Happy Halloween!

Here's our week of Halloween Festivities...

 Scott the Knight

Hailey and Arianna the cheerleaders! :)

They were pretty excited little cheerleaders, can you tell?

On Monday we got to go to the Zoo Spooktacular which was pretty fun! They had all the different areas of the zoo decorated with lights and pumpkins and all kinds of fun stuff. The kids had a blast trick or treating to all the animals and riding the train 

 

Here's the monkey exhibit

 

And the tortoise exhibit...pretty cool!

 On Wednesday I took the girls to story time where they got to wear their costumes and hear Halloween stories. 

I made the cheer costumes out of fabric and stuff I had around the house. The only thing that cost me anything was $2 for the ribbon to make bows AND I choose red white and blue so we could reuse the bows and pom poms for 4th of July next year. I just love Ari's little grin!

Pom poms I made out of trash bags and plastic table cloths

On Saturday I painted some pumpkins with the kids

 

and Kevin carved some with them

Scott drew his own face- pretty good at looking just like his pumpkin too :)

Then it was off to our Branch trunk or treat

 Kevin dressed up as a fighter pilot and I was a pirate

Ari just didn't know quite what to think. Both at the Zoo Spooktacular and the Trunk or Treat she wouldn't reach out for candy- she would just hold out her basket and look at the ground. She's definitely the bashful one- such a cutie!

 Tonight for dinner we made Candice's mummy french bread pizzas and had this cute bat cake for dessert (thanks Mel!)

 The kids thought it was so fun that the bat cake turned their tongues black. Oh they just had so much fun biting the heads off the mummys and cutting into the bat. I went a little crazy this year- it's all in effort to get over my hate of Halloween :)

Here's the whole clan tonight for trick or treating. We live in the greatest neighborhood, but really I think it's just the way people are out in this part of the country. Like instead of knocking on doors, everybody sits outside by their garages to hand out candy. It's a great time to meet all the neighbors (even a neighbor came running over to take this picture so that we wouldn't have to use the timer)

We played some music I borrowed from the library too and all the kids LOVED that! They were all dancing and singing as they came up to the door

I mentioned how Ari wouldn't take any of the candy and was being shy. Well tonight she went strutting through the neighborhood and wouldn't let Kevin or me hold her hand or pick her up. She would reach her hand right in the candy bowls and get away with being greedy because she's just so darn cute :)

We just go up our street and then let the kids pass out candy- they love it

Here's Ari's loot

We had a great time! Hope all of you did too!

 Trying to enjoy our last nice weekend before the cold set in! We went to the park and had a picnic lunch.Kevin and I sat at the picnic table and just enjoyed watching the three of them playing together, helping Ari up stairs, catching eachother, etc. They don't always play well together, but when they do it's pretty sweet.


So last night while we were eating dinner Scott says, "Somebody told me I my voice sounded like a squirrel today in the bathroom....it was one of the bigger boys." I asked what he said back and he told me he said "Well I'm just fine and I like the way I sound."

Bet that boy didn't think he'd get that response from a kindergartner...awesome!

I love this picture of Ari speeding down the slide! LOL

After naps we made some sugar cookies. It was such a beautiful day we got to decorate them outside which was perfect-less mess with the sprinkles!

  This was the first time Ari got to decorate...last year we tried but she wouldn't touch them. She still wouldn't eat any this year-just the ones that weren't frosted...still she had a fun time!

 Scott didn't use cookie cutters for his, he handcrafted them with a knife. I love his cute little ghost

hard to believe we ate all 3 dozen cookies in 2 days...yum! :)

On Sunday Kevin has to leave super early for meetings and so I get the kids ready which means sometimes I don't have time to do cute things with anyone's hair (including mine). Hailey hates getting her hair curled.

Enter Beauty Salon!

Amazing what a chair and some "what would you like to get done today Miss Hailey" talk will do

yeah! I'm sure she'll be back each week now if I'm lucky

Today when I picked up Hailey from preschool I found out that one of the little boys in her class was in a car accident with his sister and Dad...he was speeding and lost control of the car. The car rolled and the Dad was killed at the scene just down the street in our little town. The little boy from Hailey's preschool and his sister had to be rescued from the car and were taken to the hospital with moderate risks, but they were okay. Their Dad was only 29 years old. It just made me so sad all day thinking about how that little boy lost his Dad.

Makes you just hug your family tighter and give them extra kisses when you hear things like that.

 The kids and I had some fun taking some pictures together when Scott got home from school. I don't have enough pictures of me and my kiddos :)

Man I love these cheesballs and I'm so lucky to be their Mom.

I love their Daddy too, there's no doubt about that!

Hailey is still having a hard time going to preschool and it's been more than 2 months. She always loves it and comes out skipping and smiling, she just cries the morning of. She says she just loves spending time with Mom. Aww what a sweetie :)

We've been going to storytime for about a year now and Ari always sits firmly on my lap and doesn't move a muscle. I have to physically stand her up to do any of the songs even though at home she dances like crazy to the same songs. So anyway last week Hailey got her to sit in her lap for storytime, and yesterday they were just so sweet. Ari goes over and backs herself up right between Hailey's legs as they listened to the stories. Then when it was time to get up and dance Ari reaches over to hold Hailey's hand. Every time. She just has to hold her big sisters hand. It mels my heart. Hailey is such a great sister, Ari is lucky to have her :)

My sisters, Mom and I decided to start up a cooking blog! I'm still keeping my dairy free blog too, but this one is going to be so much fun and we are all super excited! Check out the link to the left :)

Scott didn't have school one day this week and when I asked him what he wanted to do he said, "Make a Halloween craft"....so that's just what we did

We made spooky trees out of brown paper bags

 and then made these little ghosts. Scott formed them and even drew the faces

Finished product- Scott was so proud!

Here's the how to if you are interested:

Paper Trees:

Cut off and discard the bottom of a medium-size brown grocery bag. Then slit open one side so you have a rectangle. Place a small beverage bottle on the center of it.  Gather the paper around the bottle and twist it around the neck. Snip down from the top to create several strips that will become limbs. Twist them to within 3 or 4 inches from the ends. Snip the untwisted ends, as you did the trunk, and then twist them into finer branches. Remove the bottle and fill the trunk with pebbles (I used marbles).  Retwist the trunk shut.

Salt Water Ghosts:

Combine 1 cup flour, 1 cup salt and 1/2 cup water in a bowl. Stir the mixture with a wooden spoon until smooth. Divide the dough into 6 equal pieces and shape each into a ghost, flattening the bottom so it will stand. Microwave on a plate 1 or 2 at a time for about 1 1/2-2 minutes in 30 sec. intervals until they are fairly firm. Let them cool. Use a fine point permanent black marker to draw on eyes and a mouth.

I don't know how I forgot this one. Scott came home for about a month with just a blank paper with his name on it because he said he never knew what to write about each day. So this particular day I jogged Scott to school and we saw a squirrel climb up the tree so I said, "Scott! You can write about that today!" and that was the first time he came home without a blank paper...he's been drawing ever since :) Don't you just love the jogger stroller?

Scott is loving kindergarten! One thing I look forward to every day when he gets home is his "writing corner" papers. They are learning how to write stories, starting out with drawing pictures and possibly labeling or having word blurbs to start out. The teacher said she won't help them spell anything, she just helps them sound things out so they can do it themselves.

Here's just a few of my favorites :)

A robot

Sailing...

He loves to write about things that happen in his life ...here it goes
After going to a BMX show field trip

 

This is Scott (right) and the new kid in his class (left) who happens to have a walker. I thought that was so adorable that he drew his walkers!

The weather (the right hand side folds and inside the last cloud is a tornado)

He found a spider on our garage door so the next day he wrote about it

Camping

Decorating our tree for Halloween

And my personal favorite on assignment from the teacher to write about a time they were mad. He said he drew about when I took a laundry basket and started collecting some toys to take away for 1 week as consequence for making a bad choice. That's Scott on the right with a sad/mad face and that's me on the left holding the laundry basket-with a HUGE smile on my face. How hilarious is that!? Like it just thrills me to discipline my kids LOL :)

Cute kid!