Christmas-y

Merry Christmas! This post is mostly about what we did in December, and that was mostly Christmas-y stuff! But first, Silly Susannie with her beloved pacifiers, one in her mouth, and one for each pointer finger. This is how well supplied Susanna likes to be. 

One day, while everyone else was having a long winter's nap, Nora and I took a walk around the neighborhood which was very special. Here she is posing on the dam.

Now onto Christmas-y stuff . . .

We celebrated Santa Lucia day with our homeschool friends and it was very special for the girls.

Nora made a lovely Christmas paper plate necklace.

On another neighborhood walk, Nora decided we needed to be more festive and found Ella a bunch of pine needles and herself a little stick to tuck in their collars.

We went to an ornament making party at our local favorite Bull City Craft and the girls painted nutcracker ornaments while Susanna and I looked on.

And today is the big day! It was wonderful and low key. Maybe you'll hear more, maybe not, no promises. The blogging has been patchy lately. But I am happy to say I beat the number of posts from last year by 2 so far! Woo! See you again soon, maybe *next year* wink wink. : )

A sparkly Halloween

Thanksgiving

Off to ballet!

Schoolin

The McCall family homeschool is in session this fall! We are getting into the swing of things. I am loving that we get to set our own swing of things. So far this lifestyle is great for us. We are having a lot of fun learning about our neck of the woods, how to read, etc. Here are some snippets. (For more, visit sparklingspiders.blogspot.com.)

We have been watching the birds in our backyard and attempting to lure them closer with pinecone bird feeders. These were more successful than I hoped and are now pretty much picked clean.

We've also just been collecting some (lots of) cool nature specimens like the whoseywhatsit Susanna is examining below. Yes, that is the technical name, a homeschool teacher must be strict about that kind of thing.

As part of our tree study, we practiced some stick/wood appreciation and built teepees and log cabins out of the materials our trees so generously provided.

Our pretty lake . . .

One morning when we needed to shake off a funk, we went to the NC Museum of Art. We played outside in their landscape art area once we had exhausted our approximately 13 minutes of attention span for the indoor pictures. (Not bad right?)

We found some gorgeous blueberry looking things growing on the edge of the path.

And some pink grass

And a sculptural backdrop for a pretty photo

And a heron on the edge of the pond!

And a cool leaf

Then it was time to pose with the leaf.

Then it was time to just pose.

Susanna did some collecting too.

I love this sculpture. It looks like a real tree, but it is gleaming silver. So cool.

We have some friends in town who also are a family with three daughters and we have been getting together once a week to play and do some larger group activities together.

So far we give homeschool an A+!