No, I'm sure it's not surprising that the kids played Minecraft, but this time they played in Festive world, which is the Christmas world on Minecraft. We listened to the "Friendsgiving" station on Pandora while the tree was brought up from the basement. Though it's not a traditional Thanksgiving thing to do, we set up the tree. The kids loved watching it go up in the background while they played Minecraft. They had a lot of fun exploring all the different places they could go. They found things out like the presents were made of wool. It was great to see them working together to build their house, and to hear their comments as they flew through Santa's Workshop.
I absolutely love the idea of making these little pot holder things. They're great for the manual dexterity thing. It's not exactly easy to weave those loops through each other to get them hooked at either edge. It takes patience to work through each segment, making sure that everything is crossed the right way and over or under both sides of the loop it's passing. I ended up weaving the edge together because that part is frustrating and challenging, even for me, and I'm an adult. As much as I used to love doing those as a kid, I can't help but think how complicated the craft really was. The funny thing is I used to love doing them when I was younger, but now it boggles my mind how I did it all those years. It's kind of a pain to work with.
I'll be honest, I expected to put half of what we made away for later. Instead we ended up eating most of it. There were no potatoes left, only about a single serving of green beans, not enough corn to save, a decent amount of cranberry sauce, and small bowls of both stuffing and carrots. Of course, there was a decent amount of turkey, but the leftovers only lasted us one more day. I didn't plan for that at all. I mean, we are a big family, so that's something, but those kids can really put away some food!
Eventually I'd like to get to the point where the big tree is decorated with nothing but ornaments that were made by the family. That would really make me happy. That's a tall order if I were just going to keep it to the immediate family, but there are some nice pieces that will stay from my extended family as well. I just really like knowing that the ornaments each have a history, they were made by someone and that makes them special. That means a lot to me. I'd even be happy to extend that to friends who are close enough to be family. Whatever gets the tree covered with pieces from important people in our lives.
Last year we had four trees, the big one, the Frozen tree, "the owl tree," and "the weird tree." Each kid had a tree of their own where their presents sat. This year we're going to be doing the same, with some modifications. Each of the kids has picked their "tree." I use that term loosely because Creeper decided he didn't want a tree this year. He wants to use his Christmas cactus instead. Link is getting "the weird tree," which is nothing more than an overgrown bonsai style tree. that poor tree has taken a lot of abuse and kind of looks more like a Charlie Brown tree these days. The big tree goes to Pinkie, just like last year. The Frozen tree goes to Bear, since Bear was the one who selected everything to make it the Frozen tree in the first place. Finally, "the owl tree," which is another Norfolk Island Pine with a glow in the dark owl post stuck in the pot, belongs to the adults that will be celebrating Christmas with us this year.
by Dennis Brindell Fradin and 
by Martin Hintz and Kate Hintz. I know my daughter and her love of holidays, so that didn't surprise me. Given Thanksgiving is not that far after Halloween, she decided to pick up 
as a part of the Finding Out About The Holidays series and 
from the What Really Happened series. She also thought 
would be fun since she enjoys 
so much. Both of my older kids seem to love the Alphabet Books Series. It combines a holiday with Pilgrims! What could be cooler? None of these selections really surprised me, not knowing my daughter the way I do.
from the Spotlight on American History series and 
from the series of books bearing similar names. The kids have all been watching 
(almost to death) and Mrs. Banks just so happens to be a Suffragette. I have to admit, I kind of expected her to find interest in the Women's Suffrage movement eventually, what with her mother being a feminist and all. We read You Wouldn't Want to Be a Suffragist already and she had a lot of opinions about it. We talked about the feminist movement, how some people to this day think women aren't as good as men. She asked about why I changed my name when I got married, then we talked about how in some states, such as Texas, a baby born when a woman is married is required by law to take the husband's last name, whether the wife wants the child to have her husband's last name or not. For example, if my last name was hyphenated, like...say...Smith-Adams, and my husband's last name was Adams and was never hyphenated, all of my children's names would have to be Adams unless I went through a legal name change to have it changed to Smith, or Smith-Adams. We also talked about the way some people think jobs, like being a scientist, doctor, or engineer, aren't women's jobs, and sometimes women have to work twice as hard to prove they're just as good, if not better than the men. I had personal experience with that in my robotics class in high school. Several times the teacher asked one of the boys to help me because "they were stronger" or he "didn't want me getting hurt". The boys didn't want to work with me because no one wanted to be put on a build team with a girl. It was frustrating. She didn't think that was very fair at all. We talked about how the Women's Suffrage Movement actually paved the way for a lot of the progress more modern feminists have made. It was a wonderful conversation and I can't wait until we can sit down with that other book. I'm even learning something too!
from the Truth and Rumors series. Shortly after she picked out the holiday books she wanted, she saw a binding with a word she definitely knew how to read 
from the Eyewitness Books series. I could have sworn we had that book at home, but she swears we didn't. Only thing I can think is maybe I'd seen it before, either when I was in school or when I was working as a nanny. We haven't read through the Eyewitness book yet, but she loved the Truth and Rumors book. She had a good time trying to guess if each story was true or a rumor. It contained some really fun facts and some fancy new words that she'd never heard before, like cholera, cryonic freezing, cremate, asphalt, embalmer, and resin. She was thrilled to know that the oldest mummy known in existence was actually a dinosaur, not a person, and that there was a mummified baby mammoth too. She's decided that mummies are now the new cool and interesting thing to know anything about, as well as archaeologists. She thinks the most fascinating thing about archaeologists is trying to put together ideas about what people they've never met are doing from clues like the things they used, the pictures they drew, and the monuments and buildings they left behind. I think her interest in mummies is going to take us far beyond the realm of mummies and into a whole new realm of discovery about history, learning about things that happened because there's some great mystery to solve. You don't know anything about the people. You can't talk to them. You just have to solve the mystery. Now that I think about it, a friend of hers did have a live action/role play mystery birthday party, so maybe that's where she picked up her new love of mysteries.