School Days

We LOVE our school and the teachers, Ms. Christie and Ms. Karen. The kids (especially Abby) constantly ask to go to school and will also say they can't wait to go to school and show X to Ms. Christie or their friends. We are all so in love with this place. Our two have behavior issues and they are bending over backyards to help (and they haven't thrown in the towel like the first place :-). We are getting them some help and will have ECI coming 2x a month to help my guys learn to listen and cooperate with the group starting in December. They already come and work with the kids 1x a week at home, we'll just be extending that to school next month.
The teachers always plan great things for the kids and manage to snap a few pics along the way. Here's a sampling of their fun.

The Halloween parade - their class dressed up as cats. Abby still talks about this today and asks where her tail is all the time.

Making bread - Abby still has texture issues, but Jake knew exactly what to do.

Abby's favorite thing in their room - zoo animals. She plays with these everyday and sets them up all pointing her.

Some fun time outside and one of Abby's friends, Will.

Dress up time!

Ooh - cookies! Ms. Christie didn't have to help Jake at all.

For Fire Safety Week they had a firetruck and firefighter come talk to the kids. Then they walked around the school looking for "fires" to put out with their hoses. Notice my two wouldn't wear their hats.

Trick or Treat!

This year, the twins dressed up as Dora and Diego. Two of their favorite characters. Not wanted to pay full price for new costumes ($70 or $80 for something they'll wear a handful of times, I don't think so :-), I set out to find good, used costumes in August. In late September/early October I finally found both of the costumes I needed (for $20 total!!). I was so happy. However, you never know if it's going to be hot or cold on Halloween and on Saturday morning I finally decided it was going to be to chilly for the kids to wear the shorts that came with their costume. I set out for some orange and blue sweatpants for them to wear instead. You'd think this time of year it would be easy to find orange sweats, but I couldn't find them anywhere! Finally, I found some orange pants in the boys section for Abby and some great blue, cargo pants for Jake. Jake's looked authentic, but I think Abby's looked like astronaut pants :-) Oh well, they had fun and still looked cute.

After naps on Saturday, we dressed the kids and set out for a Trunk or Treat at the kids' school. The parking lot was littered with cars decorated for halloween. The kids had fun going from car to car getting candy and we even ran into their teacher (which was the first time John got to meet her).

After the Trunk or Treat, we headed home, ate a quick bite and got Lily ready for that night. I tried to get some good group shots, but the twins were so ready to head out and wanted nothing with pictures.

Lily however, was an angel and loved getting her picture taken.

(I just love this last shot!)

It's 7:00 and we're FINALLY ready to head out!

All done and ready to eat some CANDY! Sunday morning, Jake walked into the kitchen and instead of asking for breakfast, he said "I want to eat some candies!"

Halloween Crafts

We did a TON of Halloween crafts in October and I wanted to share a few of my favorites.

I'm leading with my all time favorite. This was the coolest craft we've done I think and the kids had a blast. It was a puffy paint ghost. First we had to make our puffy paint. I added shaving cream and glue to a bowl for the kids stir. They loved that part.

Then it was time to paint the ghosts I had drawn on old paper bags. Abby decided to use the spoon, but Jake got dirty and loved scooping the paint out of the bowl.

After we painted our ghost, we added googly eyes and a mouth. It took almost a full day for these things to dry, but once they did I cut them out and they were so very neat. They stayed puffy and felt really cool. This is one project we'll be doing again.

Of course, after we picked our pumpkins out at the pumpkin patch we had to decorate them. Knifes are out of the question so we did the next best thing - paint! My kids love to paint if you haven't figured that out yet. Jake did great, but Abby kept painting and painting that pumpkin. Soon you couldn't even see orange. She tried to pick it up at one point and of course it slid right through her hands. Then she figured out she could make hand prints with all the paint on her hands so her pumpkin became an "ink pad" for hand prints and she took almost all the paint off. Oh well. They both had a blast.

(Jake's pumpkin)

Another craft we did incorporated the letter "P". Jake's favorite color is black so I drew a P out on black paper and let them paint the P. They also got to paint 4 foam pumpkins to glue onto the P. They carried those things around for ever. They really like doing crafts around a letter and Jake is so into his ABCs at the moment. Abby is past her ABCs, Shapes, Colors and Animals and so I think it's time we get into words. She knows letters make up words and will combine various letters to spell words (although she'll put together XGEY and say it spells FISH).

My Little Pumpkins

We haven't been able to do all the fall festive things I like to do this time of year with John traveling so much (he's in MN this week), but we did make time for a quick trip out to the pumpkin patch. The kids and I love this trip. Plus this would be Lily's first visit so I was super excited. I don't know why pumpkin patches make the cutest photo backdrops but I love getting pics outside during fall. However, my better half was not up to photos so we'll have to try to catch some great family shots next year when everyone is a bit older and will sit for a picture with a little less effort. Never less, I still captured some great individual shots and we all had a blast!
Abby is really into flowers at the moment and wanted her picture taken with all that she found. However, she would look at the flowers vs. the camera and say "cheese". Goofy girl!
(the flowers just made Jake sneeze, lol)
The kids loved the pint sized pumpkins. They each picked one out and we decorated it on Monday (perfect rainy day activity, another post coming about that).
Abby tried to pick the big pumpkins up too, but found it was much easier to roll them.
Jake LOVES the windmill this place has. At one point, he found a place to sit and just plopped down and watched the windmill.

Everyone was less than thrilled to try to get a family shot.

And my littlest pumpkin...too cute!