Halloween time

Here we are nearing the end of another year, and I feel hopelessly behind on this blog.  I have let myself get swept away in thinking I need to accomplish so many things, and then wondering what exactly it was that took up so much of my time! So now, I will attempt to go back to October...

 Dylan spent over a month trying to figure out what he wanted to wear to our halloween party.  He spent many hours searching on the internet until finally two days before the party, he decided he needed a wig and beard so that he could be Hagrid.  We have been in a Harry Potter mood lately, watching the movies, starting with the first one, a few weeks ago on our "Monday Movie Night."

 Gracie got the idea for her costume after seeing a show at California Adventure where the girls dress in costumes identical to this one.  The girls stand outside of "Soarin' Over California" and are called "Minnie's Fly Girls."  They sing songs from the 1950's and are so cute!  Several of the aunts helped Aunt Gail make this. Aunt Gail thought she had the right pattern, and we were amazed at how close it came to the exact costume.  SO cute!

 Gracie and the her friend Abby, the "fire fairy!"

 Gracie is getting quite talented at taking pictures!  She took several of these for me on the day of the party.  I love my Hagrid!

I love my sweet friend Laurie.  We have such fun together!

 A new game I found on pinterest this year was based on another game called,"Don't eat Pete," except this one was called "Don't Eat Frank!"  You cover the game board with candy corn, one child leaves the room,  and one child picks a character to call Frank.  When the first person comes back into the room, they try to pick the right one.  If they do on the first try, they get to eat ALL the candy!  If not, they get to eat each piece as they try to guess which one is correct.  The other kids are supposed to shout, "don't eat Frank!" right before they pick the correct one.  I was so happy to see everyone enjoy it!  Even the moms and grammy had a try!

 We also did a math memory game with chocolate kisses.  They had to find the answer to the math problem on a kiss.  This kept them occupied for a long time!

 Caleb and Weston got to play their very own game.  Caleb took it very seriously once he figured out that the silver things had chocolate in them.  Yes, my son didn't know what a chocolate kiss was.  :)

 Gracie and Dylan did a multiplication game with the older kids.

 Denise and Delena came to share in the fun with us too.  Aunt Gail brought Owen over for a little while also.

 Joy caught this wonderful picture of Caleb as he was getting ready to enjoy all of the kisses that he won in his game!

Sweet Winona and her knights

I convinced all four of the kids (I still don't know how I did it) to NOT cut open the pumpkins this year.  Dylan made his pumpkin into a mummy (can't believe I didn't get one picture of it), Gracie did a really cute design on hers with puffy paint (again, sorry Gracie, no picture), Luke went with a traditional look, and Caleb drew the duckling and pigeon on his pumpkin.

Halloween 2012

football, fair, fun, flags, and feet

 Dylan and I finally got to go to a UCLA football game.  Aunt Lori got us great seats,  and the only bad part about the day was how HOT it was!  I bought us all rally towels and kept going to the restrooms to get them soaking wet to cool us off.  UCLA didn't win the game but it was a fun experience and we stopped at the Stonefire Grill in Pasadena on the way home and had a great dinner!

 At the end of September, we were able to go to the fair again with our homeschool group for free.  Here we are enjoying our free chocolate milk while waiting for the milking show to start.

 We were so happy to have Abby along with us for the day.  We met up with the Shorts and got to try out weaving and watch them spin wool.  Marilyn and I were excited to see these things that related so much to what we had been reading about in Farmer Boy.

 They also got to braid some strands that were part of a rag rug.  This is definitely something that Gracie wants to try to do herself.

 Montclair played Chaffey in football a few weeks ago.  The kids and I sat on the Chaffey side while Bill and Dylan stood on the Montclair side.  We knew Bill was rooting for Chris on the inside.

 At the beginning of October, we were finally able to share a day at Disneyland with Grandma, Grandpa and Uncle Bob.  We had bought them tickets for a xmas gift, and Diana wanted to wait and use them during Halloween time because she had never seen how they decorate during October.

 We had beautiful weather that day, and even though the lines were long, we were able to ride lots of things, even the carousel.  Everyone had a try at pulling the sword out of the stone.

 We waited the longest for the Haunted Mansion ride, which was decorated  with special things from "Nightmare Before Christmas."  No one minded the wait, as long as I had plenty of snacks in my back pack.

 We got to the end of Main Street just as they were having the ceremony to take down the flags.  We had never seen this before and it just shows how many neat things go on at Disneyland each day.  You see something new and special almost every time you go.

 Last Saturday, Bill had to be at school all day so we met him for lunch at Chipotle.

Gracie took this picture on my phone of her and Winona wearing their Converse high tops.  These are actually my high tops that now fit Gracie.  I never wear them so I gave them to her. I can not believe that we wear the same size in shoes now. Time flies and feet grow. :)

spelling, speeches, and pumpkin pie

 In September and October our homeschool group made our way through our last two Laura Ingalls Wilder books.  We met together after completing Little Town on the Prairie.  In the spirit of the Friday night Literary meetings in the book, Reuben and Isaac encouraged us all to have our own spelling bee.  It was fun watching each child feel pleased at how many words they were able to spell.  Perhaps the seventh grader of the group had a little bit of an advantage!

 In the book, Laura got herself into a mess with her quick ability to write clever rhyming phrases.  One of our activities was playing rhyming bingo, reading Shel Silverstein poems, and writing our own poetry.  Here is what one group came up with:

 In October, we met to do activities from the book, Farmer Boy.  I had not read this book because I never thought I would be that interested in a book about a boy.  I am so glad I got the opportunity as an adult to share this with my kids.  We learned so many lessons about hard work, responsibility, and loving others.  I teared up at the end, as usual, and now find myself bringing up Almanzo quite a bit when the kids start to complain or don't appreciate how easy things are around here!  This was a very big day for Caleb who did his very first oral presentation to the group.  Caleb and Luke acted out one of their favorite Mo Willems books, Watch me throw the ball!.  I am still in the process of trying to figure out how to load the video onto here.  I was so proud of him overcoming his shyness to do this in front of everyone.

 Kim Medina brought a jar of cream for us to churn into butter.  Each kid took turns shaking it up and enjoyed having a taste.

 Couldn't resist another picture of Grammy and Caleb together.  He can't wait for Grammy to ring our doorbell whenever our group gets together. He brought down his entire stack of 20 library books for Grammy to read to him....and Grammy read every single one!

 Sweet Isaac is actually very allergic to dogs but that doesn't stop him from playing so sweetly with Jack.  He usually ends up with hives on his face or neck before they leave the house, but he never complains.

 In the book, Almanzo talks about filling up his glass of milk with popcorn and that it never overflows.  Laurie popped some popcorn for us and we tried it out to see if this was true!

 They kept adding more and more popcorn, and it never overflowed!

 For my activity, we took a bunch of new vocabulary words from the book and put them in alphabetical order.   Then I read a random definition from the dictionary to see if they could remember what they all meant.  Luke and Winona were quite a team, but Reuben and Wade kept it very close!  Dylan and Isaac barely beat the girls, thanks to Isaac remembering what the word "sheave" meant!

 Marilyn explained the science behind Almanzo's family using sawdust to pack the ice into the icehouse.

 Grammy made mini pumpkin pies for all the kids. I think they were the hit of the day!  In the book, Almanzo ate pies, cakes, ice cream, donuts, candy, and the list goes on and on... I told my kids that if they worked out in the fields from sun up until sun down they could eat more foods like that too!

 Ok, one more random picture of Owen and Jack.  I forgot to put this one in my last blog post and I thought it was just too cute to leave out!