Winter Wonderland (in November?)

We've been shocked at how early the stores have begun Christmas displays, it's actually very confusing to the younger kids. Every time we walk past that Christmas tree all decked out in basketball sized bulbs, Krystal says,"Is today Christmas Mommy?" My usual response, "Not until after Thanksgiving, then we can start thinking about Christmas." But apparently Mother Nature has a contract with the marketing companies because November 18, we wake up to this! Our house in the snow.

Part of the backyard in the snow.

Eskimo Amber in the snow.

Clarissa, Krystal, and their friend Sariah, frozen, but happy!

Jared's attempt at the biggest snowman our family has ever built. Unfortunately the snow melted pretty quickly so the snowman will have to wait until the next snowfall for the rest of his body.

Caps for Sale

For school on Monday, we read "Caps for Sale" by Esphyr Slobodkina. Cute story, plus it inspired all sorts of fun activities. We pulled out all our caps and hats and the kids tried to see how many they could get on their head at one time. Then we did some math activities for all ages, ranging from sorting the hats in colors, estimating how many there were of each, graphing how many of each to more compicated equations involving money and multiplication.

Isn't she cute?!

Clarissa got glasses! For a while, I've suspected that she needed them. She was straining to read words in a book and couldn't read from across the room when I write on the white board. Turns out, it's a stigmatism. We picked up her glasses on Saturday, she wore them to church and on Monday for school work. She's still getting used to them. She chose a purple pair.

And a pink pair. I find it interesting that she didn't smile much for the pictures, I think she felt like she was hiding behind her glasses. It'll take some time I guess before they are a part of her.

A busy Halloween

Now that I finally got the costumes washed and put away, I can post Halloween pictures. Our Halloween began on Saturday, Oct. 25 with pumpkin carving and painting. Amber did not want to reach in her pumpkin to get out the seeds, but she did enjoy the painting part. The pumpkins came out really cute, but I forgot to take pictures, I was too busy roasting (and eating) the seeds. Saturday evening, Chris and I chaperoned for the youth dance. It was a costume dance, and it just so happened that two of the young women were dressed up as Peter Pan and Tinkerbell, so we fit right in as Captian Hook and Wendy.

Here's an action picture of the Peter Pan clan. Sunday after church, Chris flew to Illinois for work, not to be back until Friday. We kept ourselves so busy we barely noticed he was gone until Wednesday when we all dressed up for trunk or treat at the church and didn't have our Captian Hook. It was a pretty hectic evening, so I didn't get any pictures.

Friday, Chris came home and we all dressed up and went to a Halloween party at our friends house and trick or treating in their neighborhood (our neighborhood consists of about 10 houses).

Chris is Captian Hook, I'm Wendy, Jared is Peter Pan, Clarissa is one of the mermaids, Krystal is Tinkerbell, and Amber is Tigerlily. We had a lot of fun making costumes, getting dressed up and got loads of candy!

Last, but not least. Jared played his first game of guitar hero. Our friend was so excited that she finally won a game of guitar hero, she said she'd play against Jared any time.

The rooms of a child's mind

Jared describes the way a child learns as thus: "It's like your mind is full of rooms. Each room holds information about different things. Every time you learn something new, it's like a little person goes around your mind trying to find a room to put it in. Sometimes there isn't a room that it will fit in, so you have to open a new door and put it in a new room."

The other day I was giving Krystal a bath and when I told her it was time to get out, she responded that she wasn't done playing "Water Wally." I had never heard of this game before and asked her about it, except that this time when she said "Water Wally" it sounded more like "Walter Raleigh." Being that we had recently studied Sir Walter Raleigh and the Roanoke colony, I thought she must surely mean Walter Raleigh. However when I said, "Do you mean Walter Raleigh?" she said, "No, Water Wally!" So I was left a little confused, but quickly forgot said incident. Until tonight.

Krystal's friend Janet came over to play. Janet took off new shoes at the door, getting ready to go play and all of a sudden up came the name "Water Wally" again. Clarissa says to me, "Mom, remember that guy we were learning about? These are his eyes (pointing to Janet's shoes). To my amazement, she was pointing to the eyes of WALL-E, the character from the movie (The movie my kids have not yet seen).

So, the detective in me says that upon hearing the name Walter Raleigh, that little person who lives in the mind of my children went searching for a room to put him in and finding that there was no room for Walter Raleigh, the person put Walter in the Water room (to be played with during bath time) and Raleigh in the WALL-E room (to be watched when Mom finally decides to get it from Netflix) and somehow came up with a new character of the mind: Water WALL-E.

It's moments like these that make me laugh and remember why I love being a mom.

You are invited to a Mattson family laundry party!

Saturday is the day when I do most of the laundry. You may have noticed that the last couple Saturdays we've been busy with other things. So, when I finally decided to tackle the mountain of stinking, filthy clothes that was taking over our bathroom - this is what I found. It's times like these when I call in the troops and invite them for a laundry party. Party hats are optional (Clarissa is wearing a fabulous purple laundry hat), but everyone is required to help sort clothes by color. Now, when I say color, I don't just mean lights and darks and in-betweens. We have a red pile, pink pile, orange pile, yellow pile...you get it. Before we sort, we always make a guess about which pile will win (have the most clothes). You'll be shocked and amazed I'm sure to know that it is always the pink pile that wins.:) Not only do I have a whole load of just pinks, this week there were actually two whole loads of pink clothes!

This last picture shows what my bed looked like towards the end of the day. Unfortunately, the clothes don't usually make it all the way to the dressers, but I do have nice neat piles of folded clothes all over my bedroom. At least until Amber decides to start knocking the piles over. Everyone keeps telling me to enjoy this stage of life that it will soon be over. So, when life gives you laundry - have a laundry party!