Happy Halloween

After having pumpkins sit in our front entry for a week, we finally got around to carving them!  The kids loved getting to pick what their pumpkin would look like.  Emma dug right in, but Ben wouldn't touch the 'goop'.  

Cutest 'Bumblebee' Transformer and Dalmation!

 They were both so excited to go trick-or-treating.  I stayed home for a while to hand out candy while Lennard took them out.  After about 45 minutes, Lennard came back and picked me up and the kids kept going.  Even after Ben was tired and came to sit in the van, Emma kept on going!  She had so much fun running from house to house.  They definitely got more than enough candy.

 The finished jack-o-lanterns.  The kids loved seeing them 'glow'!

Party Time

We were invited over to Toone's for a Halloween party/dinner.  Everyone brought something to share for dinner and no one went away hungry!  Shannon had made 'bone' breadsticks, there were meatballs, seven layer dip, 'mummy' hot dogs, etc.  Yum!

The kids played downstairs most of the evening while the adults visited in the living room.  Then, they had an activity for the kids where they had to follow their string through the 'web' of tangled strings up the stairs and find their goody bag.

They were so excited to try out their glasses and mustaches!

I love this group of kids!

 Nothing like fake teeth and mustaches for a Halloween family picture!

Halloween Activities

While Emma was at school, Ben and I went to the reading program at the library.  He still won’t participate in the reading portion (except when it’s his idea), but he loves the craft portion.  Even better, today they were making spiders out of oreos and pretzels.

 This evening was Emma’s Halloween dance class.  All the kids got to wear their costumes.  Unfortunately, the nice warm costume that we bought for Emma to be outside trick-or-treating with was a bit too warm for dancing in!  She was soaked by the end of class!  She sure loves her dance class though!

Halloween Decor

I don’t love Halloween.  Is that horrible?  I just don’t get it.  Having said that… the kids love it.  I saw this idea on Pinterest and decided to try something new.  The kids were thrilled with how they turned out!  For less than $5 for poster board, the kids got monsters in their windows too!

Piano

The kids have been doing piano for about a month and are so far enjoying it.  They love the workbooks and even Ben (who doesn’t like to color) was quite diligent in coloring the keys in tonight.  I was so impressed with how hard they both worked on their ‘homework’.  I hope they will keep liking piano and that I’ll have the patience to help them!

Thanksgiving Dinner

The kids were great little posers for pictures this morning.  These two are our greatest blessings that we’ve been given.  We are so blessed!

My parents invited us out for Thanksgiving dinner.  We had a lot of fun singing around the piano, eating yummy food and watching all the cousins play together.

Pictures:

1- Mary Lou, Rachel, Roger, Dave and Will; 2 – Liam

3 – Mary Lou & Lucy; 4 – Dig in!  Family dinner.

5 – Will; 6 – Rachel and Brooke

Thanksgiving Treasures

Emma brings home ‘treasures’ from school almost every day.  Her backpack has at least two papers or crafts that she’s done.  She was very proud of the turkey she made.  I loved her place mat that she colored.  She is writing her name so much better now!  I am so thankful for Emma.  I can’t imagine where we would be without her in our lives.

Stone Soup

I got to be one of the parent helpers today in Emma’s class.  They read the story “Stone Soup” and each child brought an item to put in the big soup pot so they could make their own stone soup!  They were quite concerned about the large stones that Mrs. Bennett put in the pot first and weren’t sure if they really wanted to eat stone soup. 

While they were busy at gym, the other mom and I took everything into the staff room and made the soup.  It was a super simple chicken soup with potatoes, carrots, onions, celery, chicken, and barley.  Nothing too crazy, but (most) the kids loved it!  We had it all ready and served up so that it could start cooling down for them when they got back to the classroom.  They all were looking for the stones!  Emma had two cups of soup and would have had a third if there had been more! 

Pilgrims… and Barbarians?!

Ben had a Thanksgiving feast in preschool today.  According to Ben, they learned about the Mayflower and the barbarians who came across the ocean. When asked if he maybe meant ‘pilgrims’, he said, ‘Oh, yeah… that.”  and continued to play.  lol.  He just makes me laugh!  Barbarians… pilgrims… so similar… ha! ha! 

He wanted me to take his picture with our dinner tonight… so I did!  Made him a happy boy and it made me smile… again!