Jamaica, Costa Rica, Peru, and a few other countries.

It's the Christmas season, but that doesn't mean that we haven't done anything around here.

We learned about Jamaica and made rasta bracelets as our activity.

We learned about Costa Rica and made worry dolls as our activity.

We learned about Peru and made god's eyes. (My nieces actually taught this to my kids---gotta love family.)

We learned about Panama and made bird molas.

And we learned about a couple other countries without doing any activity.

Notice how the pictures I have are of Maxwell? Yah, my other boys gather round for the reading and sometimes dabble in the activity, but Maxwell is the one who is REALLY interested in crafts. I practically had to bribe and threaten Hyrum to make the bird mola pictured above (top right,) yet Maxwell could do it all day (Maxwell's is bottom left.) Not sure if that's how it will always be, and I don't often force Hyrum to take part, but it is interesting how different all my boys are.

We also had our monthly geography fireside today instead of the first sunday of the month because our speaker thought he had to go back to school by next sunday. Our speaker was Denny Burton, and he did an awesome job of teaching us all about the Netherlands and Belgium.  If you've ever seen The Best Two Years, that was exactly what Elder Burton experienced.

It was really funny, he showed us a picture of his first area which was the same city as the movie-complete with the same people who were members who had parts in the movie. There were the four missionaries who shared an apartment. One was about to go home, one was girl crazy, one was a bit up tight, and one was an enthusiastic new guy all full of hope and nerdy. (Elder Burton was the new guy) They even LOOKED like the actors in the movie! It was awesome to have him come and talk to us.

But it was, of course, CHRISTMAS! And so we had a few Christmas activities that were mandated by the kids, not me. Seriously, these kids do crafts! Even Hyrum--when it's something HE came up with. Look at Daniel's Santa:

And they INSISTED on a gingerbread making extravaganza---LOOK AT ALL THAT CANDY!

And I doubt I'll get much of anything done next week except math. I HAVE to do math because I don't want to get too behind in anything. I want to be DONE on time for summer since-----

Yep, we're going to have one more pupil for next year!