Halloween activities and the Candy Fairy

We are doing lots of fun things for Halloween this year. There are so many activities in our areafor Halloween it's hard to choose which ones to do.Last Thursday a friend hosted a painting pumpkins play date at her home. The weather was gorgeous, so the kids painted their pump

kins outside. N wasn't interested in painting his, so I didn't force him to do it. I enjoyed watching the other kids decorate their's with paint, glitter, feathers, foam stickers, etc. N admired their work when they were done, but he still wasn't interested in painting one. (I think it's because we painted pumpkins at home a couple days before.)

We did a "witch's walk" at N's favorite park last weekend. It was our first time to do that. It was so fun! The children dressed up in their costumes. The park was decked with orange lights, witches, pumpkins and wooden Halloween

figures. So cool. Adults dressed up as witches or g

houls were stationed throughout the park for the children to trick or treat to. The barn, bridge, chicken coop (minus the chicken. ha!) were all decorated as not-so-scarey haunted houses. The bridge was my favorite. It was filled with white fab

ric and black lights. We'll definitely do that again next year.

N had his party at school. I wasn't sure I was going to make it to this party because of L's nap time. It's hard making it to preschool stuff with L's nap tim

e the time it's at, but I'm getting more and more creative with ways to make it work out. This time I asked D to work from home that morning so I could go. He was very understanding and started to work from home. L ended up sleeping late

r than usual that morning, so we decided L would be able to stay awake long enough to attend the party and D headed to work earlier than expected. We had fun. L really enjoyed being there. The preschool children wore their costumes to school that day. They paraded from their class room to their snack tables. The parents watched the parade. L liked the parade and tried to join it (see pic below). The kids had snack time then Jesus Time. L wanted to be a part of those activities as well. I enjoyed the party, but I also found it interesting to see how N's doing in a class setting. I am really impressed with how well he walked in line with the other kids during the parade, he sat in his chair during snack and listened during Jesus Time. He's coming a long way! I remember wanting to take him to story time at the library a year ago and deciding not to because I knew he couldn't sit still. Now he can. Good job, kiddo. :)

Thursday night we went trick or treating at the high school. This is such a neat event the high school puts on every year. They always have several games in the gymnasium and the kids get to trick or treat through the hallways of the high school. The foods class makes hundreds of pumpkin shaped sugar cookies and the children get to decorate them with frosting and sprinkles.

We made chocolate covered pretzels at a friends house Friday afternoon. This was so much fun. It was just my friend and I and our children. N does so well in this type of setting. It is much more likely that he will do a craft when the group size is smaller. My friend has a daughter N's age. They did a great job of sharing the pretzels, chocolate and candy molds. They were both creative with their candy color choices. So cute. This turned out to be a good craft because the kids made them easily with a small-ish mess and the craft was edible and ready to eat in about 15 minutes. We even hada few pretzels to take home with us.

This morning was my Mom's group Halloween party. N and I attending this without D and L...err should I say Thing One and Fish?? We were sad they had to miss (due to L's nap time), but it was nice to spend one on one time with N. The party was really nice and well organized. There are several women in my group who were teachers before deciding to stay at home. I think their class room party planning experience was very beneficial for this event! The kids played pin the heart on the skeleton, listened as one Mom read Halloween books, broke open a pinata, ate breakfast and trick or treated. So fun! We are so lucky to be a part of such a great Mom's group!

Tomorrow is our community wide trick or treating. I think we're going to do it, but at this point I'm getting Halloween'd out. I think N really wants to trick or treat, though. He keeps asking when we're going to trick or treat at "the houses."

So, with all of these Halloween activities comes a ton of candy!!! After a hugely hyperactive day of consuming a small amount of gummy candy and skittles, I have determined that N is very sensitive to candies with certain food dyes in them....Anyway..more on that later...But we needed to figure out a way to get the candy out of the house that is fun for N. So, this year the "Candy Fairy"is coming to our house. N gets to keep any snack items such as pretzels, raisins, graham cracker or animal crackers. He gets to keep any trinkets or treasures.

He gets to choose five pieces of candy to keep. All other candy is left outside his bedroom door in his trick or treat bucket at night. The candy fairy comes to our house, takes the candy and replaces it with a gift. I talked to N about it in depth the other day. I told him the Candy Fairy comes to your house. You leave your bag of candy outside your bedroom door with a note on it. You can leave a note that says "Candy Fairy please take my candy in exchange for a

gift" or you can leave a note that says "Candy Fairy, do not take my candy. I want to keep it." At first he told me to tell the Candy Fairy to leave his candy. He said, "Mom. Write the candy

fairy a note that she can NOT take my candy!!" After much thought he changed his mind. So, the candy fairy went shopping and got him an inexpensive Dr Seuss movie, bubble bath (N's been wanting bubble bath for a long time), a glow stick and Tinkerbell vitamins...We needed the vitamins anyway, but the candy fairy thought they were cute enough to put in his treat bag. ;) The Candy Fairy considered purchasing a Tinkerbell doll for N since he loves that movie right now, but that idea got veto-ed very quickly during a phone conversation with Daddy. :) So, we'll see how this goes. Hopefully N will find his decision was worth it...

Halloween Costumes In Progress III

So, here is the final product. I finished L's Cat in the Hat fish costume and I thought I'd share how I did it in case you want to do it. I was telling D that you could do this in different colors and accessories to make it into a variety of costumes such as a yellow chicke

n, green turtle, purple monster, etc. If you can't quite tell this is a fish at first, think of a fish laying on the table. If you looked at it laying on it's side on the table you'd only see one eye at a time. N told me I need to change the costume so both eyes on are on the back. I think that's probably a good suggestion. We'll see if I actually have enough time to make that change.

Things I used.

Red cotton shirt

Red cotton pants (nothing sewn to these)

dark red fabric for scales

light read fabric for scales.

Red felt for tail.

Blue, black and white felt for eyes.

Needle and thread...Then after the needle and thread took a long time I switched to fabric glue. What a dream that stuff is!

Figure out what size of circle looks best on the size of shirt you are usin

g. Then cut out circles.

Lay out circles on top of shirt before you start sewing...errr gluing. :)

I started sewing each row by hand which took forever!! After you've got all the scales attach, cut out the eyes and attach.

Final product.

And here's "The Cat."

First Steps!!

L took his first steps about a week ago. Grammy and I were at home with the boys when L took his first two steps. It was great that Grammy was here to see that! Good memory. :) Crawling is still L's main mode of movement, but every once in a while he will go from sitting to standing. He stands there for a few seconds, gets his bearings, then takes anywhere from 4-12 steps. He takes more steps when he's trying it out on his own without anyone there to encourage him. He gets too excited when we cheer him on and he falls down. Then he gets really frustrated and kind of grunts and growls at us. N is really excited for L to walk. He tells him "You can do...this is how you do it, Buddy" while he walks next to him. Every once in a while N will stop whatever he's doing and say, "Mom is L walkin yet?" I'm trying to get good pictures of it, but every time you bring a camera out L does this funny little thing we're he scrunches up his face and says "cheeeeeese" to the camera. I'm going to have to catch him from far away where he can't see the camera.

School (kinda of random train of thought)

N has been in school for five weeks now. Wow, I can't believe it's already been five weeks. Time flies! He likes school. He likes his teacher. I think he likes his classmates. Ha. He doesn't talk about them that much. He hasn't complained about any of them, so I guess that's a good sign. N's teacher is super sweet. She is very organized and is really good at communicating with us parents. She's good to send out newsletters, calendars and emails as needed. She even texted me the day the kids had a field trip and got back to school early. She gave us a calendar that lists what skills the kids will work on every day this month. I really appreciate that because I can support what she's working on in class by doing similar things at home. Each week the kids learn a new letter. This week is the letter D. She's talking about dinosaurs this week, so she has lots of dinosaur books for the kids to read in their books shelf. The boys and I went to the library and picked up two dinosaur books to read at home. (We also picked up a book about fall since the weather and leaves are changing right now.) Each week the kids bring in a small item from home that begins with that week's letter for "show and share" time. Each child has a job to do at school each day. N can't always remember what job he performed, but the tasks he has remembered are plant waterer (is waterer a word?), fish feeder, door opener, "caboose" (I think this job makes being the last person in line exciting. Ha) and backpack buddy. I still haven't figured out what backpack buddy is. I think that child gets to pull the wheeled back pack to the gym for gym time each day...The backpack contains kleenex and other essentials that the kids might need while at gym class.

Some thing I've been doing at home to support N's preschool curriculum are below. N has really grown an interest in letters and numbers. The second week of school I decided I'd print out a few activity pages from education.com just in case N had an interest in doing them. I wasn't sure if he'd have any interest in them, so I prepared myself for him to tell me no he didn't want to do them. I printed five pages, one for each week day. We did one page, then another, then another and another until we did all five pages in one afternoon...We did them all in about twenty minutes actually. N devoured them! I was shocked! Now I make it a routine to print out several pages for the week and I purchased an activity book to keep on hand. I also make one activity page each week. I make it in a Word document. I choose two letters to focus on and find items who's words begin with those two letters. So, one week I found picture of items that began with "A" and items that begin with"B." I copy and paste images onto one pages for each letter. I then make one page titled "A" and one page titled "B." N and I say the names of the items as he cuts them out. He then determines what letter each word begins with and pastes them on the appropriate page. I'm not an education major, so I don't what all this is teaching him (beside letter recognition and cutting practice), but he seems to be enjoying it. I also try to do a bigger project with him each week.

Week A: we played play-doh using all of our cookie cutters that are shapes that begin with a.

Week of letter B we made a bus out of paper (He got to ride a bus at school and loved it!)

Week of C we made apple "cobbler." N kept calling it cider. That begins with c too, right?

This week we're talking about fall and pumpkins, so we painted pumpkins and made pumpkin muffins. I plan on carving pumpkins sometime this week.

N went on his first field trip to a pumpkin patch last week. I was not able to go because it was during L's nap time. After much deliberation I decided N is a big boy and he could go by himself. I had two friends attending the field trip with their kids who said they'd keep an eye on him as best they could. I prepped him by telling him to stay with his teacher or with our two friends. I told him about the hay wrack ride they were going to go on and told him he had to sit down during the ride to be safe. I read books to him about strangers and how we shouldn't go anywhere with a stranger...I even wrote a note on his permission slip that he kind of tends to wander so the teacher would be aware of that...Really, all of the preparation was good for him, but I think it was more for me than it was for him. Ha! I was nervous about sending him out by himself to a public place but he did a good job. He got to ride the bus with his class and teacher and he got to go somewhere with his class like a big kid. He is so proud and I am too. It turns out (my friend who attended the field trip told me), there were so many parents in attendance that N practically had his teacher to himself. So, I had nothing to worry about in the end.

I hope N's interest in school continues to grow. I can't believe he's going to be in Kindergarten next year! I want to do my best to prepare him for it, but I also want to enjoy this last year I have with him being at home!!

Halloween Costumes In Progress II

L is being the fish from "The Cat in the Hat" for Halloween. Below are two pictures. The picture of the orange fish is my inspiration. The red fish is L's costume in progress. L doesn't like anything on his head, so I opted for a shirt without a hood. I have a few scales to sew down. I need to add the eye(s). This is the back of the shirt. I may put scales on the front of the shirt I may not. We'll see. :)

Halloween Costumes In Progress I

I am working on our Halloween costumes. This is great for me (or us) because D and I usually know what we want to be for Halloween but don't start to put the costumes together until about three days before we need them. So, to be doing this so early is exciting. N wants to be the Cat in the Hat. I have his costume done. D and I are going to be Thing One and Thing Two. L is going to be the fish....if I can figure out how to make him look like a fish that is. So here's N is most of his costume. I have black sweat pants and white gloves to complete the outfit. I bought the black shirt. I tied the red bow out of three inch satin ribbon. I cut white felt into the shape of the tummy. I sewed the red bow to the white felt then attached the white tummy to the black shirt using the adhesive backing that's already on the white felt. I also secured the white tummy/bow to the shirt with a few sections of stitching for good measure. I bought the hat at a local costume store. I'm still debating on attaching a tail to the pants. I think people will know who he is w/o the tail so I may exclude it. We'll see... Now I'm off to work on "Thing One" and "Thing Two." I'm keeping these very simple. I bought two red t-shirts at Micheal's (they are two for $5 right now). I purchased two pieces of white adhesive backed felt and a black fabric pen. I'm going to make to big circles out of the felt. I'll write "Thing One" one one and "Thing Two" on the other using the black fabric marker. I will secure the circles to the shirts using the self adhesive backs and a few sections of stitching the same way I did for N's costume.

Mark Twain Quote

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. ~Mark Twain

I just found this quote on a neat blog. This blogger is about my age. She has five kids. Eeek! She and her family live in an RV and travel the country without having a permanent place to call home. Double eek!! I have no desire to live in an RV for more than five-ten days and I have no intentions of selling our permanent residents, but this quote does makes me think of myself and how I need to do my best to get out and explore more. I find myself getting stuck in a pretty tight routine. Routine is definitely good for my boys. They seem to do better when they know what to expect next. However, sometimes I need to break us a little free from our daily grind and go somewhere.. See something new and refreshing. As a Mommy (I'm too young to call myself Mom.) of two little ones I am finding that sweet spot where I can push the envelope just enough so that we're all having fun, learning and exploring without pushing too far and causing my kids (okay, the whole family) to be fussy and "out of whack" for three days.

My husband and I get a chance to have date nights every once in a while...okay, we rarely go on a date night. It's usually in the afternoon/evening. We're usually home before 7:00. Some day when the kids are grown we'll revel in the fact that we can return home past 8pm! But I don't want to wish things away. I don't want the boys to grow up too fast....Anyway. I digress. When we go on said dates, I always tease my husband that I'd love get out of the house and go out to eat or see a movie and it'd be great if we left the city limits. If we leave the county it's super exciting! When we do get the chance to leave town to see a movie, go out to eat, see new scenery we return feeling rejuvinated. I wonder if the kids get that feeling after we go some place new.

When the boys get older and can travel more easily I'd like to set out and see as many states as we can. I'm excited to see their faces when they see new landscaping, cultures, etc. Until then we'll have to plan smaller, more practical short trips that everyone in the family can enjoy and tolerate! With winter just around the corner we need to get out and do a few little travel days before the bitter cold winds and snowy weather settle...Ooow. I think I just gave myself a cold shiver after typing that. :)

Apple Orchard

We went to the apple orchard/pumpkin patch this weekend. We had a lot of fun. Here's a picture to prove it.