The Tiemans

The Tiemans

Sunday, November 1, 2015

Christmas Stuff

A bunch of pictures of our activities leading up to Christmas 2014

Decorating the big tree downstairs
The downstairs tree
The kids also got their own tree upstairs that they decorated their own way, and mostly with their own homemade decorations



The kids tree
Contact paper and green cellophane




Color sample Christmas trees




Making glue ornaments
A few of the glue ornaments after they dried
Trees made from foam and stickers
Parker just made these on his own.
Little presents with yarn to hang them on the tree

The kids also helped me make cinnamon dough, and we rolled and cut out Christmas shapes.
After they dries we painted them



Finished cinnamon dough ornaments


Handprint Santa Claus
The handprint Santa's were actually done at Glendale Glitters.
Speaking of which....

We went to Glendale Glitters. A friend who teaches dance was asked to set up a flash mob for on of the nights and we got to be a part of it. 

So Parker and I were part of a flash mob dancing to Justin Beiber at Glendale Glitters

If I can I will add the awful video of us dancing, but here are some pics of the night


Anna and Elsa were part of the flash-mob as well and the kids wanted a picture with them



Then There's the food:
We baked sugar cookies together and the kids decorated them for family home evening.



Cookies

And of course, we ate them afterwards

For family home evening another week we tried to make graham cracker "gingerbread" houses. 
A bit of a fail, since they wouldn't stand tall, but the they were fun and got decorated/eaten all the same


A lot of the treats from our advent were just candy but we got creative with a few:
grape/strawberry Santas

Banana Strawberry candy canes



Our ward had a Christmas party and only a couple of our kids would go sit with Santa, but that's ok, since he isn't real anyway ;)





We played with goop (cornstarch and water) dyed in Christmas colors and scented with peppermint for a little Christmas themed sensory activity:



At the Childrens Museum they made wreathes that also ended up on the kids' Christmas tree



Monday, October 12, 2015

Temple Lights

We went to go see the Christmas lights at the Mesa Temple again.
Basically it's one of my favorite parts of the holidays

We got there early and ate a picnic dinner at the Temple, just as the lights were turning on, then as it got dark we go to look around.

The pictures while we were eating dinner:




Touring the visitors center:


My whole wonderful family:

November Pictures

Just a couple of pictures to wrap up November:

The kids in front of a local farm that grew flowers.
They saw them in bloom and wanted to stop and see.


Now that I'm adding a caption, I'm not exactly sure why I added this picture?
But it's my cute Terra taking a selfie.

Parker was part of a chess club for a little while and ho LOVED playing chess.
He's a thinker though, so playing with him would take soooooo long. 
We found a solution. 
He would sit at the kitchen island while I made dinner. I could prep and cook while he thought about his move, then I would move and repeat.


Goofy Parker

And my baby...
I think one of the girls took these pictures



More of my adorable baby boy


Cars

Corin became obsessed with cars around 9 months old.
He still is as of my writing this (24 months old)

He loves to play with little cars, ride on bigger toy cars, and watch cars.

He loves seeing big trucks drive by us on while we're driving. 

When we would go to the Children's museum his favorite thing was to have me hold him up in the window so he could watch the traffic drive by on 7th street. 
With all the awesome stuff at the museum, he still just wanted to watch cars drive by.


When we would head outside he would spend most of his time at the gate watching the cars:


Even a couple of times we went to McDonalds for someone's birthday lunch and he would rather watch cars drive by out the the window than play on the play structure.

Sunday, October 4, 2015

Free Enterprise Day

One of our homeschool groups had a free enterprise day.

Parker had recently read the Origami Yoda series and was super into making origami Yodas.
So he made some of those and we worked together on Jabba the puppet, Fortune Wookies, Darth papers and origami light sabers.

We made 5 different kinds of popcorn.
Butter, Kettle, Chocolate, Garlic and Caramel
The garlic was a surprisingly big hit even among the kids (I thought it would be more for the adults)



Here's what Corin did for most of the time:

The kids loved helping to make the origami and the popcorn.
They REALLY loved making money from it and then going and spending that money on other stuff that the other families made.

Thursday, October 1, 2015

Crafts

Some random pictures of crafts from the end of November

Painting on ice:
You can wash it off and paint again. 
They liked this more than I thought they would.
Because seriously... it's not that different from painting paper, right? But new and different if pretty much always fun for kids, right?

We made "stilts" with the empty No. 10 cans



Salt tray

they played and dumped, and then practiced drawing/writing.

Turkey. 
They made patterns with buttons, then colored with bingo dotters