A Little Pumpkin Fun

Last Friday night we had our small group over from the Young Adults Group at church.  We enjoyed a little potato bar, painting and carving pumpkins, roasting pumpkin seeds and just laughing and letting our kids run around crazy together.  I don't remember ever making or eating roasted pumpkin seeds so it was fun giving them a try.  We made one batch of sugar and cinnamon pumpkin seeds and one batch of salt and pepper seeds.

 

 Joshua thought he needed to see what raw pumpkin tasted like.  He didn't seem to mind it and ate a couple of bites.  Yuck!

 

My Mom and I had been out craft fairing early that day so she was able to stay the night and join in on the fun.

The kids had fun painting their own pumpkins.  I wish I would have taken a pictures of their pumpkins earlier in the night as their creations didn't last long.  At one point in the evening the girls went inside and thought the guys were still outside with the kids.  The kids evidently decided they wanted to do a little more work on their pumpkins while they were outside by themselves and proceeded to just start squeezing the bottles of paints over their pumpkins until they were just big black pumpkins.  Needless to say there was a little bit of a mess to clean up but everything cleaned up easily and they had fun.

I am blown away by the talent of this group!  They ended up creating some really neat looking pumpkins.

This is as creative as it got for me. 

I love Amy and Lauren Elizabeth's painted pumpkins! They both free handed these and didn't use any type of stencil.  WOW!!

 

I love how all of the carved pumpkins turned out!

Joshua's pumpkin

I'm so glad we had a chance to get together! The weather was perfect and we had a great time getting to hang out together! We are really enjoying getting to know this group better and love getting to meet together every Sunday morning.


Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God, but our lives as well.  1 Thessalonians 2:8

Halloween Crafts

When I started being a stay at home mom I envisioned hot cooked meals every night, a well organized house, finally working on the boys scrapbooks, keeping up with blogging and lots of craft time with the boys.  Somehow two years have passed and well let's face it all of these things are still just things I'm "envisioning".

One of the things that I hate I haven't done as much of with Joshua as I did Caleb is little craft projects.  I have some fun memories and pictures of Caleb and I working on various projects.  I recently found a couple of Halloween craft kits at the Associate Store for $1.00 each and since I can't seem to pass up a "deal" at the Associate Store I bought two of them and the boys and I put them together yesterday.

Caleb has always enjoyed a good craft project so it was fun to see him in his element.  I was neat  getting to see Joshua experiment with making something on his own.  I helped Joshua with a couple of pieces but I definitely tried to give him the opportunity to put a few pieces on himself and relinquished control of where he glued them.  Caleb asked me when we first started "well what if he (Joshua) doesn't do it right".....oh son, you are so your Momma's child.  I reassured Caleb it would be ok and off we went to having fun and hopefully making a few memories.

Joshua's finished project

Caleb's finished project
(Ha! I just noticed his Frankenstein is missing his pants.  I found them and glued them on but didn't take a new picture.)

Ocean Day!

Today was the long awaited for Ocean Day!!!  We have heard about this event for a few weeks now and the Kindergartners have been busy earning, and in some cases losing, their Ocean Day tickets that they would need to participate in various activities and games.  I'll admit I was starting to wonder if Caleb would actually get to play any games today because I think he was losing his tickets just as quickly as he was earning them (they had to give the teachers back tickets if they were misbehaving).  I was able to volunteer at Ocean Day today while Joshua spent the day with his Nana and Papa.

 

The Kindergartners were equipped with their sack of tickets and were allowed to decide how they wanted to redeem their tickets throughout the morning with the exception that each of them had to keep 3 tickets that they would use for popcorn, a Capri Sun and to watch a movie once all of their other tickets ran out.  Each of the three Kindergarten class rooms were set up with various stations.  Some of the options included playing in shaving cream, searching for buried treasures in the sand inside a kiddie swimming pool, making a fish, creating an ocean mobile, fishing for candy, etc.

 

I love this picture of Caleb and his friend Ray Ray. They are in the same classroom and Ray Ray also lives down the street from us.

His fish

 

I manned the shaving cream table.  It was fun watching the kids decide how they wanted to spend their tickets or see them come in excited about the treasure they found in the sand or the picture they had made. 

We finished up Ocean Day right at lunch time so I stayed and had lunch with Caleb before heading home.  So glad I got to spend time with him this morning at school.

Sunshine!!!!

It's crazy how a little warmer weather and sunshine can totally effect your whole attitude and just make your whole day better.  Today was a great day!

After picking Caleb up from school the boys and I headed to Braum's for a little ice cream treat and then some much appreciated time at the park.  These two had a blast and are totally in their element outside. They love being able to run around, throw rocks, be loud and all the other things that boys like to do.

Going to the park will definitely not be for the faint of heart this summer keeping up with these two.  Gone are the days of just pushing Joshua around in his stroller while Caleb plays or having him just sit on a blanket and play in one spot.  This boy (Joshua) is mobile and is trying to keep up with his big brother with everything he has.

Caleb was super sweet and took Joshua down the slide a few times and did a great job, with only a little bit of protest, of being as patient as he could to take turns playing in areas he wanted to go while making sure we played in areas that Joshua could also play.

I love this picture of Caleb playing "SWAT team" in the background while Joshua is swinging.  This is Caleb's latest imagination play.  He did a really good job of staying close by where I could see him while Joshua got to swing on the swings.

They both had a great time playing at the park and desperately wanted to get into the water but mustered up as much contentment as they could with just playing at the edge of the water.  We managed to leave with only a little bit of a wet shoe which is an accomplishment as it never fails that I end up caving and  Caleb ends up in the water before the trip is over.

So happy for some warmer weather today and am looking forward to many more trips to the park this Spring and Summer.

Come on Spring!!!!