Halloween

This year's Halloween is the best one with the boys by far.  They are so into all of it and the whole month has been filled with excitement and anticipation.  It's incredibly fun!  

We had fun carving pumpkins together.  Colton and I were a team for this creation...

...and Mason and Mickey made this one...

They were great helpers...

We managed to carve 4 pumpkins and the boys were thrilled with the display at our house as a result...

We kicked off Halloween morning with a trip to the Library for their fun event.

There was coloring...

...sensory bins... 

...and lots of fun stuff to play with...

We love our library!

Before we knew it, it was time to trick or treat.  

Colton got ready first... 

...and we finally convinced Mason to join the party...

...homemade glowstick lightsabers for the win!!

Check out our two adorable Darth Vaders... 

They had a blast trick or treating around our neighborhood on a gorgeous night ...

It was especially fun to trick or treat while keeping an eye on the evening air show in the sky complete with fireworks.   It was the best Halloween for these two kiddos yet... I have a feeling they only get more and more fun over the next few years. 

"a" week

We're into week 2 of our homeschool adventure and still going strong.  This week, we're continuing our letter A theme with a focus on lowercase a.

We kicked off our week with a lowercase a apple craft...

...Colton was more into playing games with the markers than coloring.   "Look mom, they're all twins... 

...and I can color with two hands at once...and did you know these markers double as stamps...

...I'm realizing coloring is really just not his thing these days.  Looks like patterns are though :-). I'm going to follow his lead and let his interests guide our activities.

Here are our finished products...

...like I always say, process not product.  I had a good gut check with this one in trying to decide if the colors of the apple were important.  If it's art, blue apples are totally appropriate.  If it's supposed to be realistic, blue isn't acceptable.  I decided to let this one go into the art category this time.  This is such a learning process for me.  

We also had some fun with some letters and play doh...

...we simply used the plastic letter magnets like stamps in the play doh and the boys had a great time with it.  I see some spelling fun in our future with this activity.

We took two field trips to the library this week.  On one visit, we had fun with the big magnetic letters...

...see the patterning thing he's got going on these days?  They've also been having fun with things like the number 6 and the letter M and all the other letters that are other symbols when you turn them upside down.  They had fun rotating the sandpaper letters as well to see what other letters they could find.  Lowercase b and d were fun ones :-).  

Coloring may not be high on his list of favorites, but Colton never turns down a chance to paint...

...he had fun mixing yellow and blue to make green.  This one's for you, Oma!

The boys surprised me on Wednesday and were very into working on their tracing skills...

...I took a cue from their interest and let them have at it.  I'm not sure how much to stress proper handgrip and don't want to make it feel like work to write but don't want them to develop bad habits either.  I need to look into that more.

Wednesday also found us playing with some play doh...

I had plans to put apples on the apple tree and roll out "snakes" to turn into letters but quickly found we needed work on making balls and snakes out of clay first so we spent most of our time on that instead.  I'm sure it's good for their hand strength and fine motor skills to tackle those tasks.  We'll keep working on it.  

Part of our daily routine includes a devotion.  In case you're in the market for a good devotional book for your little ones, we're really enjoying this one...

...the boys and I are working on praying for others each day too.  Their little prayer requests are so sweet.  We pray for our cat each day :-), our family,  and our little friend who's moving to Texas.   

Other highlights of the week included legos with Dad...

...lots of books, and lots of car play.  We've also had some fun with ABCMouse on the Ipad and a leapfrog DVD...

Today I play to let their interests be our guides.  I'm hoping to get in a nature walk, lots of reading, and some tangrams.  We've also got a trip to the grocery store planned which always lends itself to lots of conversation and learning as well.  The world is our classroom!   

Summertime Fun

It's funny...I thought this summer was going to be nice and relaxing, you know, laid back like summers used to be...it's not happening around here though.  Guess that's the way things go when you have two busy three year old boys.  What our summer has lacked in down time, it's more than made up for in adventure.  Last week was no exception.  

After a few trips to the chiropractor, lots of PiYo and stretching, and listening to my body, I'm back to my regular, regular for summer that is, running routine.  Woohoo!  That makes me one happy mama!  We always seem to find something exciting on our stroller adventures...

...this was the highlight of one of our very hot afternoon runs last week.  Fun stuff!  I welcomed the break to stop and watch it in action :-)

We've been knee deep in delicious summer fruit this season thanks to Annie's Organic Buying Club...

...oh pluots, how I've missed you.  We can't wait for more sweet cherries tomorrow too.  Yum!!!

On produce day, I usually play around in the kitchen too since I'm stuck there all afternoon.  Last week's experiment turned out to be the best gluten free cookies I've made so far...

...this recipe is a winner!  I subbed coconut oil for the butter and added maple syrup instead of molassas since that's what I had on hand.  I'm trying it with chocolate chips next time.  They are three year old approved too which is a definite plus in my book.  

Despite the heat, we made time for some outdoor fun, making sure to do it earlier in the day.  Last week we had fun at the bouncy bridge park.  It had been a while since we'd been there...

When we got too hot there, we cooled off with some dollar bowling...

...we were a little distracted by the cartoons at the end of the lane...

...oh well.  $2 well spent in my opinion :-)

Our air-conditioned indoor fun has included lots of blocks lately...

...and multiple trips to the library as well.  Check out the new computer game we found that taught us about the human body...

...gotta love the loud 3 year old comments coming from learning about organs...haha!

Of course we always stock up on books when we're there too...

...you better believe we read this entire stack over lunch as soon as we got home.  Love that they love books as much as I do.

Of course no summer week is complete without a trip to the water park.  Last week's discovery...

...learning how to splash the person that's trying to squirt you by putting your hand on the squirter :-)  Funny stuff!

On Saturday, we had some fun building a taco truck at Lowes...

...they were pretty proud of their work and figured their fish bob would enjoy looking at their handiwork too...

...obviously, we was impressed but wanted to make sure there were no fish tacos being made on that truck ;-)

Sunday was the perfect mellow ending to our weekend.  We took a ride to the Green Market and got some honey sticks and a dragonfruit...

...spent lots of time outside, climbing trees...

...jumping on the trampoline...

...feeding the ducks...

...getting work done...

...swimming, and relaxing...

There were no complaints about our evening entertainment...

...what's not to love about a sunset like that and entertaining music like this...

...it was the perfect ending to a perfect family day.  Hope your week was fantastic as well.