Pumpkin Carving

I see I posted the picts backward today. Meaning the story will be told backwards. I wanted post these picts today and don't have the time to redo the picts. You understand!!!
I think Maddies turned out very well. Daddy helped her cut it out. This is one proud girl who makes sure to ask each guest arriving at our door if they saw "HER" pumpkin?

Suprisingly Hunter really didn't care for scooping the inside out. It took quite a bit of convincing to get him to do it. This is the kid that loves to cover himself in mud as many of you have seen pictures of this in previous posts. He chose the skull in front of bones. His pumpkin shows me how much he's growing up. What happened to the cutsie little boy images??

Maddie unlike her brother didn't have a problem with getting her hands dirty. Not only did she do her own but she also helped big brother. Sweet sister!!

Emily didn't like to touch the insides either. Once she saw everyone else cutting the pumpkin she found her own little tool that no one else was using and kept poking at the pumpkins. She thought she was in heaven and kept asking everyone to look me, look me, look me!!!!

When Hunter and I were finished with his pumpkin he helped his daddy come up with ideas for his own. Our plan was to do this tonight for family home evening. However, during church we were told we were going to be asked to do something different for family home evening with other families in the ward. We would be contacted later that day with more info. So we decided to carve our pumpkins sunday afternoon.

Tonight for family home evening each family has been put into groups (other families that live near by) Our group has been given 200 flyers supporting the marriage propostition. We have been assigned certain streets all within the ward boundaries and will be hanging them on every front door. It will be an interesting evening.

Windmill Farms

Last week we took our preschool group on their 1st Field Trip. We went to Windmill Farms in Chino Valley. The kids had a blast. Most of the kids chose to feed and pet the calf, goats and sheep.





We all got a hay ride. Hunter was able to come with us that morning.

Some of the mom's brought plenty of snacks to go around. The staff at the farm was vvery accomodating. Besides the preschoolers and Hunter we also had everyones younger kids giving us 6 kids under the age of 3.

For some reason Maddie missed the group shot.

Feeding the fish and ducks.

Maddie

Hunter

Emily giving me grief for taking her picture. This girl has more attitude when it comes to taking her picture.

It was a nice, warm morning. Everyone took their jackets off and had a great time. All of the kids were able to pick a very small pumpkin to take home. For $3 just for the preschool kids it was a great field trip.

Harvest Party Ideas????

Hunter's teacher asked me today if I would be willing to plan the "Harvest Party" this year. It's going to be in 2 weeks. The kids DO NOT dress up and I need to stay away from Halloween themed stuff. I need to plan games and an activity. Here are some of my ideas:

Games: Harvest Theme Picture Bingo (pictures of pumpkins, leaves, scarecrows, corn, apples, etc.) I thought I could print them out and cut them into squares. Have the kids color them and glue them onto their bingo card. This way each card should be different.

Pin The Leaf On The Tree- again I could give them a traced outline of a leaf that they could color. This way identifying whose leaf belongs to who might be a little easier.

With the kids coloring it would take a little bit longer to play.

Activitys: There is a poem about 5 little pumpkins sitting on a fence. The poem also mentions a flying witch so I'm not sure this paticular poem will work. If not I hope to make up my own. The kids can glue a fence together using craft sticks and then color, cut and glue 5 pumpkins on top of there fence.

Peter, Peter pumpkin eater
Had a wife and couldn't keep her
Put her in a pumpkin shell
And there he kept her very well.
Hunter has to memorize a poem each week. The past few weeks have been nursery rhymes similar to this. I thought using this poem the kids could cut out a pumpkin and glue it to a bigger piece of paper. Before gluing making a window that opens and shuts in the center of the pumpkin. Maybe gluing a picture of a woman behind the window. Just to go along with the poem.

Using a paper plate the kids could glue torn up pieces of orange construction paper and glue it all over, add a brown stem to make a pumpkin.

Using a paper plate, cut the center out and glue construction leaves all around making a wreath.

So far Hunter hasn't painted at school but if they had a couple of leaves that they fold in half. Open it up paint one side, shut the leave and rub so it has that distressed paint look when opened. Then they could glue that as part of there wreath. Might be kinda messy though.

I'm sure lots of you out there have ideas. I'd love to hear from you. I'm meeting with Hunter's teacher thurs. afternoon to go over some ideas. So leave me your ideas please. Anything you've done or heard about that was a hit. Thankyou, Thankyou, Thankyou.

Unbelievable

This video is absolutely incredible. The 1st couple shares their experience about their KINDERGARTENER being taught HOMOSEXUALITY. The 2nd couple shares their experience of their 2nd grader. Both couples show the books that their children were read at school. One showed a Prince falling in love with another Prince. The Prince's get married and kiss!!!!

My sister-in-law posted this on her blog and I thought I'd share. You've got to watch this it's about 4 min. long. It'll make you want to vote.

Annual Halloween Party

It's that time again. We have been planning our annual Halloween Party for a few weeks now. I cheated this year on the invitations and let my good friend April do them for me. I picked them up from Costco yesterday and will start hand delivering them today. If your not home I'll be leaving it at your door. Just in case it grows legs and walks off, YOU are invited.

For those who have a hard time reading this it says:

Ghosts, pirates, witches n' more

We must see a costume when you come to the door

It's a night filled with tricks n' treats so beware

The Heaton halloween party... come if you dare !!!

Saturday Oct. 18, 2008
4-7pm

6300 E. Prince St.

RSVP 775-3521

Maid wanted...

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have been fighting a cold for a few days now. Quite fankly I'm just tired. I fell asleep on the couch last night about 6 o' clock. At some point I did make to my bed as Hunter performed his wake up mommy routine at 6:10 this morning and I was in my own bed. For some reason I just couldn't go back to sleep. Instead of cleaning my house I talked to a few friends on the phone this morning. To one I mentioned how embarrassed I 'd be if someone were to show up on my door step. I jinxed myself. I have had about 5 unexpected visitors. As I let one visitor into my house he congratulated me on my pregnancy and then said,
WOW, I hope your morning sickness doesn't last long.". The funny part that I'm still laughing about is I just told his wife this morning I was pregnant and didn't mention morning sickness at all. He's just assuming my house looks like this becuase of well.... morning sickness. The 2 above picts is what you see from my front door. Whats hard to imagine is I taught preschool yesterday and my house didn't look anything like this. It's kinda scary to see how quickly a house can be trashed. At the same time its shows how much I (and every other mom) do during the day. I don't know if my house has ever looked quite this bad. Any one have a maid to spare??? I think I may need to hire one just for the next few months.

This would be my dining room. Which still carries last night dinner plates, breakfast cereal, peanut butter and jelly from lunch and the art project Maddie has done today to keep her busy.

Yes, it is 2 o'clock in the afternoon. Today was P.J day at school so that's Hunter's excuse for being in his P.J's. And just for the record he did not wear these last night to bed. Emily however there is no excuse nor for myself. Maddie just informed me that Emily had an accident and wiped it up with the pair of pajama pants in the background. That is why she doesn't match. Which I didn't realize until now. So I guess it's time to end this blog. I've got much cleaning to do and a child that needs a bath before she starts a stinkin'.

The 10 Second Rule...

Hunter has never understood that when food drops on the floor it is now dirty and you shouldn't eat it. When he was quite younger we'd go to the movies and he'd crawl off our laps to sit on the floor and eat all the fallen popcorn that had been sitting there for who knows how long and from who know how many different people. There are too many times to relate how many times Hunter would show me a piece of candy he found on the ground that he was already chewing up.

It's probably true that a little dirt won't hurt but we all know that the 10 second rule is just a bunch of crap. However, we figured if we could teach this to Hunter than maybe eventually we could move on to the if you drop it don't eat it concept.

Last week we took a family field trip to Costco. My kids love going there for all the free food. (I must say thankyou to the sweet little lady who gives each child their own whole Go-Gurt. And we wonder why our kids love this place.) Hunter went up to one of the "free food" spots and took one of the freebies. The little chunck of meat slipped off the flimsy paper cup onto the floor. He imediately bent over picked it up and took a big bite. I seriously thought the lady who was passing them out was going to have a heart attack. Her jaw dropped, her eyes bugged, she grabbed the meat out of his hands and told him not to eat it, and gave him a new one. Hunter looked up at her and said "but I haven't counted to 10 yet." Kory and I both kinda chuckled. I was just so excited to hear him repeat what we've been telling him for quite some time now. To think he may actually be "getting" what we've been trying to teach him. It was definety something gross. We all know you just don't eat something that has beed dropped onto Costco's floor.

Yesterday Hunter wanted left over spaghetti for lunch. After warming it up for him he wanted to take it outside and eat on our front porch. He kinda tripped on the ledge making him tip his plate a little too much causing this.... He didn't seem to care so why should I??? I've been fighting a cold the past few days and the cold finally won. So not sleeping good at night because I can't breathe, being pregnant and fighting morning sickness that tends to last all day, babysitting this week and teaching preschool, I'M TIRED!, I really didn't care how, where or what he's choosing to eat.
Kory happened to be home at the time of this little incident. After him eating just a few bites Kory looked at me and said, "You gonna let him eat that, off the porch?" I should have had a quick come back something along the lines of your the one watching him do it, maybe you should do something about it. Instead I had a flash back of our house being sprayed recently for bugs. They usually squirt down the entire front porch with their pesticide. I decided it probably wasn't very safe for him to eat it so I helped him clean it up and got him some fresh spaghetti.

Preschool- Thursday

To continue with our "bug" theme of the week I focused a little more on the change of a catipillar. We started off painting our catipillars green. Some have asked, "what does Hunter do when it's your turn to teach?" Well he goes along with everyone else. It just adds one more student to the day.
For snack we ate cocoons (cresent rolls). Everybody got to make their own.
While waiting for the cocoons to bake and the paint to dry, we made a counting catipillar.
And in the end a beautiful butterfly to take home.
Maddie says that today was her favorite day. I'm so glad she has fun in our little preschool.

"I'm not tired", says Hunter.

For as long as I can remember Hunter's woken up at the crack of dawn. I think we trained him to do this when he was just a baby and I was working full time. I had to have him at the sitters at 7:30am so I would wake him up between6-6:30. ANYWAYS... So what seems like forever now he comes into my room about 6am every morning and asks,"Is it wake up time?". My response is usually, "is the sun up?" Unfortunately his answer is usually a yes. So for an hour he gets to watch cartoons or play the WII without his sister's opinions.

About once a month he gets incredibly tired. He whines, crys throws a tantrum, you name it. It's on days like this that I make him lay down. So the other day he was having one of his tired days and I asked him to go lay down. He threw a fit and kept saying he wasn't tired. He wasn't in his room to long when I went in to check on him. You know to make sure he was on his bed and not playing quietly in the corner. This is what I found. At first I didn't think he was asleep, but he was!!!
And he says he wasn't tired!!!!

Preschool- Tuesday

It's that time again. It's hard to believe we've been doing the school thing for 6weeks now. It was my turn to teach again. The letter of the week is G. The kids wrote the letter G out with glue and then we covered it in sparkles making us "Glittering G's" They each had a paper to color the capital G's one color and the lower case G's another.
Our theme of the week is "Bugs". This is my favorite theme. We made a Lady Bug Counting Book. Each page had a number on it and then the kids glued black dots to match the number.

Who doesn't like to paint??? This is the 2nd time I've tried having the kids paint with potatos. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong but it didn't work again. So in the end Maddie painted one big black dot on the back of her ladybug. As long as the kids have fun it doesn't matter.