Christmas 2012

So I'm going to begin catching up on the blog.

First we had our traditional Christmas Eve eating and presents at The Murphy's

All the cousins, except Jovi, at the time (9 kids, 6 and under)

Opening presents:

Then Christmas morning at home:

About to open pressents

Some of which included disguises:

And Umbrellas, which may have been the favorite, at least at first.

Then later that day we went to the Tiemans and had some brunch and opened presents:

Here they are playing with the remote control helicopter 

And then playing outside

Homeschool Space

So our second unit study this year was space.
Parker immediately fell in love with all things Space.
We were actually still technically studying art (which the kids didn't like much) when I checked out about 70 space books from the library.
Parker picked up one book, was mesmerized by the information he found and never stopped learning. So we started the unit early and continued it over a month longer than 'planned' (Big perk of homeschooling:  tailoring to my kids interests!)

We were meant to move on to learning about the Earth next and we have, because Parker thinks "it's okay to learn about the earth, because it's part of space"

And Parker's knowledge of space facts would astound you! He knows what kind of galaxy we live in, what stars are closest to us (after the sun). He can name the planets in order (and in size order) and the dwarf planets, the history and order which the planets and dwarf planets were discovered. Length of each planets day and year and number of moons. Also any distinctive facts about the planet...for example: "Mars has Ice poles and an atmosphere of carbon dioxide and iron rich soil with a diameter a little bigger than Mercury"... Yes he really uses words like iron-rich and atmosphere and diameter. He's such crazy smart kid!

Inspired by our study of space we had field trips to Meteor Crater and Lowell Observatory

Many of his Christmas/Birthday presents were related to space and his entire birthday party was space-themed

A few pictures from our time learning about space:

Playing a space game on the computer, where he gets to make his own planet

I got a big refrigerator box from Lowes, drilled holes in the top and shoved Christmas lights into the holes to make 'stars'

Reading a book (about Saturn) in the star cave

"Napping" (they did not sleep)

Parker didn't wanted to have stars and no planets, so he made the solar system and taped it on the box:

Parker used a bunch of balls to make the solar system outside. The big one is the sun and then he has balls in relative sizes (the smallest ball for Mercury, largest for Jupiter, etc) for the planets around the sun.

Similar scenes happened in our loft pretty often.

Using my music stand and a formerly neglected space shuttle toy to make landings and take-offs.

And then the music stand became Cassini-Huygens.

Yes, I'm sure you didn't know that Cassini-Huygens was the name of the spacecraft sent to orbit Saturn and it's moons, but my 4 year old did!

Some more incredibly smart/adorable quotes from Parker about space:

"Mom, I think Mercury and Jupiter must not have seasons, because their axis' are like this" (putting his arms straight up and down vertically). It actually took me a second to realize he was right. If there is no tilt to the axis, then there are no seasons.

"I think if we lived on the sun we would not need a calendar" I thought he was being silly, but realized he was a genius when he explained that it would always be day and there is no year because it's not rotating around a star.

Pretending to be the Universe (Yes he was really pretending that he was the universe, as in... the whole entire universe) He said it was really hard to move around because "Whoa, I'm everything."

For a long time he would call me different planets, but not by name, by distinctive characteristics of a planet. For example:
Parker: I'm hungry you ten hour planet!
Mom: Did you just call me Jupiter, you fastest planet? (Jupiter's day is about 10 hours long)
Parker Yes! Did you just call me Mercury, you planet closest to us?
and on, and on, and on... this sometimes went on for 30 minutes at a time.

We started talking about how much we love each other in terms of space. I love you more than Jupiter's diameter, and I love you more than the time it takes Neptune to revolve around the sun!
And his primary teacher said they were talking about how much God and Jesus love the kids and Parker said "Yes, Jesus loves us more than the time that Neptune goes around the sun!" So Funny!

Bowling

We went bowling over the summer and the kids really seemed to like it, so when we got a good coupon we went again. We were able to bowl three games- And I am proud to say that I won two of them (Aria won one) I'm not great at bowling...

But it was super fun!

Posing with the bowling balls:

Aria taking a video as Parker watched his ball roll down the lane.

The kids are not so strong so the balls went SO slowly done the lane most of the time, and got stuck more times than I can remember.

I took a whole pile of videos while we were there, some of the bowling and some of the kids messing around while we were there. So I made a playlist of all of them, and you can click here to view them

New Glasses

I got two new pairs of glasses, and I LOVE them:

And the best part is I bought them online and both pairs plus the eye exam were cheaper than I used to pay for a single pair!

Candlelight Dinner

Parker wanted to have dinner by candlelight...

So we did.

Colored Bath

We do a lot of different kids of baths, many involving food dye.

One time I put colored water into a pile of squirt/spray bottles we have and then stuck them in the bath with the kids

Fun times followed:

Fake Snow at the Outlets

A new outlet mall opened not far from our house and they were having 'snow' falling for the first weekend in December. 

Aria in the 'snow' (which was made of little soap suds since it was about 85 degrees out):

Parker, who was refusing to enjoy himself:

Terra, just taking it in, she ended up loving it!

playing with the snow on the ground

They had a big old tree there and I tried to get a picture of the kids in front of it...

Well, it was worth a shot.

Ward Party!!

We only have couple pictures from our ward Christmas party.

Sharing the hot chocolate and cookies in our PJs:

We watched some videos, the kids made ornaments, sang a couple songs and then the kids didn't want to see Santa when he came in so we headed home and went to bed.

While we were there, Jason tried to convince the kids to take a picture by doing one himself:

The kids were still unwilling to get their picture, but now Jason will love me forever for posting this publicly!

Temple Lights

We went to see the Christmas lights down at the Mesa Temple.

We went early in the 'season' so it wasn't busy at all and it was an unusually warm night (Jason and I were just wearing t-shirts). Basically we picked an awesome night to go! 

We looked around and Aria kept squatting down to get a look at different lights/exhibits

The girls took a rest here:

And then we saw my parents, they were 'hosts' for the evening so they took some pictures for us:

Meteor Crater

As I've already said a few times, Parker LOVES space.

So on our way home, We took a detour as we left the cabin to visit Meteor Crater

Cool Stuff about Meteor Crater:

--It's the crater that Shumaker studied and used to prove that many craters on Earth were caused by meteors, and not just volcanoes. (from this also came the idea of a meteor causing the extinction of the dinosaurs)

--Since Meteor crater was in some ways similar to the surface of the moon the Apollo mission trained for their moon walks at Meteor Crater.

Aria wanted me to take a picture of her with this tree.

One of the Apollo test modules

Me and my babies with a view behind us:

There were all kinds of stuff inside the museum so you could learn about meteors and stuff. I'm sad (and so was Parker) that we kind of had to rush through this part since it was getting to be naptime, and the girls were making it known.

we also got to watch a short film about the history of Meteor Crater.

Aria is such a lightweight she has a hard time keeping theater seats flat.

And then we hiked down to the bottom of the crater, see:

Obviously not, but they had this display so it could look like you were down at the bottom.

Hanging out at a lookout point

Silly wiggly Aria

Taking a closer look:

how many 4 year olds do you know that would be excited about a view like this?

Parker liked it though, since it was caused by a meteor and meteors come from space.

Another successful family field trip!