In the late afternoon today, we set out to find a body of water to skate on. My dad bought all of us (except Phoebe) skates for Christmas. The snow was falling perfectly like a snow globe so we headed out. A parking lot pretty close to our house that was flooded served as the pond. A shovel, which some nice people let us use to clear the snow off the thin sheet of ice, was our Zamboni. And Katherine served as babysitter of the baby girl. It was a so fun as we skated! Some of us were much better than others (I only lasted 10 minutes), but this will be an afternoon that will last in our Christmas memories. This video is a snapshot of the afternoon. I love that my kids are honest, but how do you teach them to be tactful?
Monthly Archives: December 2007
A Romantic Skate on Christmas Day
"Somewhere In My Youth Or Childhood…"
“…I must have done something good.”
My lovely husband is giving me an early Christmas present this evening. We’re going out on a date…first to dinner, and then to see The Sound of Music at the Ordway! Whoa! This is a dream come true…well, actually… I dared to dream much bigger than this. I dreamed of playing Fraulein Maria in The Sound of Music one day. But then again, I also dreamed of getting married and having four children. 
I wonder if I thought I could do both at once?
P.S. Did you know that on my seventeenth birthday Dave serenaded me at my bedroom window with “You are Sixteen, Going on Seventeen?” I know…how romantic. But I remember feeling so embarrassed that I wouldn’t even go to the window! I suppose it didn’t help that my mother and two sisters were in the room with me getting a great kick out of it. Poor Dave!
P.P.S. This will probably be the last post from me for a couple of weeks (although Dave may post some photos on Christmas day). We have a busy few days coming up, and then, on Boxing Day - also known as the day after Christmas for my non-Canuck readers - we are leaving for Toronto to visit my sister, Jill, and her family! Hooray! We’re very excited.
I wish you all a very Merry Christmas!
The First Annual Horsman Family Snowflake-Making Contest
We had a snowflake-making contest last evening, and I was deemed, by my two eldest sons, to an unfair judge, which I had to agree with. We need some impartial judges! So, I turn to you, my dear blog readers, to help choose a winner. Here are the entries. (Only four, since you needed to be five or older to compete, and even that seemed to be a stretch. Dave and I watched with our hearts in our throats as Zeke cut his snowflake! You need to use heavy-duty sissors to cut through multiple folds in paper…oh dear, I’m thankful Zeke didn’t cut a finger off!)
Super Zeke by Zeke (notice all the Zs?)
Circles of Distruction by Dave
Jaqueline Frost by Janet
Victor o’ Votes by Elijah
We all made several, but the rules were that we had to use the first snowflake that we cut. Here are a few more of my favs…
Got Milk?
Look what I caught my monkey of a son doing today…
I suppose the fact that I ran to get the camera, and then got him to tilt the milk jug up one more time so that I could get a photo, did nothing in the way of teaching him not to do this. The legnths I go to for you people. 
Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make Me A Match!
Noah has been quite taken with all the Christmas decor. All of the ornaments, large and small, were inspected by him as they made their exodus from the Christmas storage boxes. It was really cute. He was so excited about everything. In fact, we could probably forego having any gifts for him on Christmas morning, he’s been loving all the decorations so much!
One thing that he has especially enjoyed is my collection of Christmas cards. I save some of my favorites from year to year, and put them out. After I’d set them all up on a table in our living room over the weekend, he spent some time studying each picture. A little while later, I heard him exclaim, “Yep! That’s it…”
He’s since matched some other cards and decorations together, and is pretty proud about each discovery…
How interesting! All three of my boys have different, quirky ways of thinking. Elijah’s the organizer, Zeke’s the pattern-maker, and Noah, it seems, is a matchmaker! Won’t it be interesting to see how these traits display themselves in adulthood?
ec·lec·tic [i-klek-tik] – made up of what is selected from different sources.
”I really like our tree.” said Elijah with pride. “I like how all the ornaments are different.”
“I do too, Elijah! You know, I have a perfect word to describe our tree: eclectic.”
”What’s that mean?”
“Ummm…it kind of means that nothing really matches. Like…how the ornaments on our tree are all different.”
“Oh…eclectic. I like the sound of that word.”
Our tree is very eclectic. We have ornaments from my childhood, Dave’s childhood, strings of popcorn that I strung four years ago (yeah, you can keep it from year to year…if you air pop it, and put nothing on it, it’ll keep forever!), candycanes, sentimental ornaments that we’ve collected from year to year since we’ve been married and had kids, apples that I got at a yardsale, beads that I got on clearance, and some very pretty, icicle-like ornaments that I got from Ikea last year. I’m very partial to our eclectic tree…but have you ever noticed how your tree is always the prettiest?!
Of course, adding to the eclectic nature of our tree are the kids’ homemade ornaments. We’ve collected several over the years, and display them with pride on our tree. This year, Zeke decided that we really needed some more. He got his little “Bible” out (a little book he made last year at preschool), and started copying some scripture verses out to hang on the tree…
I like this one…a good reminder for me in particular. (Thank you, Zeke! …My little prophet!*) I love the fun of Christmas. I love giving fun gifts to my kids, and watching them enjoy them. Gifts that I’ve given to them because I love them, not because they deserve them.
When Jesus came to earth on that first Christmas, he came on a mission. He gave us an extraordinary gift that we truly did not deserve! It’s really mind-boggling to ponder. He came knowing that he would die for us; wanting to die for us. Whoa! When Christmas gets too much fun (and by too much fun, I guess I mean materialistic) I need to deliberatly remind myself of this. What an amazingly huge, sacrificial gift the Lord gave us!
*We’re always telling our kids that they can be prophets. After all, a prophet is primarily someone who delivers a message from the Lord, right?
Sittin' Pretty
Phoebe’s latest developmental milestone…
She sits! And it’s a good thing too…the skill of jingling a jingle bell is much easier to develop as a sitter…
Dear Santa…
“Well,” said Zeke with an air of haughtiness, “I’m gonna find out for sure this year whether Santa is real or not. We wrote letters to Santa at school today, and I asked him for a Segway.”
A month or so ago, someone showed up at the park across from our house riding on a Segway. They very generously let Elijah and Zeke try it out, and they thought it was hilarious! Since then, they’ve been saying they’d love to get one for Christmas. They retail for about three thousand dollars, so we told them that would be just a little out of our price range!
We’ve actually never encouraged a belief in Santa for any of our kids, so I’m not sure where Zeke’s pseudo-belief in him comes from. I think it’s safe to say, though, that this year will mark the end of it!
