Halloween 2012

Tonight was the night the kids have been looking forward to all month long. 

The costumes on were on, faces were painted, and candy buckets were ready.

 

They were ready to go get treats!

Simeon 

He had his heart set on being Drizzt from books written by RA Salvatore. His white hair, black face, twin swords and black cape completed the costume. Simeon started reading these books a few months ago, and instantly became obsessed with them. Johann read these books when he was a teenager, so we already own all the books. Simeon has dove in head first into them and is loving them. He's also  gotten his friend into them too. He's been talking about his costume for a few months and was so excited when it all came together and especially when we bought him face paint.

Corrine 

She had a change of heart on her costume after I had her cowgirl vest made. Last year she was a cowgirl, and decided to just be that again. Then a few days after finishing her vest, she told me she might want to be a vampire. I wasn't sure we could make the switch so close to Halloween, but luckily for her I found a vampire cape for $2 just days ago. She liked putting fake blood on her face. A friend gave her some "vampire blood" hand sanitizer today from Bath & Body works.

Ammon 

He had 1 plan in his mind for his costume and it needed to be home made. I took him to the fabric store to pick out material for his costume. We had the store worker laughing over our conversation about what this robe should look like and what type of material it should be made out of.It was a comical interchange trying to figure it out! I tried to buy a pre-made robe, but it wasn't right, so I needed to make one. Ammon wanted silver on the shoulders and hip. We worked together to figure out how big and where to put them. When he saw the robe ready, he was SO EXCITED! It was exactly what he wanted! He had elf ears, but they wouldn't stay on to save our lives. We tried everything from duct tape, to sticky goo and ended up taping them on across with scotch tape. We tried to tape his ear pointed, but he said it really hurt, so that only lasted for a few minutes for the pictures.

Rebecca 

She was our sweet and sassy cowgirl Jessie. She got her Jessie hat at Disneyland this summer, and her Woody & Buzz boots were from last winter. I made the chaps 1st and loved how they turned out. Her chaps were out of the same material as Corrine cowgirl vest that she decided not to wear. The shirt top was a bit harder to make for some reason. Sewing the shinny red ribbon on the front made it all come together. She has been wearing this everywhere the last few days. It's gotten pretty dirty and now that Halloween is over I can finally wash it. The hat was hard to keep on, so instead you got to see her ringlet pigtails-and yes those curls are completely hers! She sweet talked her daddy into being Woody. How could he say no to her. I was suppose to be Bullseye, but got away just carrying a Bullseye toy!

Tonight was the end of an era for our family. We made a decision years ago that the kids can trick or treat while in elementary school, and after that they get to hand out candy. So this was our last time going out trick or treating as a whole family. Simeon is actually really excited to stay home and give candy out next year. We came home for a short time tonight and the kids so wanted kids to come over so they could give them candy!

After trick or treating the kids all dumped their spoils in the front room. Ammon quietly went through his stach, then told us that he took out all the he wanted and we could have the rest. He only took about 20% of his candy and it was almost all sour candy. He left all the chocolate!! Rebecca did a similar thing separating her most wanted candy from the rest. When Johann said then he'd take the rest, she got very protective and started collecting and laying on it like a mother hen. She decided that she did want it all after all! Corrine was so sweet with Rebecca trick or treating. Rebecca got tired and wanted to ride in the stroller, so Corrine collected for her. If a house said take 2 or 3, she would keep one and give the other to Corrine. Corrine is a great big sister!

The kids said their favorite house was one by Grandma and Grandpa Smiths who let them pick out a Matchbox car or a beanie baby. Rebecca carried her duck holding an Easter egg the rest of the night. She's in love with that little ducky!

We love Halloween!!

Pumpkins, hammers and cookie cutters

Tonight was our annual pumpkin carving night. The kids are always so excited for this night. Since it was Monday night this was also our Family Home Evening.

We realized during dinner that we hadn't brought the pumpkins in to warm up. The kids ran out and grabbed them to put in front of heater vents in the hope of warming them up. No such luck for the boys and their bigger pumpkins!

We tried out an new idea this year to help carve out pumpkins-COOKIE CUTTERS. The metals ones worked awesome!! We'll be looking for some new fun metal cookie cutters for next year.

Rebecca right away saw the pig cookie cutter and wanted that on her pumpkin. Since we live in Iowa a pig was the perfect thing to put on a pumpkin. She did a great job hammering the pumpkin cutter in for the nose and mouth. It was fun to watch her drive in and clean her pumpkin out without any hesitation this year.

Ammon got working on his first, but his had the most innards in it and took the looongest getting it cleaned out. He wanted a scary mouth, so he choose a spikey leaf cookie cutter. He made lots of leaf shapes joined together. Dad the dentist came to the rescue with a chisel to knock the "teeth" out of his pumpkin.

Simeon had the biggest pumpkin with very thick flesh. That made it harder to use the cookie cutters. We found out the hard-breaking-the-pumpkin-kind-of-way that plastic cookie cutters do NOT work on the pumpkins very well. We ended up braking the areas between the letters on his name.
He so wanted his head to fit inside his pumpkin-but the whole was just a bit too small.

Corrine was a super scraper and got her pumpkin cleaned out the fastest. She wanted an IOWA mouth for her pumpkin. She was also our super patient kiddo waiting for the hammer and letters. After seeing that Simeon's pumpkin was breaking from all the hammering on the plastic letters, she decided that her patience paid off and we used the letters as an outline and free handed her IOWA letters.

After we took their finished masterpieces outside and lit them, the kids ran through the giant leaf piles on the curb waiting to be vacuumed up this week. Thankfully the lights we got for the pumpkins have a 100 hour battery life because we left them on ALL NIGHT!! I hope anyone driving by in the night, enjoyed our jack-o-lanterns!

Pumpkin carving night is always so much fun and so messy-but absolutely SO worth it! 

Now we get to enjoy all those yummy roasted pumpkin seeds!

Our Colorful preschool

Today was our week to teach preschool. Our letter was "C" and we did everything around Colors.

There are so many fun activities to do with colors. A few weeks ago I found some fun ideas to do with Legos, and since we have an abundance of those in our house this was easy to do.

 I made a Lego rainbow picture, a Lego patterns sheet, and a Lego color sorting sheet.

I've seen paint chip color sorting activities and I really wanted to make one. Thing was I wasn't ever able to get to the hardware store to get the paint chips cards. I decided that I didn't need paint chips to make one, I could use a sturdy piece of cardboard and paper scraps.

I LOVE the way it turned out! I love using clothespins!. It helps with fine motor skills while they are learning their colors. The big kids like to mix up the clothespins and have Rebecca sort it. This has had lots of use and it is holding up really nicely.

Today at preschool we did color sorting with paper plates that I colored with crayons and a bag full of colorful toys to sort.

This was something the kids really liked. Rebecca did this 4 times with me yesterday and the boys at preschool did it a 2nd time while the girls finished their craft project.

For our craft project we made paper plate rainbows.

These were really easy to make. I cut paper plates in a rainbow shape. Then I drew the colors of the rainbow with a crayon on the plates. I cut up construction paper into little squares. To make you give the kids a pile of colored squares, a glue stick and a paper plate rainbow. When they were done I tied a piece of string on the top so they could hang them up at home.
Some kids were more into this then others. I ended up sending home some colored squares for the kids to glue on at home if they wanted to.

We also did some color experiments with water. I started with 3 cups and dyed the water red, blue and yellow. We used those 3 colors to make green, orange and purple. The kids thought this was fun to watch.

I found a recipe to make sidewalk paint with cornstarch, water and food coloring. (I did't measure, just mixed until I got the consistency that I like.) The kids all picked their favorite color and I made it for their paint. They had a great time painting the driveway. It was interesting to watch the way the kids painted. The girls sat quietly and worked on making a shapes. The boys wanted to paint on each others pictures and ended up running around flinging the paint on the sidewalk.

I love the way this sidewalk paint dries. The colors get brighter when it dries. The best part is that the paint comes off very easily with rain or the hose. I learned the hard way that sidewalk paint made with flour, water and food coloring does NOT come off the driveway very easily!

For snack I was going to go buy fruits of all the colors of the rainbow, but wanted to do a low to no budget preschool day, so I changed my snack to Fruity Cheerios which we already had.

I took paper plates and drew colored wedges on them the same color as the cheerios. The kids sorted by color on their plates, then ate them. It cost way less then buying all that fruit and was so much faster to do.

I've always loved doing learning activities with the kids, but over the last few years I have done less of them as I've become busier with the older kids activities. Doing this co-op preschool with Rebecca has helped me get back into making learning activities for her and we are both loving it!

Fall colors

The leaves have started turning the most brilliant beautiful colors the last few weeks. Every time I drive down Court Street I see the bright yellow leaves at a church that are just begging to be played in.

Today Rebecca and I took a walk over to those leaves to play. What I thought was going to be half hour playing, ended up being a 2.5 hour play/bike ride. We were both TIRED when we got home!

On our way to the church we walked under this bright tree that I just fell in love with!

This lawn is leaf heaven to a 3 year old and her mom! Rebecca ran in the leaves, climbed a tree, made leaf soup, threw them in the air, searched for the mom, dad and baby leaves, found a big branch to carry and ran around some more.

After playing in the leaves we decided to walk down the street to check out the new bathrooms they built! You know your a mom when you know where ALL the bathrooms are, and which ones are the cleanest and best and which ones to stay clear of!!

 Rebecca found this ginormous leaf that was way bigger then her head.

After walking all the way to Hyvee and getting a free banana and cookie, we headed back home. Rebecca was so tired, that she gave up on her bike. Walking up our street we saw this bright yellow tree, right next door.

I love fall and all the amazing colors