This Christmas

I brought my son home in 1996 and for his first Christmas and we went WILD!!! He had so many gifts that we could hardly get into the living room on Christmas morning. He was my "first born" and the first grandchild, nephew, Godchild...you get the picture. Two years later, when I brought home a 2nd baby, we over-indulged again. His reign as the only child was ending.

About 5 years ago, we decided to not buy gifts for family exchange, but adopted an area family and bought gifts for them. That was such a blessing and the kids loved it. We had planned on that being our family tradition, but then I re-opened my home for foster care and that created this whole other situation. I had great foster care workers that were very diligent in getting gifts for the kids placed in my home. They also got gifts for my kids and not just a few trinkets... our cup over, overflowed. So much so, that we could not possibly open them all on Christmas. When kids left our home to go to new families, we were able to send huge boxes of new clothes and toys with them.

Last year, we were able to provide gifts again for an area family and the children are asking to do it this year as well. We are also doing something different for ourselves. We are doing, "dollar store Christmas." The 8 of us are buying gifts for the other 7 from the dollar store only. While the quality of the gifts may not be high, the value of the giving ranks way up there. As always, we sing "Happy Birthday" to Jesus and enjoy good food and family fun.

Merry Christmas to all who read this. We here at MHS wish you love, happiness and contentment.

Peace,
:)De

Snow Day!

5 Fingers

On Monday we started a unit in 1st grades History and Geography titled: "I Live In A Family." On one page, he was required to draw a picture of his family. Let me just say we have all come a long way from just a round head and 1 stick bodies. But today another first happened... people now have 5 fingers on each hand. LOL! And they are counted twice to be sure everyone has 5. I know...I know...fingers. But it is these developmental growths that just thrill my heart from this child that they said would not be able to learn.

Various numbers of fingers....


5 fingers on each hand!

The Elfin Rotties

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

5th grade has been studying cells. Today she looked at skin cells from her hand. To prepare her slides, she scraped cells from the palms of her hands, from her finger tips and from under her nails. We placed the specimens on slides with a drop of water and slide covers. These are drawings of what we saw:



Let's just say that when we saw what was under her fingernails that we all said a dramatic, "EEEWWWWW" and discussed again the importance of hand washing and not biting our fingernails.

Science...Weather Permitting

10th grade has a science project to look at pond water through the microscope. I knew about this project from the beginning of the school year, but I thought it was later in the school year. If you have seen the pictures from my post, Recess, then you know that getting pond water would be very difficult for us right now. LOL! Luckily, I have a relative that lives "down South." They have promised to send us some, but we shall see.

I told 10th grade that he can always tell his teacher that he tried to do his assignment, but it froze!

Recess