Thanksgiving cont...

Grandma Heaton is always so good to allow the grandkids to help with meals. The grandkids helped make homemade rolls for dinner. When helping Grandma wasn't an option playing in the snow was! We definetly had plenty to play with. Hunter made me laugh. He'd play outside until his pants, socks and shoes would be soaked through. He'd then come change and go do it again with different shoes. He didn't want to wear a coat becuase he only had one and didn't want it to get wet like his clothes. Kids!!
It's hard to tell but the sun was out and really wasn't that cold when I took these pictures. Thanksgiving day was the coldest day while we were there. It was FREEZING. It was a high of 12 degrees and incredibly windy. It was cold cold cold. After thursday though during the day it really didn't feel to bad.
We could easily go outside to the cars or walk down the street to a family member's home with no coat.

Over the weekend we stayed at Harmony's home (Kory's sister). They built their house with a rustic theme and so throughout the house they have these posts.

This paticular post always becomes the inside jungle gym when the cousins get together.

Hunter likes to show off what he can do to his cousins.

Turkey Tournament

I think the highlight of our Thanksgiving weekend this year was the Turkey Tournament. At thanksgiving time every year Valley High School holds an alumni Basketball Turkey Tournament. You yourself don't have to be an alumni just someone your related to. This year Kory's brother Kirk, his brother-in-law Dustin and their nephew Carson played on the same team along with a few distant cousins. Our 1st game this year took place thanksgiving day, after dinner.

Unforunately we lost by 6 pts. But still played a pretty good game.

Our 2nd game took place Friday night. We did awsome. The game was one that we'd be ahead by 10pts and then it would reverse, then we'd get ahead again. Overall it was a good game and we won in the end.

Being we won our 2nd game this put us in the finals. We were playing for 5th/6th place. I know... Whoo Hoo!!! This game was by far the best game I have been to in a very long time. We were neck to neck the entire game. With 3 seconds left on the board Kory shot a 2 pointer which tied us and sent us into overtime. The next 7 minutes was just great! The wives of our team really got into it. There was stomping and yelling and jumping out of our seats cheering our team on. We were again neck to neck through overtime. In the end we did loose by 1 measly point. But boy did we have a great time.

Brayden was one of Daddy's biggest fan's. He'd stomp his feet with everyone else, clap his little hands and yell go daddy go!

Preschool Turkey's

This week was my turn for Preschool.

Today we made turkey hats! On tuesday we made turkey birds with colorful feathers sorted and glued all by themselves.
We played my rendition of a "feather" memory game using numbers which ended up being the kids favorite.

We also played "Gobble Gobble Gobble". I had a bowl full of turkeys with a letter from the alphabet printed on it. The kids had to pull a turkey and say what the letter was. If they knew they could keep the letter. There were several turkeys that said Gobble on them. If that card was pulled they would Gobble like a turkey.

At the end of the preschool while waiting for our mom's we played Turkey, Turkey, Gobble aka duck duck goose.

We really have had fun this week at preschool. I love teaching on the holiday weeks. There are soo many fun ideas to chooose from. It's a little wierd to know my next teach week is not until next year!

Not already. Where has the time gone?

Elemantary School Projects

Over the past 10 days both Hunter and Madelyn have had to give an oral report of some kind. I am so done with reports right now. I feel like thats all we've done over the past couple of days. Anyway's Madelyns was yesterday. She had to pick a National Symbol and give a 2-4 minute oral report. Thank the heavens for internet and google. It didn't turn out as hard as I thought it would be. Her and I both sat at the computer and learned a little about the American Bald Eagle. She wanted to type up our notes that we took. After a few sentences she tired and I finished typing for her. I was very impressed with my little girl and her dedication she gave to this report.
She did an AWOSME job. After many practices at home she read her report very clearly and loud enough for all to hear. She did great! My grandma quilted this wall hanging many years ago for one of my brothers when they received their Eagle Award. We brought it to share with the class.

Over the last 2 weeks Hunter has had 2 different oral assignment too. The 1st was a Hero Project. He had to pick a hero and then complete the 5 W's (where, what, when, why, who). He had to compile all of his research and then he made his and mine very 1st power point presentation (aparenlty being 7 and in 2nd grade isn't too young to learn how to do this) to share with his class. The Hero he picked was his Uncle Travis who served for 18 months in Iraq. Since his Uncle Travis lives with Grandma too we asked him to dress up in his army fatigue and be present during his presentation. After Hunter was done with his presentation the teacher let the kids ask questions. Although it seems there weren't too many questions as the kids repeated the same question over and over or they would make a statement like, "I've shot a gun before or hey I have a dog tag too or even my uncle is in the army too." Uncle Travis did a great job responding to a class full of 7 year olds. Hunter did a great job doing his presentation too. I'm just sorry I forgot the camera to capture his moment.

Hunter's 2nd grade class has something called "Show and Teach" not show and tell. Hunter has been assigned one friday every month to teach his class something. This past friday Hunter picked his show and teach to be about eggs. He did 3 different science projects in front of the class to teach them.
#1- What happens to a hard boiled egg that has been sitting in a mason jar full of Vinegar for a week?
Answer: The vinegar disolves the egg shell and membrane. The egg is now rubbery and can bounce similar to a bouncy ball a few inches off the table. If you threw it across the room it would break. So don't try that!

#2- How many books will it take to break 4 empty egg shells?
Hunter gently cracked the egg vertically (not the normal way). He emptied the egg and using a pair of scissors trimmed the shell so that it would sit evenly on the table. He did this with 4 eggs and then evenly spaced them so that they would be near the corners of the book. At school he was able to get 4- 3inch hard bound dictionaries on top of the egg shells before he heard the 1st crack. Dictionary #5 squashed the egg shells. When we read about this on the net there is a grandma who has been able to get 30+ books before the 1st crack.

#3- Spin the egg, this was more of a magic trick. Hunter asked for a volunteer to try to spin a egg. While his volunteer is desperatley trying to get his egg to spin Hunter is making his egg spin with ease. What is wrong with the Volunteer? Why can't he spin his egg? How hard is it to spin an egg? Come on!
The trick is that Hunter's egg is hard boiled and the volunteers is raw. A raw egg won't spin becuase of the momentum of the raw egg sloshing around inside. The hard boiled egg is solid inside and will therefore spin.

I wasn't able to be there for his show and teach and so didn't get any pictures. Hunter tells me everyone loved his show and teach this month. His teacher even commented on how well he did. This month's show and teach was definetly a success. Until next month...
I hope it's a little while before the next report.

A Homemade Christmas

As I mentioned above the past 2 weeks has been fairly crazy at our house. After all those class reports were done and my prep for Preschool this week was done I wanted to get ahead start on some homemade Christmas gifts. I knew I wouldn't be able to get much done this week or next (as far as my Christmas gifts are concerned). I'm pleased with all that I was able to accomplish in so little time. This week the big kiddo's have been getting out of school at 1:15 everyday for parent teacher conferences. I lost my afternoons to those and then also my mornings by it being my week of preschool. Next week there in no Preschool which means I can't work on anything or Miss Emily might spoil the suprise. Hunter and Madelyn only have school on Mon. and Tue. anyways and then there out for Thanksgiving. My 1st gift I wanted to work on was for Miss Emily. After months of some serious BEGGING, ASKING, WHINNING,PROMISING TO DO ANYTHING, CRYING for some baby doll diapers

I finally got around to them. She doesn't know that though as just yesterday at WalMart she asked me to buy her baby dolls a box of diapers like I was buying for Brayden.

Um.....No!

It was a little tricky but hopefully these diapers will fit all her babies. Big and small.

I can hardly wait to see her surprise when she opens this gift.

My last sewing project that I wanted to accomplish last week was for my niece who is 6. Knowing how much she loves to draw, write doodle and color, I made her this. During the school supply sale I was able to pick up composition books for just $.25, boxes of markers and colored pencils for under $.50. My 1st thought was just to wrap everything up and give it to her but then after seeing something similar to this on a TON of blogs out there I decided to follow the crowd. Seriously I'd be surprised if you haven't seen these yet. I made a fabric book cover for the composition book and then a matching crayon roll (only made mine bigger to hold markers and colored pencils).

I absolutely LOVE the way everything turned out. My two girls also loved it. Since the completed project almost everyday Madelyn will mention how much she too LOVED it and would also like one for Christmas.

After hearing (non stop) how LOVED this gift was going to be I made two more for my girls. I recently got a new wallet and purse and was going to throw away my old well beaten up planner. Emily asked if she could have it for a little while. I didn't care, but seriously that thing as been connected to her hip ever since. It is not uncommon to see her sitting on the couch writing on the previously used (by me) papers. I hope I transfered all my contacts as I don't think I could read anything anymore. I'm glad my girls LOVED this. It certainly made an easy and inexpensive Christmas gift for them.

And one that I know they will enjoy!

Milestone

Another milestone has been reached.

The baby boy has turned 18 months and is officially in Nursery!

Redilicious

Yesterday Maddie brought home something a little different for her homework.

Meet Tom the turkey. The homework assignment was to disguise dear Tom so that he would escape Thanksgiving dinner. To Maddie this was not a homework assignment but a "project" just waiting to happen. Around this house one child can not do a project without everyone else joining in also. So we made a few copies of dear old Tom.
I must say Hunter had a clever idea. Being Halloween was just last week he decided to do a halloween costume for Tom. He was going to curl short pieces of black pipe cleaners and attach them to the eye lid but in the end changed his mind. Instead he added fuzzy's.

Emily was was apparently going after the "starry eyed" turkey.

Maddie was very proud of her final project. Have you read the books Pinkalicious, Purplicious or even Goldilicous? I didn't have all pink, all purple or all gold fabric so she chose red instead.
And so this is how Redilicous came to be.

If you couldn't tell, she "love it". She did a great job and really did most of it by herself. She just needed me sitting next to her agreeing with her ideas.

Good Job Madelyn!

Trick or Treat

Those of you who know me know my passion for Halloween. I LOVE this holiday!

I love everything about it. For the past 4 years we have had an annual Halloween Party. Living in my parents basement, not having a lot of room and not knowing what the weather would really be like and of course not knowing a lot of people we decided not to this year. I should have done one anyways. I really missed not doing one. Oh well next year for sure.

We were able to go to the Elder's Quorum party held at the church. Kory and I were the Ghost Buster's.

I've been working for several days on our costumes and I thing they turned out great. I loved our costumes this year. We usually don't do the same costume every year. I guess we are like our kids and want to do someting "new". My sister Sheri has already called dibs on our costumes for next year. We'll share! These were such a hit though we'll have to use them again, sometime in the future. At our only party we got to attend we won the most "overall" halloween costume this year.
Brayden was our ghost.
Emily decided to be a witch for the night.
Mommy with my little man spider.

My ghost!

My brother and his family came along with us.

It was a good party with lots of food, sugar cookie decorating for the kids and plent of visiting.

I think what I like about Halloween the most is all the creativity you can have with it. The thinking up and then creating the homemade costumes. It was much easier when my kids were younger and there was only 1 or 2 of them to do there's too . Now having 4 kids that come with there own opinions and the changing of there minds so quickly I just can't do homeade for all. But at least I can use my creativity on Kory's and mine costume. I know I've said it but I'm going to say it again. I absolutely loved our costumes this year. I don't know how I will be able to one up ourselves next year.

School Parties

I found another picture of a Spider Web hairdo I did on Maddie but never blogged about.

She loved this one.What's a web without spiders? I personally think we over did it with the spiders but it wasn't my hair and I did what I was asked. So the spiders she had!
Emily had her Halloween Party during preschool thursday morning.
She was dressed as a Care Bear ans seriously 2 minutes before we were to leave she got mad at me for something and refused to wear a costume. This girl is stubborn! I'm afraid of what we have enstore when she's a teenager.

After spending several minutes explaining to her that she would be the ONLY one not dressed up. That every friend of hers and her teacher would have a costume on she decided whe wanted to be Tinkerbell.
And so we quickly created a Tinkerbell costume. Not one of her pictures has her eyes open.
Oh well!
I was not very good about taking my kids pictures while in their costumes this year.
Maddie was Wonder Woman with using a borrowed costume this year.
She loved it.

Hunter could have been a Ninja or a Pirate. He had an AWSOME fully loaded costume for both. But nope he didn't want to be those. He wanted to be the hand me down spider that could have really used a face lift. But.... deciding to be the spider the morning of his class party not much could be done.

It must not have been as bad as I thought it was as he received so many compliments on it. Or maybe it was becuase he was one of the few with a homemade costume.

I am Hunter's room mom this year. We had a great party. Lots of games, cupcakes to decorate and getting everyones costumes in place for the school parade.

Halloween Meals

Why just do Halloween Dinners?

That's what my kids wanted to know.

So I suprised them the next morning with a "one eyed egg" breakfast.

Instead of doing the normal circle I used some of our Halloween cookie cutters. One night for dinner to go along with our main course we had Frankenstein join us.

This was the 1st time we've made these.

The kids loved it. I will have to do these again next year. I tried making little rice ghosts but.....didn't much look like ghosts. After a family vote we decided they were Fall Owls. Not quite Halloween but still fun and something different.

For Halloween night we had "Ghost Pie" aka Shephard's Pie.

Several mornings we also had pumpkin and ghost shaped pancakes but I must have forgotten to take pictures of them. What a crazy Halloween week we ended up having. Doing our traditional Halloween Dinners were fun but next year I am most definetly going back to the once a week Halloween Dinner.

Halloween is one of my most FAVORITE holidays.

I love the school parties, the dressing up, fun dinners, the outside decor. Especially come Halloween night I love the creepy looking houses with the strobe lights and fog.

I just love it all!

I'm a little sad that Halloween has come and gone already. However, I do love the holidays. I am ready to take down everything Halloweeny and put up our Fall/Thanksgiving decor.

Monster Toes and Project #3

Tonights Dinner was some good ole' tasting monster toes and french fries.

I sliced the potatos while the kids took some of our Haloween cookie cutters to them.

We had homemade frenchfries in all different shapes, a moon, coffin, bat and spider. The monster toes were sliced pieces of chicken breast rolled in bread crumbs with a slice of red pepper and then baked

Yummy!

The kids claim tonights dinner as the best so far.

The dinners this week have been fun to do but very time consuming and I'm definetly going back to the "Halloween Dinner" once a week through the month of October next year.

I'm glad there enjoying all my hard work trying to make this week memorable for them.

I sure hope they remember these times when they're older.

After dinner tonight we did project #3. We ended up eating later than I had planned and so didn't have time to do our carmel apples. Instead I pulled out our games we will be using for Hunter's class party this week. We all helped put them together.

Some a little more than others. Brayden enjoyed his siblings sitting with there back towards him. Your never safe from him if your on the ground at his level. This baby boy of ours loves to tackle!

I think his big sisters and brothers love it just as much as he does.

After the stickers were all in place we played Pumpkin Bowling and Candy Corn Toss.

Hunter's class will definetly enjoy these games.

Thanks for your help my little ones!

Mummy for Dinner

Last night for dinner I made a yummy "mummy" meatloaf.

Along with brittle finger tips dipped in ranch.
After dinner we were going to make carmel apples for our family project, but....
I had a very disobedient little boy who couldn't seem to listen or do what was asked and so
he got sent to bed early. Not wanting to be quite "that" mean I decided to wait on the project for another day. Maybe tommorrow....

My little man, Brayden seems to get hungry every night about 8:30. This little boy eats and eats and eats. He eats a good breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack and dinner. I'm telling you though come 8:30 he eats more at that time then he does all day. Being he usually sleeps all night I don't mind to much. Last night was no different. He started whining and beating on the fridge for someone to come help him open it. Daddy came to the rescue, he pointed to the milk so Kory got the milk out and went to get a cup. When he turned around Brayden was pulling a box of cereal out of the cabinet. It wasn't a drink of milk he wanted but a bowl of cereal.


It was just a few minutes into his bowl of cereal that I realized his head wasnt bobbing to get the spoon into his mouth but becuase the poor kid was falling asleep.
Everytime the flash went off his eyes would open to just a slit and you could see his eyes rolling back into his head. Way "Creeepy"!

I wish I could have gotten it on video cause it was HILARIOUS to watch him bob and sway.

Being he sits at the table in a normal chair I didn't feel like I could let him bob to much or he'd fall off. Needless to say his cereal didn't get finished but he still slept good!