Off to the pumpkin patch

Weston and Savannah took a couple of outings to the pumpkin patch during the day.  I got a few cute pictures of them on the tractor.  Weston was the only one who cooperated with a pumpkin picture.  The disappointing thing about our outing was the piggy and all the other animals were all taking a nap!  

This was the first time Savannah let me braid her hair.  She looked so cute! 

We went in the evening for a family outing to the pumpkin patch so the kids could do the corn maze (not open during the day).  Also, Jared and Owen wanted to pick out a pumpkin.  Weston was excited to see the pig up and around this time!

This was the second daytime outing.  I wasn't expecting much, since I heard it was pretty small.  It was on a small lot, but the kids had a lot of fun.  We ended up staying for a couple of hours.  I think the older boys would have enjoyed it more, with the ping pong table and basketball shoot.  But Weston and Savannah liked all the activities too.  Weston's favorite thing was the ping pong table, even though he couldn't figure out how to hit the ball.  Savannah liked being pulled in the wagon.  Both of them liked playing around in the red car.  

Gotta love the beer bottle ring toss! 

Look out!  Here comes Weston!  

creepy crawlies, bats, and other things

We had fun with the halloween themed preschool days.  Savannah is coloring a bat paper airplane, which I forgot to take a picture of - they flew pretty well.  (I had to try to adjust them to fit the page - they didn't print out right from the website.)  

Weston and Savannah loved the "Room on the Broom" book and video that we checked out from the library.  The green paint is for the witch's faces.

They had fun with pumpkin scented play dough, and they tried the ring toss for a while.  It was too hard.  You probably can't hear Weston in this video, but he says, "This could take all day."

Weston really seemed to like the spider theme.  The crayon-watercolor project was particularly fascinating, as well as the glitter on the glue web.

feathers, fins, tails, and shells

The idea was a pet theme - I realize we strayed a bit with the birds and fish.  You wouldn't actually fish for your pet fish or have a nest with your pet bird...  

Anyway, we had fun with each of the different animals.  We had friends over for some of the days, like bird day.  The kids enjoyed their Oreo cookie dirt, pudding, and gummy worms.  I made some chocolate pretzel nests with peanut M&M's for them too.  Savannah has several birds in her room that chirp when you squeeze them.  They played with those for a little bit.  

We had one friend over for cat and dog days.  We played a Lotto game (a memory game), and they played hide and seek with the pink cat.

Dog Bingo was fun, although Savannah just ate a goldfish every time I called a new picture on the board.  You can see that her board is empty!  We read tons of dog books, because we found so many at the library and already had about 7 dog books of our own.  "My Father the Dog" by Elizabeth Bluemle was a really cute book. It compares the things that dads do to things dogs do, such as scratching their tummies, getting the newspaper, or running towards noises in the middle of the night.  

Our dog got some extra attention on dog day, of course.  Kai loves licking Weston all over his mouth, and Weston seems to like it too.  I think it's pretty gross!  They have a funny relationship.
 

 Goldfish was a hit for our fish themed snack!  The painted striped fish turned out pretty good, although I didn't have painter's tape.  The electrical tape stuck a little bit to the paper.

I got a kick out of Savannah's sound effects while painting.  She was copying me - when I first tried to show them how to stamp with the celery, I said, "Doink. Doink."  Pretty cute that she did the same thing, until she knocked the paint bowl off the table...

 This is what the idea was for stamp painting with celery.  

I could probably do a whole post on how projects really turn out with 2-5 year olds...  

The kiddie pool from my friend Vivianne came in handy again.  The kids loved fishing in it.  I loved seeing Weston's imagination at work too.  He pulled the slide off our little play set and used it as a boat.  His fishing poles were the oars.  He also had to get his little piggies to include with the fish.  I love the picture of Savannah and Weston sitting on their boat! 

The dog eventually joined in too, figuring out how to catch fish.  

We took an outing to an aquarium.  They spent quite a bit of time with the puppets, even though Weston eventually said, "This is bo-ring."  In the video, he also says, "We're making a big mess here."  Funny kid.     

We had a turtle show up in our yard during pet week too.  We kept it in a box for about a week and then let it go.  It was a pond turtle, so it wasn't doing very well in our box.

It was nice of him to drop in for pet week though!

down on the farm...

I think I went a little overboard on the farm books... but we read them all!

Milk comes from cows... we love milk, especially for milkshakes!  They also enjoyed watching a Barney farm video.  

I loved Weston's version of the 3 Little Pigs.  I tried to get him to blow down the "straw" and "stick" houses, but he wanted his orc to chop down the houses.

I did finally get them to try to blow them down - it was too hard for them.  They needed mama wolf to help!

He tried...

some September projects

My good friend Amanda, from Oklahoma, had a baby in September - so I wanted to send a little gift.  I went with a fox theme, although I couldn't find a fox fabric that I liked.  I found a self-binding blanket tutorial that was pretty easy.  I saw the fox notebook at the store and thought it might be a cute journal.  Savannah really wanted to keep the fox - she'll have to settle for a picture with it!

Another one of my good friends adopted a baby recently, so I sent this to her.  It turned out pretty cute too.  (Good thing I can find quotes and things on-line.)  

sports fun

For school, instead of doing the alphabet, which we did last year, I picked other themes.  Sports was high on my priority list.  I had hoped to do 3 or 4 different sports, but we ended up actually playing only soccer and a little bit of baseball.  We read some books about other sports though, did a basketball craft, and played a dice soccer game (I must not have taken a picture of that). Gatorade was a hit for snacktime!  

We might have to do sports again another time.  

We have a few friends coming over on Mondays now to join in our fun.  This was Annie's first time at our house.

Notice Savannah still wanted to wear a skirt!  

September 30-somethings

We celebrated Alex's birthday a week early, since he was out of town on his birthday.  We had one other family over to help us celebrate.  They made the fun birthday crown for Alex.  

He got omelettes and bacon for breakfast, stuffed peppers for dinner, and chocolate cake for dessert!  I sent him off on his business trip with some M&M cookies and dark chocolate candy bars. 

I got french toast for breakfast, mongolian beef for dinner, and vanilla cake with raspberry sauce for dessert!  I also enjoyed my mint chocolate brownie cookies and big bag of Twix - they know me well.   

A true gem

More of my good friends moved away this summer - Vivianne, her husband, and son Guillermo moved to Utah. Guillermo was right in between Jared and Owen in age.  He fit right in with our Lego-loving boys.  Vivianne was assigned to visit me each month as my visiting teacher, but she quickly became a good friend.  I really enjoyed our conversations and getting to know her.  A "quick visit" often turned into a 2 hour visit.  I really appreciated her dedication to coming and watching over us, despite our crazy bunch.  Vivianne was always so willing to help - bringing pizza over for lunch or dinner, treats for the kids, or coming over at 7:00am so I could get a run in when Alex was gone.  She is such a great example of love and service, and I am grateful for our friendship.  I miss having her around!    

$1000 dog

While Alex was gone to Japan, I had to take the dog in to the vet to have 2 foxtails removed from her nose.  The bill was nearly $1000!  Pets are expensive.  But what can you do?  She was sneezing up blood and kept having violent sneezing episodes.  She was miserable.  The bad thing is that our yard is covered with foxtails, so it's likely to happen again.  I'm not sure we can afford this nearly free dog that we got from the humane society... 

She had an IV in her leg while they did the anesthesia and pulled out the 2 little weeds.  The kids were glad to have her back home.  She is a good dog.  If she wasn't, we wouldn't have forked over the money to get her well again.  

back to pre-school...

...starting with fruits and vegetables

I made the extra effort again this year to do pre-school mornings with Weston and Savannah - usually Monday and Friday mornings for this fall.  I still have a hard time getting Weston to sit down and do crafts, but I can usually get 10 minutes out of him... he's better with games, books, and snacks.  Savannah loves to do crafts!

We own this copy of "Ten Apples Up On Top" - fun book.  The kids painted the apples, and then I cut them out and made these headbands for them.  They didn't last long, but they were cute for a little bit!

I tried to give them apple slices and a few chips for snack.  It wasn't good enough... they ended up with strawberry applesauce and nachos!

We did a banana theme, so of course we also had to do Curious George.  We already had several of the books on our shelf.

Alex was out of town with the camera for these projects, so I only got a few pictures of the live action on the I-pad.  I snapped some pictures of the finished projects after I got my camera back.

I created a blueberry game for them to play, which is good for counting.  They each had a green "fruit basket".  They took turns rolling a die, and then put that number of blueberries in their basket.  The first one to get all their blueberries in the basket won.  

They love watermelon and cantaloupe!

They were excited about ice cream smoothies with berries, spinach, and apple juice.

They also had corndogs for lunch - that's in the vegetable group, right?  Ha ha. 

We did a paper plate salad craft, veggie books, and coloring - Weston wasn't happy about coloring.

We watched a couple of Veggie Tales episodes as well and had real salad for lunch.   

We had these cups out for a few days, showing how plants take water through their system.

Our mostly veggie dinner - plus salmon and veggies from a friend

I took them grocery shopping with me one morning - we explored all the different vegetables.  Weston just kept saying, "I don't like that." He does like broccoli though!