Halloween 2011

This year was like all the rest, in that, two weeks before Halloween I was asking the kids what they wanted to be and they were saying "I don't know."  I throw out about a dozen ideas and eventually they bite onto one of them.  This year, Parker was torn between going with a Barrel of Laughs, or Noah in the Ark.  He eventually decided to go with the barrel, because it was an original thought.  We have seen a bunch of Noah's at church, but never a Barrel of Laughs.  It was so funny when Pastor Sonny asked Parker what he was, he said "A Barrel of Laughs"  and then handed Sonny this joke to read. 

The young couple invited their elderly preacher for Sunday dinner. While they were in the kitchen preparing the meal, the minister asked their son what they were having. "Goat," the little boy replied. "Goat?" replied the minister, "Are you sure about that?" "Yep," said the youngster. "I heard Dad say to Mom, 'Today is just as good as any to have the old goat for dinner.'"

Everyone got a laugh out of it!

                                             
Blake decided to be the Holy Ghost.  It was the easiest costume I have ever made!  LOL! 

They both won second place in the costume contest!!!!!

Kaleigh is in the teen group and they don't really dress up, but she wanted to wear this hat, so I painted a shamrock on her cheek and told her if anyone asked her what she was, she could say...' Lucky!'

Halloween is NOT just for kids in my book.  I love to dress up too.  Funny thing was,  I had to go into a store, on my way to church, to return something.  The kids refused to come in the store with me dressed like this.  WHY on earth could THAT be?  LOL!

Pumpkin Carving 101

This year I convinced my hubby to hand over the carving reins to our three children.  I must say they did remarkable for their first time ever!  The hard part, taking out the insides, was done at the Halloween Party that they had on Friday.  So Sunday evening, they picked out their patterns and got to work.  Eric showed them how to tape their templates on and start poking the holes.

After that, Daddy handed them the saw.  They worked so well.  At one point, Kaleigh got into a bit of a jam on the legs of her wolf, so Daddy helped her out. 

                            We stuck the candles in, lit them up, shut off the lights, and enjoyed!

                                                         Parker's final project.

                                                                  Kaleigh's wolf

                                          Blake's pumpkin that he carved 100% by himself!

                                       Can't wait to see what they come up with next year!

Homeschool Halloween Party

On Friday we went over to, our dear friend, Donna's house for our annual Halloween party.  This year another dear homeschool family, the Durnings, joined us.  We had 9 kids total.  The first activity on the list was Donna's tye dye t-shirts.

 Then, we headed around back to play shave the balloon.  They all got lucky and nobody had their balloon full of shaving cream pop on them. 

 Next, it was Donna's game of pass the pumpkin.  It was a huge balloon filled with water and the kids had to pass it around, the child who was holding it when Donna stopped singing was out.  They really liked the game and Blake ended up being the winner.

After the messy activities were over, the  kids went inside to have snack.  Karen brought pumpkiun shaped sugar cookies and all the fixings for the kids to decorate and eat. 

While we cleaned up for the next activity the kids were sent outside to Karen's scavenger hunt.  Here is a video of the kids having absolutely NO fun!   :)

After they had found all the items on the list, they cam inside to decorate glass jars.  We had pumpkins.

 And ghosts.

 Then it was time for some science.  Donna showed the kids how to make Gak.  They loved it!

Then it was my turn to do a little pumpkin math with the group.  We had three groups that estimated the circumference of the pumpkins and then estimated the number of seeds that they thought were inside their pumpkin.  They made use of tally marks to keep track of seeds in groups of tens.  Then we compared the estimates to their actual findings.  I thought it was a good activity that all the ages could participate in.

Lastly, the children practiced their oral skills by getting up in front of the group and sharing something they had written, read, or drawn.   Blake wrote a scary story, and Parker told the group about a scary book he had read, and Kaleigh wrote this acrostic poem.

Happy times
Absolutely cool
Lurking in the woods
Lost in a corn maze
October
Witches on brooms
Eerie
Eating candy
Not scary, or is it?

 They all did a GREAT job!

Week 43

Saturday October 22
I spent the entire day on the couch with chills and feeling like I was going to throw up.  When my hubby got home from work, he made a fire for me.  First one of the season!

Sunday October 23rd
Feeling much better than the day before I headed out to my appointment before church to give blood.


Monday October 24th
I found this idea for milk jug ghosts in the Family Fun magazine.  All it took was a milk jug, a black permanent marker, and a string a white Christmas lights.  This was our art for the day.


Parker was happy to drill the wholes in the back for the lights to be put in.


Tuesday October 25th
Parker finally got a real mattress for his bed.  No more futon for him.  He LOVES it!



Wednesday October 26th
Sick again!  I came down with a terrible head cold.  It only lasted 48 hours thanks to prayer and all these herbs!  YAY!



Thursday October 27th
First snowfall of the year.


Friday October 28th
We had our homeschool Halloween party.  I have so many pictures, I am going to write a separate post about it.

Week 42

Saturday October 15th
Our church held a missions conference and my job was to teach and entertain 4 and 5 year olds for 6 hours!  Kaleigh and her friend Rachel helped me.  The day went well.  Here are some things we did.

We made prayer books.  The kids colored the flag of the country the missionary serves in and then glued the prayer card on the page with the flag.

 We had an Around the World puzzle that a group worked on.

 We read a story about a missionary.

And then did a bunch of crafts.  We made sheep coin banks, a foam craft and some sand art crosses.

It was a great day and I got to bond with some great little people!  Later that evening my brother and sister in-law came over for dinner.  It was great to love on my nephew!

Sunday October 16th
We said goodbye to the Bhandari's.  They were missionaries from India that stayed with us over the weekend.  They are dear to our hearts and we really enjoyed having them in our home.
( Picture to come )


Monday October 17th
Mondays are crock pot meals.  The kids have choir while I am at bible study, so it is nice to have our supper ready and waiting in the crockpot when we get home.  If anyone has any good recipes for the crock pot I would love to hear about them!

Thursday October 20th
I try not to let the little girl I watch sleep more than an hour if she falls asleep.  So on this day I got her up about 3pm after her 1 hour nap.  We began playing on the floor and next thing I know, she was asleep again.  She clearly wasn't ready to wake up.  Hopefully, she slept for her parents that night.

Friday October 21st
We had two free tickets to Six Flags to use by October 30th so we decided to go check out the Fright Fest there.  The kids were super excited and assured me they wouldn't be scared.  I did not know what to expect because we had never been.  We talked a great deal about how there might be people in costumes and makeup there.  Well,  two out of the three were able to handle it.  One of my children who will remain nameless, Blake, left the haunted exhibits in tears.  We paid for it that night with numerous nightmares and an extra body in bed with us.

I thought the ghosts on top of the building as you entered were cool.

Kaleigh on yet another horse..LOL!

Me trying my best to look scared.

The boys in front of the Gotham City roller coaster.

This is where all the scary stuff happened.  It wasn't that costumes that get you.  It is people jumping out from behind things, yelling and reving their chainsaw that gets you.

The kids rode the scrambler about four times in a row.

This was a little show in where they 'cut off' someone's head.  Then they put her head on a shelf where it started to talk.  Parker was amazed and wanted to know how they did it.  Daddy, of course, explained the entire illusion.

Aside from the scary parts, the entire family thought this was the best time to go to Six Flags.  There was hardly anyone there and there were NO LINES.  They rode each major roller coaster at least twice with no wait!