Thanksgiving

We spent Thanksgiving this year with Grandma and Aunt Kim(or "Kimmie" depending on how S is feeling at the moment).  James' Uncle Buddy came too but he had another Thanksgiving to go to so I didn't get a picture of him.

Here's all our yummy food!!

The day after Thanksgiving S had to help Grandma make some pancakes for breakfast.

And then the kids helped decorate the tree.  There was a joke that James had to put the star on the top because Aunt Kim was too short but she managed to be able to plug in the star just fine!

There was also some creative decorating...

The kids actually help decorate the tree after supper when James and I went out for some late Black Friday shopping(why go out at 4am when most of the stuff you can get at 7pm???).  Somehow I didn't get a fully decorated tree picture but they did a good job.

This next picture is funny to me.  Normally it's James that gets all the wrestles from the kids but I got involved this time and Kim was nice enough to take a picture for me. :)

We had a good trip!

raking leaves

 I love our house, neighborhood, and all the trees!  But fall time with trees means raking time.  A few weekends ago James' mom and sister were visiting and James thought it would be a good time to rake leaves. :)

O was a very big help this year.  She loved raking and putting the leaves into the sacks!

S, not so much. :)  He did try to use one of the riding toys as a bulldozer! :)

And he kept throwing his ball into the piles.  Oh well, the job got mostly done. :)

halloween

For some reason I realized this morning that I hadn't posted Halloween pictures.  Opps! :)  So here we go!

O wanted to be a cat and S never would say what he wanted to be.  He loves pandas so I figured that would be an easy costume to figure out.

O really did love her costume.  I think it turned out cute.  And if I ever get around to taking off the black feather boas off the shirt and pants, she can wear those again!

I was so glad S finally decided to put on his panda hat!  We had been trying to convince him to wear it for about 3 weeks before Halloween.  I was trying to think of what he could be without the hat... maybe an Oreo??

By the way, one of our neighbors handed out little bags of chips.... my kids were more excited about this than the candy!  They love chips!

Gaga was able to join us this year and we had fun trick-or-treating with her!

Just as we were finishing our round of the block, our good friends and neighbors came home so we trick-or-treated at their house and ours together. :)

And then there's the sorting of the candy afterwards.  We don't give the kids much candy at all so it still amazes me that they understand that everything(but the chips of course) they got is candy!

bowling fun

There's a bowling ally by our house that offers preschool bowling(a.k.a. bumper bowling) on Thursday mornings.  I thought it was just a summer activity and that we had missed it until I read in a kids magazine a few weeks ago that it continues through the winter.  So a couple weeks ago I decided we were actually going to check it out!  The kids had so much fun!

Getting the lovely shoes on....

O looks happy in this picture but it took awhile for her to get to this point.  She refused to put on the bowling shoes for a few minutes.  It took S getting his shoes on and bowling once to convince her that it was ok to put on these stylish shoes!

In her defense, she had just gotten new, princess blinking shoes a week before.  AND as we were leaving she didn't want to take off the bowling shoes!!  She kept asking if we could take them home!

O loved to carry the ball to the lane all by herself.

There was alot of excitement!!

Apparently O got really comfortable....

Here's their scores... kind of.... S actually bowled for O for the first 6 frames since she was shoe shy.  Then O went 3 times instead of twice so they switched again... oh well.  I still think they did pretty good!

it's Wednesday....

Wordless Wednesday

leaf prints

Here is a quick fall activity that you can do.  There's really no prep... just get some leaves from your yard...

and some paper and crayons without the wrappings(which won't be hard because I think every kid takes the wrapping off of the crayons!)

Tape your leaves on the paper with the vein sides down.

Turn the paper over and rub your crayon over the leaves

And you are done!

Wordless Wednesday

shaving cream fun

 Want to have some messy, but really good smelling, fun with your kids???  Try shaving cream "painting!"  I've heard about doing this from several people.  I finally remembered to get some cheap shaving cream and we did it!

Here's a tip: cover the surface with plastic wrap before you start:

They may start out a bit shy....

but trust me, they will get into it!

Oh yes!

"Oh my!  Look what we did!"

"Yea!!!!"

Remember that tip I gave you??  Well I had a mental block and took the plastic wrap off before I cleaned the children.  Oops!

Wordless Wednesday

(well, words this time... there was suppose to be a picture here when I posted it Wednesday... I used the what-I-thought-was-cool-but-apparently-doesn't-really-work upload to blogger button in Picasa and the picture didn't show up when it was posted.)

In September our family participated in the "Memory Walk" which is a walk to help end Alzheimer's.  I blogged about this a week before we walked.  Three of my relatives, including my grandma, have passed away with Dementia.  This was the first walk I had been a part of and it really was a good time. 

Here's the start

If my aunt and cousin are reading my blog, I'm sure they will be so happy I put this picture on!

Here's most of our family group

They had a little "memory garden" you could walk through as well.  The purple flowers represent someone who has passed away from Alzheimer's/Dementia, the blue flowers represent someone who has Alzheimer's who attended the walk, and the yellow ones represent caretakers of someone with Alzheimer's.  There was another color, orange, for people who were there as supporters.

It was a good day, even if both children were sick and James and I had sinus infections. :)  Uncle Josh always makes things better!

cider fest

A few weekends ago we went to an area apple cider mill.  The kids loved the "pumpkin patch"

We saw the apples and how they made the cider



We ate apple cider donuts and drank apple cider.  O and I shared and James and S shared.  O thought it was really funny that she drank most of the apple cider when I left to go buy some to take home.