Marc's Birthday Celebration with Friends 11/13/10

This year we started a new birthday tradition. Marc will have a full blown party every other year. The years he doesn't have a party he will choose 2 friends to go to a place of his choice.
After we dropped Samantha off at my Mom's house, we headed to our destination. On the way we saw that Krispy Kreme was making fresh, warm glazed donuts, so we stopped for a special birthday celebration day treat.Marc invited 2 girls to join him on his day. Grace is from his 1st grade class this year an Kiley is from his young 5's preschool class.
His choice of activities was lunch and a movie. After every one was done eating their lunches, it was time to open presents (Marc's favorite part. ;-) )Kiley gave him 2 books and a Smencil that smells like real oranges!
Grace gave him a Sorry game.
After presents, it was time for the birthday ice cream sundae. Yum! The kids all shared it and then decided they had enough an there was a little left. So, gee, darn, I had to eat a few bites so it wouldn't all go to waste. ;-)
Marc decided that after lunch it was time to walk across the parking lot and go see "Megamind". We let the kids sit in the row right in front of us, since after all, he is 7 years old now. ;-) The theater got more crowded that expected so the kids had other people sitting on both sides of them (with 1 seat free on each side). Marc and I kept peeking at the off and on all through the movie.
It was a very fun afternoon. It was even more fun to see how different the 2 girls' personalities were and how Marc interacted with them both.

Fun Times at Grandma's House 11/13/10

While Marc had a friend birthday celebration, Samantha got to go to Grandma's house and have some play time with Grandma and Uncle Jeff. Samantha and Uncle Jeff have a mutual admiration for each other. ;-) They were both about as excited about their time together. Here are some cute pictures from their few hours together.

Giddy up Uncle Jeff

Samantha told Grandma she was hiding. ;-)

Only my kids can get Jeff to sit on the floor and color a picture. ;-)

Interesting way to take a nap don't ya think? (They are actually just playing not napping)

Samantha riding around the house in style

I think a fun time was had by all since Samantha didn't want to leave Grandma and Uncle Jeff when we got back to pick her up.

I love the fact that my kids love their Uncle Jeff and that my brother loves them back just as much (even if he won't admit it)!

Cookies!!! 11/5/10

On Saturday we fed the homeless and our job was to bring 8 dozen cookies and on Sunday it was our turn to bring 2 dozen cookies for church. So, in a 2 day period I had to make 10 dozen chocolate chip cookies! I enlisted 2 of the cutest little assistant chefs ever!

Samantha and I made a few batches during the day. She liked dumping and mixing all the ingredients.I let her attempt to put blobs of dough on the cookie sheet but the dough was a little gooey so it didn't fall off the spoon.
After dinner Marc helped me make a few more batches. He has always liked helping in the kitchen, and this time was no different.
What better dessert is there than a fresh-baked, home-made chocolate chip cookie???? Do you think Samantha enjoyed it? ;-)
The day after we made the cookies we took Marc downtown with other families from our church. Our church is in a rotation of several church that take part in a program called Jesus on the Streets. Every Saturday 11-1 people from one of the churches goes to a specific spot an feeds the homeless. We were there for 2 hours. I was amazed at the range of need. Some people obviously lived on the streets, other had enough money to have a place to sleep but not enough money to buy food. The other thing I was surprised by was the range of gratitude. Some people were falling all over themselves thanking us for feeding them while other people complained that the pizza was cold and not hot. It was a very moving experience to say the least. it makes me very Thankful for everything we have!

Trick-or-Treat - 10/31/10

Happy Halloween!! It's time for trick-or-treating!! Marc wore a hand-me-down Sulley (from Monsters Inc) costume from some friends. Samantha wore her Cinderella dress she got for making a potty training goal.I love how much Marc takes care of his little sister. (I type that as they are arguing in the background right now). He made sure she was keeping up walking and getting her candy from the houses (for awhile at least ;-) )
We id the loop around our neighborhood. Samantha didn't quite get why we were going up to strangers and asking for candy. She wanted to look at each piece as she got it. If she id that, she would get run over! ;-) They were so cute when we got back, sitting in their costumes, holding their candy-filled pumpkins.
They made a pretty good haul! We still have a lot of it let!
After Marc got done looking at his loot, he came outside and helped me hand out candy. He was a very good helper!
It was a very happy Halloween!!

Neighborhood Halloween Party - 10/30/10

Our neighborhood has a ton of kids in it. We also get HUNDREDS of kids through our neighborhood on Halloween night. So, one of my neighbors decided to have a Halloween party at their house the night before Halloween. That way we actually got to see the neighborhood kids in their costumes and give the good candy.

One of the guests brought pumpkin cookies that Samantha loved!The turn out ended up being kinda small, which was nice and cozy. We decided to venture outside to their cold deck and let the kids bob for apples.
The kids had never bobbed for apples before and they both thought it was the coolest thing ever!
We did a pot-luck so we munched on munchies for dinner an snacked on Halloween candy all night with great neighbors, what more can you ask for?!

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. :-)