Fun with Leaves

Kindergarten Thanksgiving Feast

Riley's class had their Thanksgiving Feast on Friday.
They have the whole week off next week for Thanksgiving break!
Each year the Kindergartners make costumes to be Pilgrims and Indians.
Riley was an Indian.
Everyone brought something to share for the feast.

The kids all had a lot of fun!

They had a cute turkey song that they sang too.

Kindergartners are so cute!

Thanksgiving Art Projects 2

Yesterday, we had our second Thanksgiving Craft Day.
Johnny came over to help Lily make turkeys!
The first turkey we made was a hand turkey.
We let the kids pick which colors they wanted the feathers.
Then we painted those colors onto their fingers.
We put brown paint on their hands & thumbs for the body.
Then we placed their hand on the paper.

When they were dry, we let the kids add googly eyes.
They also used crayons to add a beak, waddle, and legs.

Look how cute they turned out!

The next turkey we made was a hand and foot turkey.

We painted the kids hands two different colors for the feathers.

Then we painted one of their feet brown for the body.

We added googly eyes and construction paper beaks & waddles.

I think we are officially ready for Thanksgiving now!

Zach's Big Idea

Zach is selling popcorn for Cub Scouts.
If a scout sells $600.00 worth of popcorn,
they get a Marshmallow Crossbow.
It is a play crossbow that you stick big marshmallows in & shoot them at people.
These are all boys ages 6 - 10 or so.......
so you can see the draw of this particular prize.
Zach has reached the $600.00 goal. (and more!)
Yeah Zach!!
Wait......now I have to deliver all of that popcorn.......
Anyway, on Saturday, Zach was thinking of ways he would use that marshmallow crossbow.
Here are two of his ideas:

In the top picture, he is on one side of a big fire in our fire pit.
Riley is on the other side with a catcher's mitt & a big bowl of chocolate and graham crackers.
He is going to shoot a marshmallow into the fire at Riley.
Who will presumably catch it.
Then Riley is going to put it on a cracker with chocolate.
Instant S'mores!

In the bottom picture, Zach is again on one side of the big fire.
Lily is on the other side & he is going to shoot a marshmallow through the fire......
straight into Lily's mouth.....

Clearly there might be some safety issues with both of these ideas.
But, they are fun ideas!! ;-)

Zach never ceases to amaze me with what goes on in that brain of his.

Riley & The Tooth Fairy

On Thursday, Riley came home sporting a very loose tooth.
It was his first loose tooth ever.
He was super excited about it!
I think he told Jeff & I about it approximately 5,236 times.
Give or take a few.
There was already a new tooth coming up behind it.
Jeff & I both tried to pull it for him since it was so loose.
He did NOT want us to pull it.
He said he wanted it to "Come out naturally".
Riley cracks me up. =)

Then after school on Friday,
he came running towards me.
"I PULLED my own tooth!!!!"
So much for it coming out naturally. ;-)
But he was SO proud of himself.

Then he reminded us 5,326 times that he had lost his tooth at school.
He could not wait for the Tooth Fairy to come.
When it was bedtime, we put his tiny tooth (in a baggie) under his pillow.
At 5:45 am, Riley came into our bedroom, put his face in Jeff's face, and said,
"The Tooth Fairy came and left me a dollar. My tooth is gone and I have a special Tooth Fairy dollar!"
We told Riley congratulations.......and to go back to sleep.
Thankfully he did. =)

Congrats Riley on loosing your first tooth!!

Advent Calendars

I wanted to get the kids Advent Calendars this year.
I actually wanted to get them last year, but waited so long that it seemed pointless to get them by the time I got around to looking for them.
Yep, that's the kind of mom I am.....very dedicated. ;-)
So this year, I decided to actually look for them in November.
I saw these CUTE calendars at Target the other day & grabbed all three designs.
This way each of the kids could have their own design!

I was going to look for some Wilton candy molds that were small so I could make chocolates that would fit in the tiny pockets.

When I told my sister Mary about this, she said that she had saved the molds from her kids' advent calendars from last year.

She brought them over & I started making candy!

I filled them with mini chocolate chips:

Then put them in the microwave, carefully watching them.

I pulled them out every 30 seconds or so & stirred up the chips.

Then the phone rang......

and apparently I am easily distracted.....

because suddenly I smelled something burning.......

(Sorry Mary!!)

Yeah.......

that's not good......

I then did what I probably should have done to begin with.

I melted the chocolate in a glass bowl.

Then I poured it into a baggie and cut the tip of the bag to squeeze the chocolate into the molds.

That's better. =)

Then I stuck them in the freezer.

When they were done, I immediately tried to pop them out.

Turns out that was not such a good idea either.

I broke a few molds.

Fortunately, my sister is very nice & will not hold this against me.

I doubt she will let me borrow anything from her anytime soon though. ;-)

Anyway....after letting the molds get a tiny bit warmer than frozen, I easily popped the rest of the chocolates out.....and repeated this process two more times.
(Only this time I didn't burn or break anything!)

Here are some of the cute chocolates:

Now I just need to wrap them & put them in their calendars before December 1st.

The kids were really excited to see their Advent Calendars & to choose which one they wanted.

(Surprisingly, none of them fought over them, they each chose a different one!!)

Although it was fun (once I got the hang of it) to make the chocolates myself, I think I will just buy tiny chocolates next year. =)

Thanksgiving Craft Day!

Yesterday, Lily, Camden , and Johnny made scarecrows and turkeys!
We started off making the scarecrows.
We needed these things:

Paper bags, glue, googly eyes, leaves, a marker, and construction paper.
I pre-cut hats, noses, bow ties, and hair.
If they had been older I would have had them cut them out themselves,
but these little guys are just 2, 3, and 4. =)

They got to gluing on their faces, hair, and hat.
Then they added a big smile!

After the glue was dry, we stuffed them with newspaper and taped the bottom shut.

Here are our cute scarecrows:

Seriously....best picture out of quite a few pictures...... =)

Our next project was turkeys!!

Here are the things we needed for this craft:

Feathers (I found them at Walmart), googly eyes, and construction paper.

Again, I pre-cut out turkey bodies, beaks, and waddles.

First they got to spread glue all over their paper!

So much fun for these little guys! ;-)

Then they put their feathers on, made their turkey bodies, and glued them onto the feathers.

I think they turned out pretty cute!

We are planning on doing more Thanksgiving crafts next week too!

It's So Fun.....

to see all three kids playing a game together!

Lily is now old enough to play a game without my help. So she can play with the boys. This makes her feel like such a big girl!

Fall!

I am so glad it is starting to feel and look like Fall around here!
It is my favorite season!
I think Miss Lily likes Fall as much as I do:

Happy Fall!

Halloween!

We had a great Halloween last night!
Lily dressed up as a witch.
She insisted on being a pretty witch.
Which, to her, meant she HAD to have pink in her dress.
Luckily we found one....it even lit up!
She also got to get matching pink shoes and put on some lip gloss and sparkly eye shadow!
We think she was a very pretty witch!

Riley had decided early on that he wanted to be Mario.
He saw this costume & couldn't wait to have it on!
He thought the mustache was funny......
until the end of the night.
He wasn't too crazy about it then.

It looks like I decided what they were going to be since they match.

But I did not have anything to do with this decision.

Zach wanted Riley to decide what he wanted first so he wouldn't be the same thing as Zach was. (Last year we had two ninjas.....)

But when Riley chose Mario, Zach decided it would be fun to be Luigi!

I thought they chose the perfect costumes!

Here they all are saying,

"Stop taking pictures! We're ready to go out and Trick-or-Treat!"

They had a lot of fun and got more candy than they can eat!