Pumpkin, Pumpkin Big and Round

The kiddos with Auntie K at the Pumpkin Patch.

We had some time in between soccer events to head over to the pumpkin patch for some pumpkins. It was a gorgeous day! The sun was so bright, and we had a lot of fun picking out pumpkins.

Here we are today before we carved them.  Goofy had to hold his basketball as his pumpkin. Hey, at least it was orange, right?

Aren't the flowers pretty? I was so happy to see that we have a patch of daisies!  And they are blooming now! How fun!

Soccer

Tink and Bucko started indoor soccer this week. They have never played before, so obviously aren't going to be the stars of their teams. However, they are getting some great exercise, making new friends, and having a blast!  They had their opening ceremony and first games yesterday. None of my pictures turned out great, but here they are.


Tink with her team during the Opening Ceremony.



Bucko and his team warming up.

Bucko was a pretty good goalie! He blocked several balls. Here he is waiting for the signal to throw the ball back in to play. 

Tink in the back, waiting for a chance to do something!  The "herd" was crazy!

Little Miss/Mister Muffet

I have felt like I have slacked off on the educational experiences that I have been giving my two youngest lately. So this week, I resolved to start "Mommy school" with them again. What a great week to start too, because we can do so many fun Halloween things!! So I went to the Dresses 'n Messes blog that my friend does to get ideas. Seriously, anytime I want to get ideas to do with my kids, I go here.  She inspires me so much to be a better mom, and has the best ideas! They are so fun! So today we made the spider headbands and acted out Little Miss Muffet.  The page is right here if you'd like to see the original idea at it's best.  But my kids were so cute that I had to videotape and share. 

So after Minnie was Little Miss Muffet and Goofy was the spider, he also wanted a chance to be Little "Mister" Muffet, so we switched and did it again.

The spider headbands were fun to make too.  I was impressed with how well Minnie was able to fold accordian style.  Goofy lost interest and would start rolling his up, so I just had him glue everything for me.  They liked the googly eyes too. 
We didn't stop there on our educational journey today. That was just the beginning. We cut out Halloween shapes and wrote the four letters we are working on this week (A, H, M, and T) on the back and played the Boo game that I also found on Dresses 'n Messes.  (Told you I get all my ideas from there!)  We also practiced writing them and played with a foam alphabet puzzle, but only used those four letters. We talked about the sounds they make and what words start with those letters, etc.  It was fun!  Minnie is getting better at sounding out words. I am glad, because I was worried she had forgotten everything she has learned so far since it has been so long since we've done anything like this.  All in all, it was very fun and I felt like I accomplished my goal for today.  Now, for the next day!

Tink's 9th Birthday

Tink wanted a blue cake, and I did it in a heart shape.  I guess I threw away all my birthday candles when we moved. I couldn't find them, anyway, so we used these tea lights.  They turned out well, I thought.

She wanted another Groovy Girls doll.

And another Webkinz.  She was happy.

What a great kid. We feel so blessed to have her in our lives.  She is a great big sister.  I can't believe she is nine years old!  She was a good sport and let us celebrate her birthday early, because I was flying to NC to see my PC.  I don't think she minded opening presents early, but it was hard on the day of her birthday.  I felt bad since I knew she was already missing Daddy so much.  They all made it through though, and have been so loving since I've been back!

Weeting Castle ruins

We stopped at Weeting Castle after grocery shopping.  Auntie K got some good pictures, so I wanted to share those as well.

Warwick Castle



Tink and Auntie K in front of Warwick Castle



My sister made it in on 9th and we drove down to Croughton on the 10th to spend the night closer to Warwick.  It's roughly 2 hours from our house, but only a half hour from Croughton, so we were able to get a good sleep and get there right when it opened. Plus, I only had to drive the 2 plus hour drive once a day instead of twice. Thank goodness my sister was with us! There were a TON of roundabouts (or roundabounds, if you like the Darth Vader TomTom voice) and they weren't all showing up on my TomTom!  And the ones that were showing up weren't exactly accurate either.  We had friends following us too, poor things! I felt awful every time I took the wrong exit on the roundabounds.  But we FINALLY made it to Croughton, thanks solely to my lil sis who whipped out the map (remember those?) and directed us there.  Of course, when we picked up they key for our lodging that night, they hadn't activated it, so I had to drive back and have the security guys let us in.  We made it, though, safe and sound. We brought frozen pizzas, so we cooked those up and watched The Sword in the Stone to get us in the mood for the castle the next day.

The weather was absolutely perfect to visit a castle too.  I think my sister enjoyed herself, this being the first castle she had seen in England.  Her memory card is still in my laptop, so I wanted to get some pictures up while I still had them handy!



Goofy playing at the park when we first arrived.





So many steps for a little guy. He wanted to do them all by himself, but I was worried on those spiraling stone steps. I walked down backwards in case he fell I could catch him.  He did fine, of course.





What kind of castle wouldn't have something to do with Henry VIII? This one had a life size Henry. Doesn't get much better than that, right?



First Grade

So why do our schools go from absolutely no homework in kindergarten to a ton in first grade! My poor little guy gets tired!  He didn't fall asleep, but he is resting his eyes. I just thought it was so cute and I had to take a picture.  Our routine is that he has to do his homework as soon as he gets home.  So he does that every day and it takes roughly a half hour. Not a big deal, but then they give them extra things to do. He's had a few days to do it but I haven't pushed it so today we had to get it done.  So basically he spent a total of an hour and a half doing homework today.  No wonder his eyes were tired.