Friday, October 22, 2010

Trunk or Treat

It was a NO SCHOOL day for Miss Sophia!  YAY!!!!!  Always love those days off...but oh my....by the end of the day today..I needed a good dose of tylenol!!! One minute they were playing like best buds and the next they were arguing over someone else's finger touching their spaghettio.  Oh my!! Oh and then there was the tri-colored permanent marker incident on my nice (used to be painted white) desk.  Oh well... I've been wanting to repaint my desk anyway;)



We spent the day making shape monsters, an idea I found on one of my favorite blogs, taking a trip to Walmart for some Halloween candy and decorations, and then decorating our still  "rental" car for Sophia's Trunk or Treat party at her school.  She  was soooo excited about this event...as we had to miss last year's when she was sick.  I am soooo thankful that the rain held off so we didn't have to miss this year too!


Sooo glad these little guys got to wear their costumes tonight.  Halloween always comes and goes so quickly.....so I'm glad they got to have some fun in these costumes for more than one night.  I must admit... I was not thrilled when they wanted to be Toy Story characters ( I love the movie...but it just wasn't my idea of a wildly cute and unique costume).  But once they were dressed.....I changed my mind.  YEE-HAW.....Yodel-eh-he-hoo!!! Aren't they the cutest Jessie and Woody you have ever seen????? (even after they get permanent marker all over my house??????)




Here are just a few from the evening...




It should be a spooky week!!!  Nite...nite...

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Halloween Preparations

Halloween is less than two weeks away.  The kids have their costumes and are getting excited for the big day.  We have been trying to fit in some fun Halloween crafts this week while there is still time!  Sophia has had a cold and had to miss her soccer game last weekend because she had a slight fever.  She was pretty upset...this little girl doesn't like to miss a thing!  So....I quickly pulled out some paints and the two little artists got to work.  Here is J working on his letter of the week....He looks pretty serious about this art work stuff, doesn't he??? Don't let it fool you.....He is the fastest painter I know.....I think he was finished painting in less than four minutes!  


Sophia could paint all day!  She is such the artist and oh so creative!  Here is her pumpkin!


Next up.....I finally decided to bake my apple pie....and Sophia ALWAYS likes to help with the final decorations...She cut out the leaves out of the pastry for the top of the pie!  And oops... I forgot to take pictures of the pie before we cut into it.  No worries....I have to admit... it wasn't my best.....I tried something new with the apples...and it wasn't my favorite....Still trying to work up to my mother's pie perfection!  Her crust is amazing...I don't think it can be beat!!!



Another fun Halloween craft that has become a tradition in our house are these cute little lollipop ghosts, made out of white chocolate.  Sophia LOVES them... and this year... she helped trace them with a pastry bag filled with melted white chocolate onto the wax paper.  J attempted to put the chocolate chip eyes on...but really just ended up eating them and mushing them between his fingers.


On Monday, we headed to Omi and Papa's for our annual pumpkin painting!  Sophia really worked hard on her pumpkin.  She used paint, pom poms, and googly eyes to decorate it.  She also made some spiders out of pipe cleaners and a haunted house with Omi and Auntie E.    Joseph attempted to paint and managed to dump his entire paper plate of paint onto the floor the second I walked away from him.  go figure!  He was probably a little more excited to play with the toys at omi's house than he was about painting his pumpkin!  Maybe next year....

Here is how the infamous pumpkin turned out



Here Omi and Sophia are working on the haunted house...


Here is Joseph proud of his little pumpkin I helped him with.




Omi and Sophia having fun with the spider they created!


And finally... today.... we made these cute little ghosts!  Can you tell what we used to make them????



Don't you love how Willie wants to be part of the action too??


Finally getting a BIG smile from the little guy!



Kissing his pumpkin...this little guy LOVES to give kisses.  I don't think he could be any SWEETER!



Whew!  My little goblins have worn me out already this week!!!

Friday, October 15, 2010

My Buddy

With Sophia in school ALL day....I worried it would be too quiet around here.....but have no fear....I have a buddy to keep me company....


I don't think my little J stops talking (nope...scratch that...stops asking questions) from morning to night.  He is soooo very curious....and I love the conversations he has with me.  He is always very curious about what I am doing...and pretty much asks a "why" question at least once every few minutes.  He is very inquisitive about what trucks are carrying...about what street signs say, and about who the cookies are for on the counter.  When he is not asking questions... he is usually playing with his other buddy, Willie.    He LOVES to play with Willie (especially when his "Tophia" is not around), and I think Willie enjoys it just as much as he does. Soooo cute.


He can be so naughty....so stubborn at times ( "I don't like you eeeevier (either)")!  But most of the time...he is showering me with kisses....blowing me kisses....hugging me or telling me "you're toe (soooo) nice, mommee!"   He melts my heart every day.



He is pretty proud of himself these days as he has been having some major potty successes.....He's still not sure which potty he likes best (the big one or his little one)....so he tends to try out both (mid-pottying!!!!) Oh my....he is a riot....  He is growing up....but I'm not letting him go anytime soon!

Sunday, October 10, 2010

The Patch

Whew!  What a weekend....I'm exhausted!  We have been sooooo fortunate in the weather department this Fall.  Still so beautiful here in KC...sunny and warm!!  A perfect weekend for all of our outdoor plans!  Friday night we celebrated letter "I" week at our house (J and I are attempting to do letter activities every week) with a trip to Ben and Jerry's for some yummy ice cream!  Sophia and Joseph both chose chocolate...but Sophia got hers in a cone and actually ate the entire cone!!! Wow!!!!  She used to give that part to Daddy!  Daddy and I had the new "milk and cookies" ice cream...wouldn't you know I would love an ice cream that tastes like cookies...YUM!

We had Sophia's soccer game on Saturday.  She ran like crazy on the field (with hardly any rest ....as they were short a few teammates) and scored a terrific goal! She makes it look so easy...I'm quite sure she didn't get her athletic abilities from me!  We were so proud of her!!!!  The rest of the afternoon was spent at Lowe's...checking out new dishwashers (S and J were great at testing them all...they had quite a time opening and closing the doors and pushing all of the buttons)....we of course left with no dishwasher.....ours has been leaking and now leaves this yucky film on our glasses.  It's definitely time for a replacement....but uggghhh not ready to fork over the money for a new one....  So what did we do then...went looking at cars...HA....as if that's in the budget right now after last week's incident.

Of course we were all hungry after all of that exhausting shopping....so we picked up some sammies and headed to the park for a picnic and some play time!  Besides the swarm of gnats....the weather was perfect and the kids had a great time!

Today we decided we'd better head to the pumpkin patch....this weather has been so perfect...I was just worried there may not be many more weekends this pretty left in October.  We decided to try a new patch this year and headed to Weston to the Red Barn Farm.  The drive was long...but mostly highway...which keeps J pretty happy because he gets to watch all the trucks.  A few times he got extremely excited when we passed a water tower....he would scream "WHOA....look Tophia!"

Once we arrived we walked through the country store and then took a hay ride (pulled by a John Deere tractor) to the pumpkin patch.  It was pretty bumpy....but of course the highlight of the trip for Joseph!!!! Joseph picked another green pumpkin this year...and Sophia picked a pretty perfect orange one!!!  She also found some pretty yellow "pumpkin" flowers...and to her surprise found a green caterpillar living inside of the one she picked.  She was pretty upset when, on the tractor ride back, the little guy decided to climb out of the flower she was holding and fell through the cracks of the tractor.  We told her...he would turn into a beautiful butterfly!

Lots of fun on our little trip this morning....but I'll let the pictures tell the rest!




















Thursday, October 7, 2010

Accidents

We've had our share I think this week.  The most major accident occurred Monday....but it has taken me a few days to catch my breath and be able to post about it....

J and I started the morning with gymnastics.... After class I was chatting with a good friend while putting J in the car....B/c I was not giving him my full attention, he basically was just making his own fun all over the back seat (I had not buckled him in yet).  Anyway...I finally finished my chattering and buckled J in his seat to head home.  On the way... I kept hearing this strange noise...like a door was wide open noise...I panicked and looked up on my dashboard to sure enough find the door open sign lit up....only I wasn't sure what door it was.  Since I had just put J in the car, I assumed it was his...and I started to panic.... what if his door flies open?  How open is it?   I quickly became frantic.  So I slowed down and turned into a neighborhood.  After realizing that the person behind me was quite annoyed at my slow speed...I turned up the first cul-de-sac I saw to let him pass.  It happened to be the cul-de-sac near the development's pool very near the entrance.  My intent was to get out of the car....shut J's door and head on home....well...that was my intent, anyway.....until I realized having stepped out of the car that the car was not fully in park.  It took a moment for it to click with me....a moment too long, b/c before I knew it the car was rolling back down the hill...I ran after it hearing only the horrible screams from Joseph calling my name....  I tried desperately to keep up with the car....to reach around my open door without the car rolling over me....Finally by the grace of God.... I threw the car in park....and it still rolled a bit after that (not sure why)....and it finally reached the curb (having crossed over the entire entrance street to the neighborhood) before I could jump in the front seat.  I wasn't quick enough to shut the door before it grazed a light pole, causing the hinge of the door to completely separate.  But the good news...it finally stopped and no one was hurt....J was safely buckled in his seat....and thankfully no other cars or people had been in the street.  A nice landscaper who apparently had been working a ways up the street came to my rescue and held the door for me so I could drive it off the grassy area and back to the cul-de-sac.  Oh my....scariest thing ever.  Someone was watching over us that day....  Before this incident, it wasn't uncommon for me to complain about having bad luck at times,...but after Monday... I don't think I will ever complain about that again...b/c I have never been as lucky as I was that day!  It could have been so much worse....

So now....it's a rental car....for a while... And I'm still a bit paranoid about driving...so if you live nearby...you will probably see me walking (or hobbling....somehow I threw my bad knee out again trying to chase down the car) EVERYWHERE!  Thank goodness Sophia's school is sooo close and within walking distance!!!

So I wasn't the only one having accidents this week....I guess you could say that Sophia had her own on Monday as well.....but it was really kind of a silly accident.

The missy always gets a bit anxious about her loose teeth....she's always been a bit paranoid that they will hurt when they come out or worse yet that she will swallow it.  This time... one of her "fronters" was loose...it had been loose for quite some time...but she was really working it over the weekend.  I was surprised that she was trying to make it more loose....b/c as I said....loose teeth=paranoia.  Then she proceeded to tell me that she was hoping to lose her tooth at school, because this would result in a trip to the nurses office whereby she would receive a very glamorous tooth necklace equipped with a treasure chest to house the tooth.  Exciting stuff in first grade!!!

So Monday morning...also picture day... (before the car incident) she was brushing her teeth and I could see that her tooth was finally hanging by a thread.  I offered to pull it, but she would not allow....she was determined to lose this at school.  When I dropped her off... I imagined her going straight to her teacher and telling her she needed to go to the nurse.  I wondered if she would lose it before her school pictures...thought that would be kinda cute to see her toothless grin in her first grade picture.

Well at about 2:30 in the afternoon I get a call from the school nurse..."Sophia is okay, but...." ( I panicked yet again....thinking something horrific happened which I could not handle being that my morning had already been a bit crazed).  Instead she finished by saying..."she swallowed her tooth."  The nurse sounded so calm... I was devastated....I worried that Sophia would forever be traumatized since she has been so worried about this happening to her.  I told the nurse that she had been so excited to lose her tooth at school so she could get the tooth necklace....(which the nurse hadn't even given her until I mentioned this).  To my surprise, though...the nurse said Sophia came in with another friend and they were actually giggling about the incident....I still think she was a bit scared that the whole thing happened...but wanted to "look" brave to her friends.

When we were walking home from school that day, she told me all about how that one bite of her oreo knocked that tooth right down her throat at lunch.  She was a bit worried about swallowing her tooth (and about the blood on her "picture day shirt"...pictures had already been taken by the way), but I think the new tooth necklace made up for it!  Here she is at home...showing off her necklace and her new smile!




And because most accidents have to occur in threes...let's just mention one more for the week.  Last night...it was suicide hour (you know...the hour where I have to feed the dog, make sure homework is finished, monitor the outside playtime, and somehow still get dinner on the table by a decent time).  We had just walked in from the park and I put a pot of water on the stove to boil.  Sophia was whining about the fact that she wanted to set the table, and I had already laid the place mats out.  Joseph was pushing his Noah's Ark at dangerous speeds around the kitchen floor.  I went to stir the angel hair in the pot while trying to find more things Sophia could "help" me with.  Of course I was not paying attention to what I was doing... until I smelled this awful smell...burnt hair.  Yep....the bottom of one side of my hair had touched the stove.  Singed.  Well... I guess I'll take that as a sign from God that I need a haircut.  Done. Scheduled for tomorrow.

Whew!  Is it Friday yet?????