Carving Pumpkins

Pumpkin carving is a favorite Halloween activity around here. Todd is Chief Pumpkin Carver, but all the kids scoop out their own pumpkin and choose a design. Oh, they were having a great time in all that slimy mess ;)
Love this picture :)
Chief Pumpkin Carver hard at work:

Brandon drew his own design this year while Megan and Nicholas both chose one from the Family Fun templates that Jenny posted. They turned out terrific!

Megan's is a big pumpkin eating little pumpkin-kabobs. I was trying to take these pictures without using a flash and they turned out a bit blurry. :(
Nicholas' is a pumpkin roasting marshmallow over his own candle.
Brandon's is a scary face with fangs.
So creative! I loved them all!

Tricks or Treats?

Last night was Trick-or-Treat in our neighborhood. The kids had a ball! We had actually bought costumes well in advance this year, which is something I never do since I'm a procrastinator at heart! The down side to this is that they lost some of the parts. I tell ya..I can't win here!

Without further lamenting, here's our little Trick-or-Treaters!

This picture is a little blurry, but I love it:
Our sweet little mermaid:
Nicholas is someone from GI Joe. We haven't seen it so I have no idea who he is!
Brandon was a commando-guy:
These boys love their action guys ;)

Ready to hit the candy trail!
We hope everyone has a fun and safe Tick-or-Treat!

The Tree in Our Backyard

One week ago:
I had to zoom in just to get a good shot of the leaves changing! I wish I had taken the whole tree, but you can see that there is plenty of green.

Today:
This tree actually looked like this a few days ago, but I couldn't get the picture I wanted until today. Had to wait for the sun to show up! Oh, the difference a week makes :)

Making Time for Megan

A few weeks ago, I was chatting with my friend, Jenny, and lamenting over the fact that time is flying and I don't seem to have any of that precious commodity to do any special projects with Megan. I had wanted to step up her "schooling" a bit this year and also have some fun with crafts and such, but the boys really need lots of my time. Add that to the normal things done to run a house and I feel like I run all day long just trying to keep up with life!

Jenny reminded me to plan ahead. After that, the time it takes to actually do the things I wanted to do isn't much. Really, how much can a preschooler take anyway? They get pretty tuckered out! I don't know what I was thinking, but she only does about an hour total of "school work" each day. That's not very much at all! And we both are enjoying the one-on-one time together.

I've kept it fall-related so far and I'll probably continue the holiday or season theme going for each letter of the alphabet.

The first week we did "L" and made this pretty leaf mosaic:

My mother-in-law helped me sort all the beans when they came up for Brandon's birthday party. Do I know how to entertain or what! ;) Thank you, Judy! We also read leaf/tree books and did some letter "L" worksheets. And, of course, we've been noticing the change that's occurring right outside our window!

Next, we did "A" and learned about apples. We've read apple books and done "A" worksheets and we've made a beautiful apple print (thank you Angi, for the reminder!):
It is so hard to get this girl to look at the camera!
and baked an apple pie:
Of course, we also have lots of hands-on learning things like a textured alphabet puzzle, paints, and tangrams:
Notice she's still in her pj's! We often get some work done before her brothers are out of bed! She tends to be a morning girl just like her momma :)

She also has her dance class which has been tons of girly fun for her, and guess what? I took the boys for their basketball evaluations the other night and she's old enough to take cheerleading! Yep, we have a little cheerleader :)

Thank you, Jenny, for the encouragement and tips! While this girl was poorly neglected in September while we got a good foothold in our school work, I feel like she has some things that are her own now; things that will engage her and work her brain! And I feel like I'm finally getting to enjoy some time with her! After all, she is my last four-year-old ;)

Enchanting

The Animals

This place is a working farm so of course, they have animals! Some of the animals are out running around (chickens! yuck!) and some are a little more exotic and in pens:
Yep, that's a camel! They had peacocks too, but I couldn't get a good picture. So fun!
Megan decided she should be able to feed the goat a leaf she picked up.
Never mind the sgn ;) Little Rule Breaker.

This was the cleanest "chicken shack" I've ever seen!
Joy!
Check out that face!

The Fun Center

We have really been loving this nice weather! In a effort to enjoy of it as we can, we headed to a pumpkin farm yesterday so we could pick out our pumpkins before we need winter coats ;) At the last minute, I called Kristen to see if she wanted to join us since she has a bit of a break Wednesday afternoons and the pumpkin farm isn't too far from her school. We haven't seen much of our busy college girl this week so it was nice to spend some of the beautiful afternoon with her.

The fun center is a big hit with our gang.
Kristen left us to go back to class, but we stayed a while longer. There's so much to do there! We just bounce from one thing to another. I have more to come :)

A Pretty Fall Day

Fun in the sun:

Our Little Project

We've been trying for a while now to fix up our basement for the kids. We have a finished basement and it has been everything from a movie area to a school room to it's current status as store room ;) We had our work cut out for us!

There's two rooms down there. One is a playroom and I was able to get that painted and spruced up a bit last winter. The other room is bigger and we've been up in the air about what to do with it.

One of the things holding me up was paint. The room was baby blue and I hated it. Basements are cold, in my opinion, and the wall color made it even colder. I'm convinced of it! But I couldn't decide what color I wanted. I finally chose a green color but when I brought the samples home I hated it too. Finally I found what I wanted and, with help from my mom, got it painted right before we left for vacation! I knew if we waited until we got home it wouldn't get done at all. There's just too much going on during the school year.

We also have alot of big things down there. Like a ten foot counter top. Couldn't decide to keep it or not. Then it dawned on me that it would be the perfect place for my Little Builders! It's now a Lego table :) We'll be putting up a couple of shelves so they can display their work too.

Here's the half of the room that's done:
Nicky and Megan are sitting at the Lego table. Isn't it great?! We have some of their video games down there too and the perfect place to curl up with a book. That's my favorite rocker :)

Teh other half of the room is still a little messy but nothing compared to what it was! Our old kitchen table is down there for a craft table and my wonderful (lonely) treadmill.

We still have pictures to hang and a few other things to clean out. There are two closets down there that need attention. But I think it's finally coming together! We can start moving more toys down right away! :)

We bought the stools for the Lego table today and Nicky and Megan were helping Todd put them together: