Hay ride

The boys and I went to a Fall Festival this past Saturday.  It was the most gorgeous fall day ever!  Clear skies, bright sun, temps in the 60's, trees starting to change colors, it was amazing.  So this festival had a hay ride and we couldn't miss that.  Would you believe the ride lasted a good 10 minutes?!

Buddies

This was the only time Ash turned around lol.  

After that he was looking straight ahead making sure he didn't miss a thing!

These three chatted about the things they saw.

See that sun?  Perfect.

He held on like this with
both hands pretty much
the whole ride.

The grounds at this park
are so pretty!

Played a game of Labyrinth with the boys.  It's a fun maze game.  

Vann's making a move.

To get me!  He and
Chayce were teaming
up against me lol

I supervised the SAT's at a local college here a few weekends ago.  As I watched the students think and solve problems I looked at a few questions in an unused test book.  Then that next week Vann learned the equation to solve one of the questions!  Couldn't believe it.  We love Life of Fred, our math curriculum, and this is one small reason why.  We love it mostly because it makes math fun.  The boys look forward to it everyday.  It's never a chore for them.  And now I'm feeling pretty good that Vann will get at least one problem on his SATs correct!  

Another way to make school work fun...nerf gun bullets!  

We're headed to Texas tomorrow morning to visit my family down there.  Exciting!  Remember last year when we almost missed our plane...2 minutes to spare.  Phew it was so close.  Well that's not happening this year!  And I'm bringing a new book to read.  I haven't made time to read in months and I miss it.  So hopefully I'll be able to get a few pages in while we wait at the airport.  Today we'll all be busy packing and cleaning.  I love coming home from vacation to a mostly clean house.  Makes getting back into your regular routine a lil easier.  Okay I'm off to get busy for the day.  Have a beautiful Wednesday!

Go Fish

Letter G yesterday...of course we had to play Go Fish!  Ash even got in of the action.  He's getting so big.  I love it, but I do wish time would slow down a bit.  I just have to make sure to be present every day and make the moments count.  Because gosh do they go fast!  Okay back to G...we learned about gorillas.  Played Guess Who.  The big kids did either geometry or graphing on Khan...man Chaycers blows me away sometimes.  The problems he does are tough!  And many are multiple steps so he really has to think.  He's a smart lil cookie!  Oh we also learned about geometric solids.  All the kids loved this and it turned into a pretty lengthy chat!

He was so cute holding his cards.  I had to help him fan them out, but then he held on tight!

Vann was practicing shuffling while we fished for animals. 

Harley Jo :)

Chaycers :)

I have these cool geometric solids.  My fav was hearing the littles try to say things like triangular lol.  

His favorite was the cone.

Oh I forgot...we watched glue dry!  They really wanted to do something with glue so, I pulled up a few glue art activities, but they weren't into them.  That's when I said have you ever let glue dry on your hands?!  

I remember doing this all the time when I was little.  I have no idea why, but I loved peeling it off.  And surprise surprise...they did too!  

The things kids enjoy...so funny! 

Chaycers had his soccer party after work.  He's improved so much over the years.  I hope he wants to play again in the fall.  

Okay time to get busy today!  I'm determined to mop my dirty floors at some point.  Or maybe I should just hire someone ha!  I'm joking.  Sort of.  If getting some cleaning help wasn't so expensive I'd be all over it.  Until then I'll just get around to scrub a dubbing every so often and embracing the mess in between.  I'd rather spend more moments with the boys anyhow :)

Letter A continued...

Today we learned about angelfish and armadillos.  We watched a few videos about armadillos...they're pretty cute!  The little kids did an ABC puzzle.  Puzzles are Ash's favorite.  The bigger kids and I talked about area and they solved a few problems.  Gotta sneak that math in there lol.  We also learned about angles.  I was looking forward to this as I knew the boys would really dig it.  I got the idea from here.  And everyone helped to make an apple cake.  It was just like an apple crisp, but instead of oatmeal the recipe called for flour.  The kiddos loved it!  

A few of their angel fish.  The black & white striped is Chacye's.
Blue squares is Vann's.  Pink & blue is Harley's.  

And here's Ash's.  He was so proud of it!
He even cut it out and we hung it on the wall. 

Chaycers was in charge of chopping
the apples for our 'cake'. 

They drew circles with a compass and then
made angles with a protractor.  

They really liked this project!

The entire time Vann worked on his,
he talked about how much he loves geometry.
I heart that because I love geometry too.

We talked about acute, obtuse and right angles.  

They were supposed to color each
type of angle the same color.
Turned out great!

It was a fun day!  And I stuck to my meal plan for the week and got dinner made, baked ziti.  Plus I roasted some tators and peppers for breakfast tomorrow.  They'll be really yummy with eggs.  I'm 3 days into my meal planning, again.  Hoping I can stick with it as it really is so helpful.  I'm taking it one day/one meal at a time though lol.  

Have I told you about my new favorite cookbook?  It's from the Pioneer Woman.  It's my go to every time I need to make anything.  Everything I've ever made from it has been delicious!  And the kids love all of her meals too so for me that's huge.  When they ask for seconds or for me to make that dish again tomorrow...well that just means the recipes are family friendly and oh so yummy!  

I'm baaack!!

For reals.  I'm totally back this time!  I miss blogging about the boys and our schooling and my random thoughts...I miss it.  So I'm back!  And as much as I would love to play catch up with the past 2+ months, I think I'm just gonna start from today and if I have time to catch up on past happenings (like Christmas) I will.  

Gosh how ya been?!  We've been really good!  Busy as always.  I got the boys signed up for baseball last week.  I'm excited for it to start because that means it'll be spring...yay!  I also signed them up for Boy Scouts.  I'm thinking that'll be a fun way to not only learn some cool stuff, but also meet some new friends.  

Here are a few pics from the past week or so.  Vann is super into origami!  He works on it every free minute he has and has hundreds of creations.  I got him a ginormous origami book from Amazon, but he still borrows different origami books from the library every week and is always looking for cool ideas online.  He's obsessed!

Showing me some of his creations!

The boys don't get much computer time.  They do typing a few times a week and that's about it.  My friend told me about this website, Khan Academy...it's free and goes all the way through high school subjects which is kinda cool.  Anyhow, here they are doing some math.  I love that it reinforces what they are learning in their regular math lessons in a fun way.  

This little cutie is getting sooo big!  He loves to play with stickers and most of them end up on himself lol. 

I hear 'Mom look at me!'  

More origami action!  These are some claw fingers...pretty sweet!  I told him to make a mean face and this is what I got lol.  

Then he burst out laughing :)

Ash wanted to try them on.  He's trying to growl haha!

Here is his newest creation.  It's a spike ball where the flowers flip closed and open...should be pretty cool when it's done.  It takes 90 sheets of paper!!  

So little Ash woke up this morning and wanted to wear underwear...eeek!  Super exciting, but I so don't love potty training.  I'm much more laid back about it now than I was with Vann.  I let the pressure of other moms and milestones get to me with he was potty training.  Now I'm like, it'll happen when it happens!  No sense in either of us being frustrated about it.  

Anyhow, I was happy when he asked to put underwear on this morning!  I brought the little potty downstairs and I got to look at his cute lil' bum in his Olaf undies all morning (he had a shirt on too, but we skipped the pants because well I just knew better lol).  He had two accidents and ran to the potty after it was too late.  After the second one he asked to put a diaper back on haha!  Ah well, he's still little.  It'll happen when it happens!  

Okie doke, I'm off to read about Pasteur with the boys.  Have a great day!!

And Ash just woke up from his nap and asked to put underwear on...here we go again!

More Shape Fun

This past week we pulled out some more shape games during math time.  The kids really like doing these and I love it because they're learning without even knowing it!  

Chayce is making a person out of his shapes.  Here's the link for the toy...it's by Melissa & Doug Magnetic Pattern Block Set...love their products!

Looking for his next piece

Putting the last shape on...

Happy dance!!

This is a fun game...makes you think.  It's called Meta Forms.  It's a puzzle type game.  You have to figure out where each shape goes by following the clues.  

Vann likes this one!

He's checking his work...they have the answers in the back of the book.  He got this one right!

Vann wanted to do a shape picture too.

All done!  

So, sometime during the boys birthday party, someone left me these pretty measuring spoons in my baking drawer.  I didn't notice till the next day and I gotta tell ya...I love them!  I love the colors...makes baking so much more fun!  And I still do not know who left me this fun surprise.  Whoever you are...thank you so much!!  

Seriously, how fun are these?!?!

Our Week So Far

We've been busy this week, but in a whole new way.  Now that we're done party planning, we can focus more on playing and crafting and learning and relaxing and all that fun stuff.  I love this kind of busy!


Our preschool theme this week is Web Wonders...all about spiders, webs and Halloween.  We've been doing some cute crafts.  

The two little black creatures are bats...then there's the web they weaved for their spiders...and last we have the spiders you can make 'crawl' up the string.

We've been reading all sorts of fun books.  My favorite is when the kids keep asking for more books!  The library was just about all out of Halloween books...figures since Halloween is right around the corner.  I managed to find a couple though.  


Speaking of Halloween, my mom and I went shopping while she was here and we picked up the boys' costumes.  They're both super excited!  Star Wars is the theme this year and they picked their costumes out themselves.  Vann is going as General Grievous and Chayce is going to be Darth Vader.  They've been wearing their masks all week!


Chayce wanted to be like his big brother this morning and do 'his' school work too.  So, I pulled out Tangoes Jr. for him to work on.  He loves this game!  

He was so cute...every time he would get a piece right he did a little happy dance...adorable!

Trying to get the piece just right.

Vann's doing his math workbook.  

He's cute when he concentrates!

Usually we do 2 math lessons every day, but sometimes we switch it up a bit and do one lesson and a game.  Today was one of those days.  So, after his lesson he played some Unifix Sudoku...and he's pretty good at it!  

Trying to figure out his next move...

Got it...the red one goes over here!

Almost done!

So proud of my little man!

Over the weekend, my mom took the boys shopping at Toysrus for their birthday presents.  Vann wanted Legos.  He has a few Lego sets, but they're all smaller ones.  When we got to the store, Gma Connie told him he could pick out whichever one he wanted.  He was in heaven!  He, of course, went straight to the Star Wars section of the Lego aisle.  Scoped them out for a bit and ended up with the biggest set of Legos he's ever had...810 pieces!!  He was so excited he even kissed the box!  

Here he is with his awesome Star Wars Lego ships that he put together all by himself...he just loves them!

Ok, well I'm off to watch some Grey's Anatomy.  Hope you had a great day!!