Halloween 2010

Happy Halloween! I think this was the coolest Halloween we've had since I've lived in So. Cal -- a perfect 71 degrees with beautiful blue skies! We kicked off our day with ghost pancakes; (thanks for the awesome idea, Karen!) and a pumpkin spice latte for me! I found this recipe on Kathie's Kreations and have been dying to try it. It was awesome! I'll be recreating it until I run out of pumpkin! You can get it here.

Right after breakfast the girls wanted to go to the window to wait for Grandma and Grandpa who had left for their 400 mile journey just a few minutes earlier. Hmmm... time to find something to occupy them! First up -- printable Halloween coloring pages!

I brought a meal to a friend last night, and came home with a bunch of costumes. I was suppose to bless her, but was blessed in return! The girls spent a good chunk of the morning, (and the rest of the day for that matter), dressing up, getting naked, repeat!

For lunch we had mini mummies, and for dessert Halloween Oreos and rice crispy treats with candy corn in them. We were in the middle of lunch when guess-who-arrived! Hooray! G and G were finally here!


That afternoon Grandma helped us carve pumpkins. I was so proud of Allison who spent a lot of time cleaning out the guts!

Of course, we had to roast the seeds. YUUUUM!


Natalie looks a little spooked here! Here she is making some orange jello! Since we don't have a lot of traditional meals, (We just had our first turkey this past Thanksgiving!), I am proud to say we had our 6th annual traditional Halloween dinner: sloppy joe's and pumpkin-shaped orange jello.

Somehow Grandma helping out makes dinner go by a lot smoother!

Lipstick for the little princess...

Our Hello Kitty pumpkin!

And, here they are!!!

The cutest piggy EVER!
A beautiful Dorothy...
And a very happy and adorable Snow White!

We just went around the block with our dear neighbors, again. It's about all the kids can handle, and they did great!

The sweet babes!

The first house!


And, the last house... The girls are always blessed with an awesome special gift from our sweet neighbors J and M. This year they got entire bags filled with card games, play doh, pez, straws, and candy. A perfect ending to a fun day!

Halloween School

The girls were so excited about school today! First thing, we got them in their costumes. Since grandma isn't coming until tomorrow, and she is bringing Natalie's costume, we borrowed a mermaid from some good friends. Unfortunately, Natalie didn't feel "beautiful enough." Hence, the tears...

We attempted to make jack-o-lantern shaped chocolate chip pumpkin muffins, (say that ten times in a row), but somehow they didn't turn-out. There were no jack-o-lantern faces, I should say... they tasted awesome, though!

Our school work was all pretty fun, too. The first 3 activities came from classroom jr. They did a pattern recognition worksheet, math worksheet, and their first ever "Mad-libs." Let me tell you, mad-libs are great fun for 3 and 5 year olds, alike. It's pretty easy for them to figure out what a noun and verb are, and everything else were things they were already familiar with such as color or holiday. The best part was how hard Allison laughed. She thought they were SO funny!

I wish I could remember where I found the Halloween Sudoku. It was pretty easy for Allison, and there was a more difficult one but I didn't print it because I didn't think I'd need to. Oh well... I'm sure you could google Halloween Sudoku and find it, or another one!

The girls each chose 4 of their favorite Halloween items and drew pictures. This one was Natalie's!

I found these adorable lined papers from A Little Hut, and had Allison copy pages from a Halloween book of her choice.

And now... for the best activity, EVER... I found these Halloween dolls from babalisme. The girls played with them for probably 1 1/2 hours, and only stopped because it was past lunch time. They named them Ashley and Abigail, and pretended they were twins. We will definitely be doing more paper doll play in the future!


For our last activity, we went outside for a change of scenery. This was the only flop of the day. I got this idea from Family Fun, and it's called "Witches Stew." I printed and cut up these Halloween 'stickers' from The Swell Life. The girls used a straw to suck them up put them in the stew. Whoever could get the most in was the winner... except they couldn't do it! I was shocked. These are the same girls that started on straws at 8 months old, and never used bottles or sippy cups?!?? I guess this will just have to be for next year...

Hope this gave you some inspiration for your Halloween weekend!

Dinosaur Week

This week's theme was "D is for Dinosaur." (I say 'was,' because we crammed it into 4 days so we could do a Halloween-themed school tomorrow!) I had bought these dinosaur capsules at Target on clearance for $0.25 a while back and saved them for this theme. The girls were very patient, and only dropped them in one at a time!

I also found this fun dinosaur paper plate craft from Kids Craft Weekly. It is so simple, yet lots of fun! I like the way the colors turned out for ours.




If you are ever looking for a way to teach the kids about dinosaurs from a creationist view, I recommend a book called, "What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs?" by John Morris and Ken Ham. See you tomorrow for Halloween school!

He's at it again...

Question: Do I tell my husband to read the blog to know I'm trying to eat a little healthier and to stop bringing home yummy things like these Halloween donuts from Krispy Kreme? Or, do I just enjoy this blessing and eat healthier later... I think I'll just enjoy it! Honestly, I felt like a little kid opening the box and seeing all the fun Halloween donuts! The one in the upper left corner was a pumpkin one. It was well-worth the calories! I know he'll read this eventually, so THANKS HONEY!

I had to laugh, though... We often end or homeschool by pulling a prayer out of our prayer jar. Today Allison drew, "Thank God for something big." Proudly, Allison declared, "I'm going to thank God for you, mom... and our house." Now I'm definitely feeling BIG! :)

Daniel took the girls to Chuck E. Cheese this afternoon, so Sierra and I were able to enjoy some one-on-one time and even went for a jog. We came home, and Daniel made an awesome sushi dinner with homemade miso soup and a tofu salad. What a blessing this guy is! I love livin' the Yeh life!

Claremont Tuesday and a New...

Camera! Yes, we got a new camera. A Cannon T2I (SLR).... oh my goodness! It is SO fun! But, it is actually making blogging harder! Today I had 489 pictures to sort through to bring you this post. No, that's not a typo... 489!!!

And, did I mention I don't have time to sort through 489 pictures? Halloween is Sunday! Sierra turns one in a week from today! And, the Holiday madness is beginning. But, alas life will always be busy... so here I am blogging.

Today was Daniel's first time joining us in Claremont for cooking class. I blame him for most of the pictures! Honestly, I love how excited he is, and how much he loves taking pictures of his girls. He is developing quite the artistic eye! And, of course, I loved having him with us.



Check out this next picture... I LOVE the ability to blur out the background! (BTW, Daniel took it!) Fun, fun, fun!

Today Natalie joined in on the fun. She didn't want to miss out on making haunted house cupcakes and homemade mango lemonade! (Can you blame her?)




It smelled SO yummy in there!




And, just for fun, here is a conversation I had with Allison today:
ALLISON: "I LOVE homeschool. I love that we get to do cooking, and play as a family, and..."
ME: "So, do you think you are going to homeschool your kids?"
ALLISON: "YE--uuuh... no."
ME: "REALLY?!!?!?!? Why not?"
ALLISON: "I want to send them to school so I have time to clean, and make a good dinner, and then maybe have a little time to myself to take a nap."

Huh? Are you kidding me? This from a girl who hates to clean... and hates naps even more! I had to laugh! I'm just so happy she likes homeschool :)