Christmas arrives at the Leingang house the day after Thanksgiving complete with decorations, cookies and music. Here’s a look at our place this year…
But the piese de resistance is the outside. Zack has spent the last 7 months planning out the outside Christmas lights this year, using the new light show program he got for his birthday. He did a pretty great job!!! If you get the chance, you should drive by and see it…
Again this year, the boys helped me decorate the gingerbread. And when you let teenage boys have free creative license, you never know what you’ll get… :o)
at first glance they look pretty much like your standard cookies…
but then there’s “angry snowman”
“gunshot snowman”
and our personal favorite “reindeer skeleton”
Last night was our co-op’s Presentation Nite. I had a table set up for my 3 classes (WWI, Dangerous Class for Boys and Writing Made Easy & Fun), but forgot to take any pictures of it. :o( But I did take pictures of the boys and their band playing. They did FM Static’s “Take Me As I Am”. They did a fantastic job! In fact the whole evening went really well and pretty fast, too!
you can barely see Andy in the back on the drums
This year’s Harvest Party was lots of fun and a big success, but seemed very strange without Zack and Andy there. They really wanted to be but just weren’t feeling up to it quite yet. But even though we were down some of our helpers, God still provided. No surprise!!!
We had quite a few members there to help, the youth group came to help run games, and some of our dear friends from our homeschool group came as well.
I want to thank all those who took pictures that I could steal off Facebook. I didn’t get to take any this year.
Macy and Nate (the very cute turtle)
Kevin and Falynne play golf
Kate and her girls
Walt and Peter
Kevin got himself a very cute pumpkin
and he takes a try at the ping-pong toss
mmmm! candy!!!
Kevin takes a turn at running Tic-Tac-Toe
Joey makes a cute pumpkin, too!
but I’m not sure how he feels about fishing???
Nate loved fishing, golf and his candy
Dave is a great “scarecrow” again this year (Will said it won’t be the same after he’s in seminary. I suggested Will should take over, but he doesn’t think he can sit that long…) Will’s right, it won’t be the same without him.
making crafts
and just in case you didn’t get enough candy playing games, there’s always more out trunk-r-treating!
I also want to say a big huge thank you to all those who stayed to help clean up afterwards. We could not have done it without your help!!!
Thankfully the boys weren’t so sick that they couldn’t carve pumpkins.
I love having a huge laundry room!
Andy did quite a bit of detail work
Chris is punching his pattern onto his pumpkin
Will’s needs a BIG mouth!
I love carving pumpkins and seeing what creative idea the boys come up with every year. Being sick might have put a bit of a damper on their creative spirits, but they still did a fantastic job!
me and my pumpkin
can you guess what Andy is in to?
Will looks pretty happy considering his pumpkin is eating his teddy bear :o)
Chris and Mickey
Zack’s has really cool (and yummy) eyes
Chris was right, he did need a hat
all ready for the Harvest Party carving contest
My other favorite part of pumpkin carving is toasting the seeds. But I don’t like pickin’ em out…
This whole thing started a couple of weeks ago when I came to the realization that Chris needed a new office and we needed a guestroom more than the boys needed an entire room dedicated to toys. Chris has been relegated to the furnace room in the schoolroom as a home office since we lived here (I think I subconsciously did it to discourage him from working at home… LOL) and the boys have gotten to the age where they have really outgrown 90% of what was in that room.
Good-bye toy room!!!
We’ve slowly gone through the toys, giving some to our nieces and nephews and friends. But today was the big push! And a lot of stuff got pushed today!
it’s getting empty
Some of the Legos stayed in the new office/guestroom
some went to Zack and Will’s room (which meant Will’s dresser got moved out of the closet and next to Sephira)
the movie prop toys went to Andy’s closet
then we moved in the new desk, my fabric shelf from the schoolroom and the file cabinet from the family room
the fabric from the shelf in the schoolroom went into the craft closet, which is now very full!
the school books that had been in the family room got moved into the schoolroom
and the Lego bin got moved into the space where the school book shelf had been
the little kids toys (for when we have company) got moved into the space where the file cabinet was
Chris then moved the stuff from his old “office” into the new one
that made room for Will to be able to do school in the furnace room
and cleared up my table again
it also gave me room to store some stuff that had been on the shelves in the laundry room
so now we have more room for our laundry and hot tub supplies
and then cleared up space for all my canning supplies and empty jars from the kitchen
which gave me more space in my kitchen cupboard
and in my pantry for more food after I go grocery shopping
but it also meant the beach towels and swimsuits got relocated to the basement bathroom
I love all the changes and organization! I also love the huge pile of stuff to give away in the garage! But I am kinda sad to see the toy room go… It’s like the end of an era. :o(
Now I just wait for the, “Where’s my _______???” LOL
Today we had our Dangerous Class for Boys. Friday School had the day off yesterday and my guest instructor teaches math at our local community college and wasn’t available on weekdays. But he got together a group of members of the college’s fencing club and did a three hour class on fencing for the boys.
They did a fantastic job! Rick started out by teaching the boys the history of swords and fencing. Next he did some demonstrations of both fencing and fencing lessons. Then the boys got suited up in all the gear and got to do 2 hours of learning to whack (sorry, touch) each other with swords. Needless to say, by the end of class they were all pretty worn out and really STINKY!
listening to Rick teach about the history of swords
he showed them how to fight with both a sword and a dagger
now that’s dangerous!
learning the history of hand shakes
fencing demonstration
fencing lesson demonstration
getting suited up (now the fun begins)
Rick told the boys it was just like putting on a straight jacket
Thankfully none of the boys knew how to put on a straight jacket :o)
almost ready… (Hobo is waiting for his gear)
now that they have their weapons the fun really starts
Advance…
Retreat…
en garde… (the chorus line)
paired up and ready to fence
Zack and Joel
Andy and Will
Andy got to fence Rick at the end of class and LOVED it!
Thank you so much to Rick Swee and the fencing club at LCC! Rick is truly a gifted teacher and the boys had an absolute BLAST!!!
Just yesterday I got an e-mail regarding a rally to be held here in town in opposition of the new marriage bill. This will give any domestic partners in our state the same rights as married couples. I have felt very convicted lately to stop merely complaining about where our country is headed and to pray for our country and to begin taking a stand where I can to protect our freedoms.
A few friends saw my post on Facebook and joined me, our boys and a couple of their friends at the foot of the bridge. We were only able to stay a little over an hour (because of our fencing class) but when we left there were 60 people on the bridge.
Most passer-bys were friendly, but we did meet some opposition. The boys were very excited that they were flipped-off by five people! I suppose that being flipped off for Jesus is an exciting thing! (hope that didn’t offend any of you) Andy said it was like the disciples being persecuted for proclaiming the Gospel. :o) Not exactly, but we will be persecuted for siding with Christ… There were also 6 pro supporters that came near the end of the rally and stood on the other side of the bridge while our group was gathering to pray.
I am sharing this and the pictures because our rally will not be written about in our local paper. The pro rally earlier this week, with 16 participants, got front-page coverage. Why can’t we both get coverage??? What are they afraid of? (I took these pictures when we first got there and before other families arrived)
I was not only proud of my boys and their friends, but to the many others who came to show their support for protecting marriage and families. We need to show people that we aren’t against anyone, we are merely wanting to preserve the family in the way God intended. I pray that we can show the love of Jesus to everyone even as we oppose the things that are happening in this country. Because without love we are just “a resounding gong, or a clashing cymbal.” (1 Corinthians 13:1)
Last night we went shopping at Goodwill. We went to look at a sewing machine table to use as a desk in our new office/guestroom and some stuff for the boys to use in their movie shoot.
I love the handles!
Andy LOVES this wool coat and wishes he’d had it for the “Under Liberty” shoots. And the checker gave Andy her employee discount for it, too!
Of course, we also found a few other items that we could use (or just stuff that we really liked…). Eventually we had to get a cart. And eventually we filled it up!
But we got a lot of great deals and lots of things that we really needed, too.
Here’s just a few of the treasures we found…
these bread pans are perfect for the holidays and gifts
these remind me of my grandma for some reason?
this just makes me want to have coffee
it’s my dream to someday use this basket for collecting eggs from my very own chickens
thanks to my new plastic measuring cup stand they are both handy and attractive
I got this pressure canner for only $7 and canned 4 pints of tomatoes in it today!
now I can make soap whenever I want
I bought this vest just because I liked it :o)
I love this style of picnic basket! It works great for taking pictures of my picnic quilts.
my favorite part is the red gingham lining
Isn’t it funny what a blessing a bunch of used junk can be???
Zack decided to dress as a samurai for the costume ball next weekend, but couldn’t find a good costume. We tried to rent one, no luck. We tried to buy one here in town, really no luck. Then we looked on the internet. There were costumes that we liked, but not prices that we liked. Seriously, $100 for a costume???
I didn’t know what to do, so I asked my friends on Facebook for advice. And they came to my rescue…
My sister Theresa was inspired! She did all kinds of research on making samurai costumes, got all kinds of awesome ideas and came up Friday afternoon to help.
We had tons of websites open on 3 different computers with patterns that other people had used to make their samurai costumes, authentic and original armor, and pictures of swords.
So we gathered up our supplies of poster board, fabric, picnic mats, paints, brads, grommets, foam core, spray paint, duct tape, spray glue, electrical tape, hole punches, bias tape, cotton cording, elastic and a few other miscellaneous items and we were ready to go. And about 27 hours later, we were done!!!
a Dollar Tree army helmet, some hot glue, brads, duct tape, spray paint, picnic mat, paint, bias tape, and some foam core make a pretty cool samurai helmet
Theresa brought me this old picnic mat which ended up being perfect for our costume. Theresa cut it into 7 panels, hand painted each of them, put black binding on them, and they became the neck panel, shoulder panels and “skirt” for our armor.
each piece of armor was individually cut out, accented with about 60 grommets and “rivets” (brads), spray painted, hand painted with details, threaded back together, and then reinforced on the backs with duct tape
the sword and sheath were a lot of work, but the extra details like the fabric covered sheath and handle, the gold cord and beads, the “metal” accents on the sheath, the gold cord on the handle and the dragons on the hilt also make it extra special
my friend Kate found this perfect jacket at Goodwill and Theresa and I made these pants out of some old fabric we got from a local grange hall. The flip-flops were on clearance at Wal-Mart.
it looked so great but we realized there were still a few improvements to make…
so we got them all done and now we’re ready for the ball…
