For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. The government will rest on his shoulders. And he will be called: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Isaiah 9:6
I hope you're all having a wonderful Christmas, and that you remember the reason why we celebrate this day!!
Merry Christmas to you from our family!
This morning we made this sled craft from the Family Fun website. Ours didn't come out quite as cute as theirs, ha ha! But we had fun anyway, and I got to use my exacto knife and glue gun, whoo hoo!
(I'm going to be lazy and let you get the instructions from their website if you want to try this for yourself.) 
Looks pretty cute with one of Wendy's catnip mice on top!
Then, being the overachiever that I am, I decided to make cotton ball snowmen to sit on top. I used 2 cotton balls glued together, with googly eyes and mini colored pom poms for decoration. Oliver really liked using the glue gun, and I was more than impressed at his self control -- he only squeezed out a little bit, just like I asked him!
Is it just me, or do they look more like owls than snowmen? 
The finished product!
And where was Miss Buttercup during all of this, you might ask? Why, she was busy yelling, screaming, slapping, and sitting in her time out chair, of course!
Don't believe me? Here's a picture that I was trying to take of Oliver and his sled, when Buttercup walked up (fresh out of time out) and stepped right on top of Oliver's sled. Sigh. Good thing we used a lot of glue. 
This morning Oliver woke up and asked to do something, "really, really fun," so we took advantage of the nice weather and visited the Nature and Science Center again! It had been a while since our last visit, so it was nice to see everything again. If you ask me, it really is one of the best kid-friendly places to go in Austin. There is so much to do, so much to see, you can trade things that you find, and it's all free!! Can't beat that. :-)
On our visit today, we walked up a different way and I saw this bat mosaic that I'd never noticed before! Oliver apparently had seen it before: "Moooooom, don't you remember seeing it when we came with Grammy?"
We didn't stay in the fossil room too long this time, and instead went into the cave room to explore the space exhibit. There were so many neat things to look at and play with!
Oliver and Buttercup both liked this globe (sorry that you can't really see it in the picture, ha ha) that showed how a satellite orbits the earth. 
This was also really neat: if you placed your hand over the holes on the table, each one would send a ball up into a tube, showing you how high weather balloons, satellites, commercial airplanes, and space shuttles go into the air. It's educational for adults, too! 
I love this picture, ha ha! Oliver was listening to a narration of the path of Hurricane Charley in 2004. He looks soooooo bored. :-D
After the space exhibit, we went outside to do the usual stuff-- looking at the animals, fish, and birds, and playing in the dino pit. We love the Nature and Science Center! 
