Lefty Little Guy

This is his new thing.  He points at something and wants to make sure you see exactly where he's pointing, so he turns his head and uses his dominant eye (the left eye) and lines it up exactly with what he's trying to show you. 

Turkey Cupcakes

Princess Sparkley made these at Activity Days in November.

Princess Sparkley aka Spicy and Cousin Pickles: in felt

by Buddy.  Apparently she is screaming with a carrot in her mouth.  Which is fairly
typical of any evening we have carrots with dinner.

Pinterest Fall Projects

Thankful Tree idea from here





Leaf Garland idea from here



Imaginary Friends

On a car trip several years ago we came up with imaginary friends for our kids.  The imaginary friends were, for Princess Sparkley, Cinderella, Bella, and Stella.  Buddy refused to have rhyming imaginary friends so his were Hammer and Cone.  Little Guy's were difficult to come up with, but we finally settled on, Your Highness as his imaginary friend.  Recently, we've added to his list [Yug]*, which is [Little Guy] backwards and is how he writes his name accidentally every once in awhile.  I'll hear from the other room, "Oh, I wrote [Yug] again!"  Just now, from upstairs, Buddy yelled "G-U-Y, you're supposed to be cleaning with me!"  Little Guy yelled back, "That spells Yug!"  Hilarious.  Earlier, while he and Buddy were playing Marines, he yelled out, "I have a bad feeling about this."  When I asked where he'd heard that phrase he said Luke says it in Star Wars.

*For those of you who know his real name, Yug, is not the new imaginary friend, it's his real name backwards that we say.  For the blog, Guy backwards is Yug.

Trick or Treating

I stayed home to pass out candy and B took the kids around our neighborhood.  I downloaded the Star Wars theme song and the Imperial March onto my cell phone, pushed play, and threw my phone in Little Guy's treat bag so they had background music as they trick or treated.  And, I made B carry Yoda on his arm.

Carving Pumpkins

Each year the kids draw a picture of what they want their pumpkin to look like and B and I do our best to carve them that way.  I gutted all the pumpkins this year and carved the two simpler designs (Princess Sparkley's and Little Guy's), B did Buddy's pumpkin.  I had my hands up to the elbows in pumpkin guts, so the kids did a lot of the picture taking.

This is several years running the Buddy has had us carve his pumpkin to match his costume. 

PS wanted it to look like it just drank sour lemonade.

Decorating Cupcakes

Our homeschool family book club book this month was My Monster Mama Loves Me.  And it worked out perfectly that we had to change the date of book club and ended up with it being on Halloween so the kids could have a Halloween party and decorate cupcakes to look like monsters.  Except the family who was hosting came down with a case of lice and had to cancel.  Instead, we invited one of the other families (the As) who lives in town (the host family lives about 35 minutes away) to decorate cupcakes with us.  She made little chocolate train cupcakes and I made orange frosting.  The kids had a great time.

Br. is a year younger than Princess Sparkley and they are also in the same Girl Scout troop (except Br. is a Brownie and PS is a Junior this year).  A is maybe 6 years old.  And there are two little boys not pictured, Be. is 4 and J is 2.

Pumpkins

We never got around to buying pumpkins last week and were stuck with picking some up Halloween morning.  Note for next year, buy one get one free isn't a super great deal when the pumpkins are huge and 89 cents a pound. 

Pittsburgh: Day 3

Our third day was Sunday.  We thought about going to the zoo (but it would still be cold) and we were worried about getting downtown to pick B up from his conference right about the time tailgating would be starting for the Steelers game so instead we picked a church downtown to go to at 1PM and then just had to leave early to pick B up at 3ish.  The downtown church parking lot was full so we had to pay for street parking and only had enough money for an hour and one minute, so we left church after an hour (which the kids were happy about because they didn't want to have a "welcome" song sung to them) and drove around nearby.  We drove up to Shenly Park and just saw the pretty trees and park then parked for about 20 minutes and waited for time to pick up B.  One of the things I liked in the park was this street sign.  There was another one that said, "Golf Course.  Park at your own risk."

 

Then we picked up B and headed to his grandparents to watch the Steelers game since we'd only seen them for a couple of hours when we first arrived and B hadn't seen them at all.  We had a nice dinner with them, watched the Steelers beat New England and the kids drew a lot of pictures and built stuff with dominoes.

The kids with Great Grandpa and Grandma Pf (Grandma M's parents)

We left Pittsburgh after the game and arrived home around 1:30AM on Halloween.

Pittsburgh: Day 2

The plan was to go to the Pittsburgh Zoo on Saturday, in costume, and to trick or treat.  I promised all of this since we were missing the Trunk or Treat at church.  We woke up to snow Saturday morning and it snowed until after noon.  D and G's son R came over with his girlfriend and their dog to hang out.  The kids were already thrilled with the pet cat, Isabel, we were already staying with.  Then we headed to the Carnegie Library to see the Natural History Museum and the Art Museum followed by a yummy late lunch/early dinner at an Italian restaurant nearby. 

At the Carnegie we saw gems, stones, dinosaur bones, a Native American exhibit and lots of art.  I took a picture of each kid with their favorite dinosaur (although technically, they mostly aren't fond of dinosaurs).

After lunch, the rest of the group headed home and the kids and I tried the incline again, this time with cash.  And exact change.

Pittsburgh from the observation deck up top:

Heinz Field

Fall Road Trip: Day 1

B had a conference at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA this weekend (10/28-10/30) so the kids and I tagged along to visit with great grandparents and a great aunt and uncle as well as seeing the city B loves. 

The drive was beautiful, I think most of these pictures are in Virginia and West Virginia.  The bottom two pictures on the right are from the same stretch of highway as these first three snow pictures on a different drive.

We got there a couple of hours before B's conference started so he drove us around Pittsburgh before we dropped him off and headed to his grandparents for a quick visit and then to his Aunt G and Uncle D's where we were staying.  We tried to ride on of the inclines with B but didn't have any cash and it required not only cash, but exact change.  The kids and I went back on our own the next day... with exact change.  Little Guy was kept making me clarify.  "You have cash?"  "Yes."  "Exact change?"  "Yes."

Daddy Daughter Date to the Ballet

Some friends got tickets from work that he couldn't use to a ballet, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, so he gave the tickets to B and Princess Sparkley.  They got all dressed up and had a nice little date.

American Girl Store

They opened an American Girl store in the Tyson's Corner Mall.  Grandma M tried to take the kids there when she watched them in May so B and I could go camping but they got to the mall only to find out the store didn't open for another month.  We were in the area the other day so we stopped in.  One mom had five girls with her and they were each carrying a doll box.  That's $500+.  Yikes.

Artwork

Top to Bottom
Left to Right

No Legos = Sad Buddy*  by Buddy
A person and a dog by Little Guy
A dog (probably a Golden Retriever) by Little Guy
Ron Weasley with his new owl by Little Guy**
Harry or Ron with his owl saying "Good Punch" to Hermione who punched Draco Malfoy by L.G.
Darth Vader by Little Guy
Self-Portrait by Princess Sparkley
Self-Portrait by Buddy
Francesco Bernoulli (from Cars 2) by Little Guy***


* (his Legos got put in a time out for two weeks for failing to EVER clean them up)
**I just finished reading the third Harry Potter book to the kids (LG was only there for some of the reading)
***He drew this cute little car on every page of a workbook.

Crafting

If you haven't yet discovered Pinterest, it's a very cool site where you "pin" the things you like and share them with your friends.  Sort of like bookmarking a webpage, but it's all stored online.  I told my sister-in-law about it and she said she didn't know if she should thank me or curse me. 

The first picture I made at Souper Saturday (a craft day at church). I was told by one of the people in charge of the projects that they chose this project especially for me because they knew I'd been wanting to make one. So true! Love it.  I saw it on a blog somewhere, before I discovered Pinterest.

This second picture is a craft I "pinned" and then my friend (E.J.) pinned it as well and set up a craft night where I went over to her house and we made them together.  Basically, she did all the work and I showed up with the knobs for mine.  But we had fun crafting together.

Soccer 2011

Soccer has sort of come and gone this year without any fun.  And technically, it isn't even over yet.  We've just had a wet Fall and the field has been muddy so a lot of games and practices have been cancelled.  I spoke to the people in charge in August and requested that Princess Sparkley (9) and Buddy (7) both be put on the 7-8 team since PS just turned 9 a couple of weeks before soccer started, and it would be much easier to have them both on the same team.  They both loved and hated this idea. 

On soccer picture day the kids just showed up to get their pictures taken and then went home.  B had the kids that day while I was at Souper Saturday at church so we took them to a park and kicked the ball around with them and let them play on the playground.

Construction

There was one part of Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park that was under construction so they had a flag guy stopping one way of traffic and allowing the other direction to go and then switching. Because my boys are boys, they came home and recreated this scenario, complete with IKEA worker vests, traffic cones and a hand written Stop/Slow sign taped to a little baseball bat.

Christmas Lists

Princess Sparkley's list can be found here
Buddy's list can be found here

But since Little Guy "I thought I did have blog" doesn't actually have a blog... here's his list*:

Mace Windu Jedi Starfighter - Lego
Grievious Chase - Lego
Slave One - Lego Star Wars
Utz Cheese balls
Cars 2 - Tokyo International Circuit Lego ($84)
Cars 2 dvd
Any of the bad guy car action figures from Cars 2
Cars 2 - Escape at Sea Lego ($19)
Storm Trooper Star Wars guy (by Galactic Hero like this but Target has them too in packs of two or with ships)
Hoth Echo Base Star Wars Lego ($84)
Sith Night Speeder Star Wars Lego ($24)
Jedi Defense 1 AND 2 ($60 and $30)
Lego Road Construction Building Set (here) (for ages 4+)
Sleeping Bag (one that can actually keep him warm on a camping trip)


*Little Guy's list was compiled by PS while he pointed at the Lego catalog.  Please, don't buy him $60 Lego sets or anything else that is ridiculously expensive. 

Shenandoah National Park 2011

The apple orchard we go to (Stribling) is in Markham, VA which is fairly close to Shenandoah National Park.  Last year we had gone to Shenandoah with B earlier in the week to see if the leaves had changed color yet and our 7 day pass was still good, so after the apples, we headed over to Shenandoah again.  This year, B and I bought a year pass to Shenandoah when we camped there in May so the kids and I drove into Shenandoah and had a picnic.  The leaves hadn't changed too much yet, just a tree here or there.  We saw three deer really close to the car (we stopped on Skyline Drive and rolled down the windows to say hi to them on the side of the road across one skinny lane of traffic). 

deer

Apple Picking 2011

We took some friends (the Js) with us apple picking last year. She emailed me this year to see if we were planning on going again so we had another fun adventure this year. I didn't get nearly as many apples, but still a ton. We didn't see any bears, which I'm always worrying about at the back of my mind. We had fun and now we're munching on yummy apples (which I had to immediately start cutting open with my little car window hammer/knife set since Buddy has so many loose and missing teeth and Little Guy fell out of bed messing around the other night and injured his front teeth and the gums above them).

I love driving in the direction of the apple orchard or Shenandoah because all of a sudden we're in the foothills, and my kids, who spent 4 years in Kansas and now live in a flat part of Virginia, are intrigued by hills, foothills and mountains.  Buddy exclaimed, "What is that?" when we came upon a hill on our drive today.  I don't think he was expecting to run into a hill so suddenly.

Our friend Mom J took this and posted it on her blog.

Girl Scout Cupcakes

PS decorated these at Girl Scouts this week.

First Day of School

Our month long California/Utah trip mixed with moving at the end of August made it so our school year got off to a crazy start. We kept up with handwriting, reading and math over the summer (except for the trip) so we started that back up a few days after we returned home, early September. We gave ourselves a week or two of that before we were unpacked and organized enough to start the other subjects. And then I just never got around to taking our First Day of School pictures, which are already super nontraditional since the kids are homeschooled and could do school in their PJs if they so desired (and sometimes do, as does their teacher). Oh well. And have I mentioned that the lighting in our living room is horrible?

Princess Sparkley - 4th grade

Buddy - 2nd grade

Little Guy - pre-pre-school

Still Settling

A few more of the house getting all put together (and now decorated for Fall/Halloween). The bookshelves you've seen, but I've added Fall stuff. The dining room I don't think I've posted before. The shot looking into the dining room is taken from the living room, next to the bookshelves. Straight through the dining room is the kitchen.

New Pets

Sign that my kids desperately want a pet: They spent fifteen minutes coming up with names for the 20 tiny gel packs of turquoise Cascade dishwasher soap we bought because they thought they were cute. (Pacifica, Perry, Agent P, Cascade, Falls, Turko, Teal, Gray Bluey, Bluey, Ocean, Sea, Sky, Lake, Atlantis, Soapy, Soap, Dish, Wave, DW, and Turkey.)

I posted that on Facebook and a friend suggested we get pet plants. So we did just that.

We just got the cheapest plants Walmart had. Buddy wanted a palm tree. Little Guy wanted a cactus. We got their $2.50 look-a-likes. PS liked hers because the leaves are purple.

Little Guy's was named Darth Vader. It may have chanced to Storm Trooper. Buddy's is Clone Trooper and Princess Sparkley's is Amethyst. Here they are with their plants throughout the rest of the day. Little Guy took his all over the house with him as he played while the big kids finished up school work. It was pretty cute. PS insisted on reading a book to her plant.