Monster Mash 10/28/10

Last year we went trick-or-treating at "The Zoo Goes Boo". This year the zoo announced they were going to have a members-only trick-or-treating called "Monster Mash". The advertising for it said it would be better entertainment, less people, and "premium" treats. So, we decided to give it a try. By doing both we would be able to know which was better for future years.

As you have seen in previous posts, every time we go to the zoo, we take a picture with the statue of John Ball.In addition to the normal statue picture, there was a inflatable Halloween sign.
We got to walk the "Not So Spooky Trail". We happened upon a grave yard....seems spooky to me. ;-)
There is a fun train at the end of the trail. Usually when we are there during the summer, there are too many kids on it for Marc & Samantha to be able to have much fun on it. Since there weren't many people there dung this event, the kids got to play, run, and climb all over it. Someone was nice enough to offer to take out family's picture on it.
I would say the kids got a good loot. :-)
The Monster Mash was a few dollars per ticket more expensive then The Zoo goes Boo. The "premium" treats were more trinkets like from Oriental Trading Company than edible treat. We think in the future we will probably do the Zoo Goes Boo instead of the Monster Mash. More expensive, but still lots of fun!

St Peter's Preschool Harvest Festival

Every year my preschool and the church host a Harvest Festival for all church and preschool families. There are always fun things for the kids to so. The kids are encouraged to wear their costumes for added fun.

One of Marc's favorite thing is the estimation jars. He made an educated guess for all of them, and there were several!! He counted how many items there were on the bottom row, then counted how many rows there were, then Daddy added them on his phone calculator. Marc guessed that there were 392 mini marshmallows in the jar in the picture below, there were actually 398. Great guess!Last year I think Marc did the cupcake walk like 8 times without winning, so after the 9th time, I let him pick one out, he did his time. ;-) This year he was excited to try it again. This year it was a cookie walk and both kids won. :-)
Every time Marc goes back to the preschool he gets very excited that he gets to see his old 5's teacher, Mrs. Street. :-)
One of Marc's other favorite games is the "Fishing for Worms" game. There is a gummy worm tied to the end of a piece of yarn. You have to catch the worm in your mouth using only your mouth.
Each year there are some various crafts for the kids to do. This year the kids got to make paper bats and foam jack-o-lanterns.
The kids were excited about getting tattoos too.
We have fun every year. It is a fun, safe, warm place for the kids to celebrate Halloween. :-)

Elmers Contest

In many of my previous posts I have talked about my friend Sarah who runs Sarahs Deals. She is on of several bloggers who were chosen to "host" a contest on their blogs. Five people (chosen at random) will be chosen to win a $100 Walmart gift card each. All that needed to be one was to use an Elmers Tri-Fold Display board and get crafty. So, I thought, What the heck, I like to craft, an I like free money even more!

The first 2 ideas that popped into my head were 1) a family Thankful tree where we made hand print leaves and we write things that we are Thankful for and 2) a Christmas countdown calendar. When I asked Marc which he liked better, he said, "Why don't you combine both ideas into one display board?" So, that is just what I did! I decided to call our creation "Counting Our Blessings To Christmas".

I headed to Walmart and bought my Tri-fold board an a few other Elmers items that jumped out at me and started brainstorming. Here are a few pictures of the supplies I used:I think I spent a total no more than $11 on supplies. I used a lot of things I had at home already. I bought some new markers, the boar, and some stencils. As a bonus my stencils came with a free mechanical pencil in the box. So after I gathered my supplies I decided it was time to get to work!

First thing I did was pencil in the wording and the tree.
And then I colored those parts in.From there it was time to make our family hand print tree. We picked out 4 different shades of green, 1 for each of us. We put Daddy's hand prints on first......
And then mine......

Then Marc's......And to finish off the tree, Samantha little hand prints.And this is how the tree turned out.After I got done with the tree we decided that there was too much white space around the outside edges. Marc suggested that I put a string of Christmas lights around the edge, so I dug into my old stamping box and found a Christmas light bulb stamp. I also added a Nativity picture, our names, and a few virtue gifts under the tree.Now that all the other work was done, it was time to start writing dates and Blessings on all of the ornaments and "hanging" them on the tree.The ornaments are "hung" on the tree with poster tack so after Christmas we can take them down without wrecking the tree. We will fold the poster up and store it in one of our Christmas decoration boxes for future years. I will cut out a new set of ornaments each year and each night we will decided something we are Thankful for and "hang" it on the tree. By Christmas our family will have decided on 24 things that we count as Blessings in our lives.

Pumpkins, Pumpkins Everywhere 10/23/10-10/24/10

It's pumpkin time! Between my and Marc's field trips we got 3 small pumpkins. Each year we usually let the kids paint the small pumpkins any way they want to. It was fun to watch how differently they painted. Marc was very thoughtfully on how he painted his and Samantha just grabbed whatever paint brush was near by an painted randomly.Both turned out great though!
A few weeks ago when we went to Klackles Orchard we picked our big pumpkin to carve. After weeks of waiting, the time finally came to carve it! We drew shapes on a piece of paper and asked Samantha what shape she thought the nose should be. She chose a diamond shape. Marc chose square eyes and we all chose a smiling mouth with a few teeth showing. Daddy always does the carving and I do the cleaning out. This year we had both kids picking through the "goop" to pick out the pumpkin seeds. Marc thought it was gross and was trying to not get dirty....silly! So Daddy had him hold out both hands and he put a blob of it in his hands and said, "Now, you are dirty, quit being a weeny." ;-) Samantha thought it felt cool squishing through her fingers. We wondered how she would do picking the slimy seeds out of the goop. She did great! She probably picked out just as many as her brother did!
We like to make happy jack-o-lanterns and not scary ones. This is how our little guy turned out. Samantha thought it was so cool that Daddy cut the pumpkin apart.
Our front porch look very "fallish" now with all the kids' craftiness.
I love fall and this is just one of the reasons. It is great family together time to sit and paint and carve and sort seeds and make pumpkin seeds. :-)

Picture Day 10/23/10

Today was the day of our family pictures shoot. We booked another shoot with the same person we did the last two shoots with. She is very reasonably priced, we get her for an hour, and we get the disc....oh, and she gets some really good pictures!

We wanted a fall themed shoot this time. We normally get pictures taken the second week in November so they are taken around Marc's birthday. We decided that at this point, taking them 4 weeks before his birthday would be fine and we could get our fall theme in. We went to a place called Schwallier's Country Basket. All morning we were watching the overcast sky and hoping the rain would miss us. I remembered from a previous shoot that Susan, the photographer, told us that a little overcast were better conditions for shoots then bright sunny skies, so I thought, cool! Well, on our drive there it started to rain. :-( By the time we got there, it had stopped raining so we went and checked out the goats while we waited for Susan to get there.

There were vending machines with goat food. You could put in it a cup attached to a pulley system that you then cranked a wheel to send the cup of food up to the top of a ramp and the goat ate the food you put in the cup.
Samantha thought it was funny that this goat stuck his head through the fence for Samantha to pet him. :-)
One of the things they have there is a huge mountain of bales of hay. There is a tunnel through the middle of it that both kids crawled through and then Marc climbed all the way to the top of it!
Another thing they have is a tube slide that was a about a story high. The first couple of times Samantha went down, she didn't pick up her feet so she went down really slow. After she watched her brother a few times, she figured out she went faster if she picked up her feet. :-)
One thing that this place had that I have never seen before is a corn box. It is like a sand box, but with corn kernels. The kids had fun scooping and pouring and piling and having fun.
By the store there were 2 wooden horses for the kids to check out.
By the time we got done with the hour long photo shoot an then some playing time, we were all (the kids especially) were filthy! It was a dirty but free and fun couple of hours. :-)

Yum! 10/20/10

I love fall! One of the things I love about fall is that the chill in the air makes me ready to make our first batch of chex mix! :-) We make it by splitting into half and mixing it in disposable pans. So, since there are two pans and we have kids, each kid gets to mix the ingredients together.Once the kids got the dry ingredients mixed up, Daddy and I take over and get all the seasonings on and cook it. It has to cook for an hour, so in the process, it makes my house smell yummy! The kids were very glad to try to fruits (or chexes) of their labor. ;-)
The first batch of the season turned out yummy! I think it was all the great helpers that took part in making it. :-)

Detroit Pistons Game 10/13/10

Ok......so those of you that us, know that we are at all sports people. But, the other day, we were sitting at Marc's swim lesson when someone comes up and offers us free tickets to go see the Detroit Pistons at our local arena for the following evening. We thought, what the heck, it was free, and we thought Marc might enjoy it, and oh yeah, Daddy says "They have really good nachos there". Glad he has his priorities straight. ;-)

So, the next night, we piled in the car and drove downtown. Of course, any time we are at an event at the arena we have to get snacks. ;-) Marc chose cinnamon sticks and Samantha shared my popcorn.There was a company out in the walkway that was giving away pens, crayons, mini-coloring books (which came in VERY handy with Samantha) and sets of boom whackers. Marc had fun banging them together and Samantha had fun trying to whack Grandma. ;-)
Our seats were way up in the nose bleed section, but hey, they were free! We kinda liked being up that high. We could see everything that was going on in the whole arena.
It was a fun evening. My Mom and I didn't see a whole lot of the game, we were busy trying to keep Samantha occupied. She watched for a little while in the beginning. She looked down at the court and told us to look at the monkeys down there. ;-) We left right after half-time so Marc could get to bed a decent time since it was a school night, but it turned out to be a very enjoyable evening.

1st Grade Field Trip to Klackles 10/12/10

This morning we headed off to Klackles Orchard for a field trip with all the other 1st graders. :-)
When we got there, we all gathered under a tent to learn about how apples grow and the proper way to pick an apple. After we learned our information, we all piled on some wagons and headed out to the apple orchard to pick some apples.Marc with his student teacher, Miss Moran.
Marc with his teacher, Mr. Steinbacher.
After every one picked their apples and got back on the wagons, we headed out to the pumpkin patch.
After everyone picked pumpkins, we once again piled onto the wagons and headed back to the entrance. When we got to our assigned tent, we found YUMMY donuts and cider waiting for us. They even had enough for us parents to have some too! :-)
After cider and donuts the kids had about 45 minutes for some free play on all of the tons of things to do there other than apples and pumpkins. The plan was to have everyone stay and eat lunch together. But, one of the families we drove there had to unexpectedly leave early (before lunch started). I felt really bad about Marc having to leave early, so after I took the family back to the school to get their car, I took Marc to McDonald's for a special lunch.
We got to Klackles once or twice each year in the fall. It was a lot of fun to see what it was like going with 85 other 1st graders and their families. :-)