A Family Christmas

This year, the Skillin family celebrated a wonderful Christmas lunch at our house. As the family conitnues to grow larger (ok, our family keeps growing larger) I decided it would be easiest to take over our entire family room and dining room and celebrate together!

The kids enjoyed getting to play with their cousin, Wesley, and their second cousins, Sam and Sabrina. We all exchanged gifts, enjoyed a great Christmas lunch and some wonderful fellowship time with my dad's extended family.

Enjoy the pics!
The mom.

Sittin' with Santa

We took advantage of Scott getting half days for the last three days of school and thought we would find shorter lines to see Santa Claus. Thankfully, we were right!! The kids and I met up with Scott and some of his Cross Country and Lacrosse boys and ate lunch at Discover Mills with great anticipation of seeing Santa!!

We wandered across the mall to where Santa was sitting and were pleasantly surprised to see NO line! Lydia ran right up with no fear whatsoever and we had to pull her back and remind her that everyone needed to write their letters first. All the kids had a good time writing and scribbling on their letters to Santa and putting them into the mailbox. I was just glad that Harbin didn't question why we were mailing letters to Santa when he was sitting right there :)

Catherine had some hesitation when it actually came to seeing Santa. She has recently been in a stage where she is quite fearful of new things or new places, so I was impressed when I was actually able to get her to sit on the stool next to Santa.

I was able to snap some really good shots of the kids with Santa and they were so kind to let us spend almost 20 minutes with him taking pictures of each kid with him, picking out suckers, and telling him everything they wanted for Christmas.

Hopefully you all enjoy the pics as much as I did!!
The mom.

Milk and Cookies...Christmas Style

Each month the kids and I go to a "Milk and Cookies" concert. Pretty much it's a free Kindermusik lesson at the local community center where the kids get to explore different instruments, learn about rhythm and end each session with juice and cookies (I guess too many kids have milk allergies these days).

In December, they have a special treat where they set up a Christmas scene, the kids dance and sing to Christmas music and then they have a lunch and storytime. It's a wonderful thing the community center does and they only ask that you donate to the canned food drive. Santa flies in for a visit at the end, but this year, we waited to see Santa at another time when Daddy could share in the memories.

The kids enjoyed getting to play with their friends, Sam and Sarah and it was fun to see all the kids dressed up for the Christmas Season.

Stay tuned for a post featuring the Tinney kids and Santa!!!
The mom.

Preparing for Christmas

This week has been very long and we have been cooped up in the house A LOT!! All three kids have had pink eye and Harbin had a double ear infection. So, to fill the time we decided to do a few Christmas crafts and preparation for the upcoming holiday.

We attempted to make Christmas cards. Harbin, as usual, was detailed on each card and spent lots of thought cutting, painting, and gluing things onto the cards. This was the first time I let Lydia use the paint- she wasn't too keen on the paintbrush, but instead decided to fingerpaint. Catherine decided to fingerpaint as well, but as you can see in the pics, she brought a whole new meaning to fingerpainting.

The kids were feeling better when Scott got off work on Friday, so we decided to decorate the tree. Since the house is still on the market and most of our stuff is packed in the garage, it's probably the only decorating we will do this year. The kids love going through each ornament and either figuring out who's it is or why we got it. This was Lydia's first year really getting to participate in decorating and you can see that Catherine was kind enough to show her how. Harbin, being the oldest, got to help put the star on the top.

I tried to get a good pic of the three of them, but as usual they just wanted to be silly. I am sure I will try again when they are all in their Christmas outfits, but I think this one is cute for now.

Enjoy and be on the lookout for a lot more exciting Tinney Family updates.
The mom.

A Pilgrim Choir

Harbin had his second choir performance a few weeks ago. This time it was just the preschool choir singing and their were dressed as Pilgrims. They sang a few more songs this time and Harbin had a great time goofing off with his buddy next to him. They were all too cute- despite intentionally singing incorrect words :( His next performance won't be until the spring, and I will sure to keep everyone informed of the date and time of that!

The mom.

Fall Leaves

It's seems like fall was a bit late coming this year. Even though we're only 2 days away from December, we still haven't had many consecutive days of cold weather. Unfortunately, the random bits of cold weather in conjunction with the heavy rains made for a short amount of tim to enjoy the beautiful leaves changing colors and left piles of dead leaves on the ground.

The kids and I spent some time last week raking leaves and they enjoyed getting to play in the piles of them that we made on the front lawn. Harbin and Catherine also enjoyed walking through the backyard hunting for acorns. As part of our homeschool art lesson, we painted with acorns. I was pretty proud of my ingenius idea (if it's already been thought of, please just let me think it was my idea). We put a piece of construction paper on a cookie sheet. Then we rolled the acorns in paint and the kids rolled them around the cookie sheet. It made some pretty neat pictures and entertained the kids WAY longer than I thought!!!

Anyways, enjoy the pics of the kids outside, since as the weather gets cooler and the days get shorter we will spend less and less time out there!!

The mom.

Free Fallin'...Now they're Free Fallin'

Scott and his brother Skylar are exactly 2 days shy of 10 years apart. They have grown up celebrating their Nov. 3rd and Nov. 5th birthday together and had vowed to go skydiving for Skylar's 18th birthday. Well, last year, Skylar turned 18, but neither Scott nor Skylar had the Skydiving funds.

So, this year they decided to fulfill their promise to one another and went skydiving 2 days before Skylar's 19th birthday.

We drove out to a small town near here, called Monroe, and arrived at the skydiving place- greeted by about 6 or so parachutes coming out of the sky. The day was beautiful and the guys were super excited about their jump.

We all went into the tandem training room to fill out paperwork and watch the "you can't sue me for ANY reason" video. Lydia was hilarious- when the lady asked who was jumping, she just raised her hand high and said "ME!"- the scary thing is she probably would jump!!!

Anyways, after the video and paperwork, we went back out into the airport hanger area and realized they had halted jumping because of the could cover. Something about it being too dangerous to jump through clouds because low flying planes and gliders couldn't see you when you immersed from the clouds.

We waited, and waited, and waited, and waited. THREE hours total we waited. The kids did really well and enjoyed watching the gliders get pulled up into the sky and then soar back down and land.

Finally the boys geared up and loaded the plane to jump. I guess they were sure about it at this point since they had 3 hours to change their minds. They were both jumping tandem with another instructor and you can see the pics of the instructor giving them last minute reminders on what to do in the air.

Both of them landed safely and I think they had a great time. Scott said that it was a blast but compared it to sledding saying it was a lot of work for just a short moment of fun. They seem to be excited to have done it, but I don't know that they will become "regulars" in the sky.

That's all for now... more in a few days.
The mom.

A Duck, a Pig, and a Pirate

Halloween was a lot of fun this year. Lydia went as a duck (thanks Kassi for loaning me the cute costume). Catherine decided she wanted to be a pig, so I decided she could be kind of like Miss Piggy and I made her a tutu and a pig nose and ears. Harbin wanted to be a pirate and he had a great Jack Sparrow costume in his dress up box.

Before Halloween, we spent a homeschool unit on Fall, where we studied some things like spiders and pumpkins. To wrap up the unit, Harbin and I made a spider cake and we did a pumpkin lab. The spider cake turned out great, the pumpkin lab not so much. We were supposed to weigh the pumpkins, then count the seeds in them. He got tired of counting, so I ended up forcing him to help me count amost 300 seeds in each of the 4 pumpkins. Next year, I guess we will get a group of kids together, so we each only have to count for one pumpkin.

Halloween night, the kids dressed up and we went to a Trunk or Treat at a local church. It was raining pretty badly, so we just let the kids play inside. Harbin was excited that they had a treasure map and he could go around and play games to get his map stamped. After 8 stamps he was able to get a prize. He chose a beany baby frog named Prince. He told us it was a Red-eyed Tree frog.

When we got home, we carved pumpkins. Derek and Jamie joined us, athough it was mostly me, Jamie and the kids carving- the boys were watching football. Catherine got attitude, so she had to go to bed, but the next morning she was able to carve her princess. Harbin carved a "smirk". Jamie carved a cat on Lydia's pumpkin but it came out with only a small piece connecting it to the pumpkin and as soon as Lydia awoke the next morning, she pulled it off.

I have attached a link to the pictures on the right.
Enjoy!
The mom.