoping the canes would flower and grow new seeds, but once they fell over, we were afraid they would not be so nice.
The kids thought the candy canes were really good. They decided that candy cane seeds must be related to bamboo since they grew so quickly. Megan said North Pole candy canes tasted more pepperminty and they thought they had a cleaner, fresher taste.
It has been very cold out, but we have been enjoying going out and playing with bubbles. Yesterday we were out for hours, experimenting as the day warmed up slightly. We also used different bubble solutions and different ways to blow bubbles. It was a fun science experiment!
We even had fun destroying the frozen bubbles.
If you click on a thumbnail, you can see a larger sized slideshow of the pictures.
We went looking for a Christmas tree this weekend. We were disappointed that the ones at the tree farm were already turning brown or very misshapen. We could not find anything that we liked. We returned home without a tree.
We are not sure if we are going to try another tree farm, find an already cut one, or buy an artificial tree. So, for now, our living room is decorated with lots of stars and lights. A good reminder that Christ is the light of the world (John 8:12)!
On Friday we went to a Western Michigan Broncos verses Toledo Rockets football game. It was the first football game I have been to since high school and the first one the kids have ever been to.
It was extremely crowded and it drizzled on and off all during the game. Megan snuggled with her uncles for the first part of the game and then came to keep Allan and me warm. Even though we did not understand the whole game, we all enjoyed it and were glad that we went.
Megan especially liked the marching band and the color guard.She was disappointed when that part was over. However, when we left before the last quarter since we did not want to be caught in the crowds leaving, she was excited to ride in the back of a golf cart. We were thankful for those carts because we had parked the car a lot further than we remembered!
We learned later that the Broncos won 55-35.
According to Mark, I have too many pets. I have two jars of sauerkraut on the counter, a huge batch of sourdough starter in the fridge and kombucha in various stages.
I wonder what other “pets” I should add?
The kids have been collecting Junior Ranger badges at every National Park we visit if we have time to work on them. Â If we are just passing through, it is hard to complete the work needed properly.
In order for the children to earn their Junior Ranger badges, there are different activities to complete in a workbook.  The younger you are, the easier to earn a badge, though Megan tried to do everything in her book. They also needed to interview a ranger and attend a ranger led activity. They were able to finish both projects the first day, though it took longer to finish their books.
They also had the opportunity to earn centennial Junior Ranger Badges. There was a separate book with different activities. Â The kids enjoyed working on that book also.
All of the children earned Junior Ranger patches and their centennial Junior Ranger Badges.
Just for fun, I took our family portrait at the 4-H fair parade yesterday.
My favorite fire work from last night!