The Ants Go Marching...

...not just one by one here. And I should add that they are the "biting and devouring everything in their path" ants. It's that time of year again. Every black speck you see in this picture is an ant. There were definitely some making trails, but mostly they were completely covering our veranda floor, walls and ceiling (this picture isn't even an 10th of the area they were covering). Thankfully we spotted them before they came into the main part of our house, and were able to empty 3 cans of bug spray to discourage them from advancing any further. I snapped this picture of Nathan in mid stomp and spray. He had to keep moving or they would start crawling up his legs and biting. Normally this happens in the middle of the night when it's so much harder to combat an army like this, but we were fortunate this time to catch them in the morning.

The Game Boy

Once Asher had finished all of his school work for the day and his brother and sister were still working on theirs, he started creating his own board game. It's very cute and you can really play it. His rules work. Just don't land on the night-time square or you'll lose a turn because you have to "sleep" until the morning. It's been fun this time around that our kids are old enough now to enjoy card games and board games...and even come up with their own! One thing though about Asher's game, he's played all of us and hasn't lost yet...hmmmm.

What has 112 legs...?

Nathan got the boys a clear bucket with a clear lid so that they could have a giant "bug jar". It does NOT come in the house, but occasionally stays on our veranda. Well, the snake from a few months, their first inhabitant of the bug bucket, ago slithered away. Since then we've had a chameleon that crawled away and a frog that they eventually let go. This one beats it all. One afternoon, the boys were collecting spiders. YUCK! In a quick glance, I counted 14 in this picture. YUCK! I'm amazed that they got this many and I'm frightened that there are so many big spiders living around the outside (hopefully not inside) of my house. And then the brave souls that would hold the spiders...can you see in this picture of Kamatu how long those spider legs are? Gives me the creeps.

RIGHT HERE!!!

The kids and I were making paper chain cut-outs of people, Christmas trees and birds and decorating them. Well, in the process Asher wanted to make other things out of paper...so he made a huge arrow and stapled it together. I became busy in the kitchen preparing dinner and was only half listening to the kids and simply replied "sorry" at the comment that there were no more staples in the stapler. A little later, I saw that Asher decorated the wall with his arrow. Very cute, pointing to the stocking, showing what his priority is this Christmas. When I looked at it a little closer, I realize that he had fixed it to the wall using a glue stick!!!

Advent

We lit the 2nd candle on our Advent "log" that Nathan made for us. We are going through a book that has ideas for each day to focus your family on the birth of Christ. One of the fun activities we've done was played "I'm going on a trip to Bethlehem and I'm taking..." going through the alphabet. We made it harder and tried to think of stuff that Mary and Joseph might have taken. The kids are getting into it, but Asher is a little concerned that in all of this remembering the real reason for Christmas, we are going to forget about the "getting lots of stuff" part of it. Hopefully he won't be too disappointed this year as there are no Walmarts or toy stores around here.

Anyhow, we are making new family traditions and singing through the Birth of Christ section in our hymn book, and playing and replaying the 3 Christmas CDs that we have. Simple, but memorable.