Pumpkin Carving Party

Our friends had their annual pumpkin carving party last night - it was so awesome! What a great party they put together! Here are the girls taking out the guts and getting their pumpkin ready before going to the party (look at that concentration on Carolyn's face...)

Hugs...



Carving the pumpkin...Carolyn was the master-mind behind the pumpkin-carving and Daddy had her tell him exactly what to do :) And Angela was a little helper in the carving, too :)
I just think I'm the luckiest girl in the world that I get to always be with these three cuties :) I love my family! :) (isn't this a cute picture of them?)

October Preschool

So, I put an end to my preschool blog. I just don't want to put the time into keeping up with two blogs. Just so that I can remember some of the things I do with my girls for future kids, I think I'll post a little monthly preschool update for myself. So, here are a few things from October...

Brown paper bags are wonderful. The activities are so easy to put together and the girls love them. They can be used for all sorts of different preschool topics. Here are two of the activities...

Angela uses them to separate shapes...
Carolyn uses them a lot for identifying words, numbers, and sounds (here she had to separate "ch" and "sh" words)....
Objects in a bag full of water can also be used for a bunch of stuff. This month we used them to separate pennies from other coins....
And the sock-toss. Great for anything. Here Carolyn is throwing socks on numbers she has to identify...This one has been a big hit.
To be honest, this month I haven't done much of planning or doing preschool at all. Carolyn is on a reading-kick...she just loves reading and so we have really just been reading everyday during our preschool time. Here are two of her favorite series to read. If you have any other suggestions of good beginner books, please tell me - I'm on the look for more good ones!
This author makes a bunch of books like this one (Hansel and Gretel, The Three Bears, Little Red Riding Hood, etc.)

Pictures

First of all, I am so grateful for the Lord's tender mercies in my life. And people who are instruments in His hands to make those tender mercies possible. I am so grateful for my sister. She sent me an extra camera that she had (mine broke)...she acts as if it's not a big deal, but it is a huge deal to me - thank you!!! Now I won't miss taking my kids' pictures in their Halloween costumes and such. Such a blessing to me!

Here is Angela with the pumpkin we got at the pumpkin patch on Friday... I also wanted to post some of my girls' artwork so I can always remember them.

I am IN LOVE with this one! I just love the detail Angela put in this picture. Angela loves to draw and I, being the mom, of course am so proud of her! It is a picture of me...you can see the two eyes, mouth, hair, body, arms (with hands), legs (with feet), a bow in my hair, and inside my tummy...she drew a baby!! (She even put a bow on the baby - she knows it's a sister coming). She drew this all on her own...we didn't even tell her to put a baby in my tummy :) I love it.
And another picture from Angela. One of my favorite things to do is go through papers after Angela has spent a lot of time drawing. I love seeing the babies and people she drew (right now, she mostly draws babies, mommies, bottles, and tries to write her name). Here is one of the babies she drew...head, mouth, eyes, hair, ears, legs, and feet :)
And, of course, here are some pictures from Carolyn. We can't help but draw lots of Christmas pictures over here...in just a few more weeks we won't be so crazy to be listening to Christmas music and such! Anyways, I love this picture by Carolyn!
Carolyn's snowman...
Sometimes people think that we skip over all holidays because of our love for Christmas. This picture proves - it's not true! We are so excited for Halloween and love drawing Halloween pictures, too! I love this pumpkin and ghost by Carolyn. She wanted the ghost to look scary and I think she did a great job at it :)
Just so I that I can remember....Along with drawing, some of our favorite things to do around here is do puzzles, sing (esp. Angela has taken off on singing lately - she is singing ALL of the time - I love that when we have a longer car ride ahead of ourselves, we can count on Angela singing to us the whole way), play princesses (the girls have a couple of barbies and small princess figurines they love to play with in a doll house), play dress-ups, dance, play games (I seriously think I've played Candy land/Shoots and Ladders 9 times with Carolyn today and she is still begging me to play with her "just two more times"...she is inlove with games), do preschool, ride bikes, watch movies (I really think showtime is the girls' favorite part of the day), go to the park, go to the library, play with dolls (Angela is obsessed with Birthdays right now - everyday is one of her baby's birthdays - Carolyn is so sweet how she plays along with Angela and makes the baby a cake, sings to her, gives her gifts, etc.), and just play with each other. The girls play so well with each other and are sweet friends - I am so glad they have each other! They love playing together and kissing and hugging each other all day long. I hope this lasts through teenage years :) They also just thrive on playing with friends - everyday they ask me what friends are going to come over and play. The girls also love to read. Angela reads throughout the day! She loves opening lots of books and doing her very best to tell the story! I love listening to her! She's such a doll! Carolyn loves listening to books and is working on becoming a better reader. She loves reading the Dear Dragon series. She needs help with quite a few of the words in the books, but she just loves them and is doing so well. I love listening to her read - it's one of my favorite things to do.

Pumpkin Patch!

This picture is from my friend, Kara (thank you!). My camera broke so I couldn't take pictures of our fun adventure at the Pumpkin Patch...but it was sooo pretty...look at the picture Kara took! Yesterday we went to the Pumpkin Patch as a family - it was so fun! Not only did it have this beautiful patch to pick a pumpkin from (which was so fun), it also had quite a lot of free stuff for kids to do (the girls had a BLAST). There was a toddler hay maze, a little petting zoo, and lots of big blown up stuff for the girls to jump around in/slide down. It really was so fun! Thank you Deckers for introducing us to this - we're also going to make it a family tradition to go there every year!

CAMPING!!!

Andrew and I love to go camping...we love the outdoors and just the whole experience of camping. However, the last time we took the girlies camping...Angela did not sleep well at all so it wasn't such a pleasant experience when night time came. Soooo, Andrew came up with the perfect solution! Day camping! We spent almost the entire day up in the mountains. We set up an tent (brought blankets, pillows, etc. in the tent - acted as if we were really going to stay the night), went hiking, played lots of games in the tent, roasted marshmallows and hot dogs, played sports, etc, etc. When night time came, we sat around the fire and told "scary" stories. Then, instead of crawling inside our sleeping bags to sleep at bedtime, we just hopped in the car and drove home to sleep. It was so fun! Hopefully Angela will be able to sleep better next year out of her bed so we can sleep overnight - but if not, we'll have a lot of day camping experiences ahead of ourselves for next year! It was fun!

Four to One

On February 2nd(ish), Andrew will be outnumbered four to one!!!! WE ARE SO EXCITED!!!!

Usually when we talk about baby sister, Angela insists that she also has a baby in her tummy. You can often find Angela walking around the house looking like this....

Everything looked good on the ultrasound. Our little sweety is always moving around and kicking...I love it! I am just so excited to meet our little sweetheart! I love my two little sweet princesses and I am excited to get another one :)

Storytime at the Firehouse

Every month the firehouses in our city do story time...awesome! We get a tour of the fire station, read a book, eat a yummy snack, talk to firefighters, see them in their attire, and get a close-up look at those awesome trucks. We went with some friends this month and it was so much fun!

I didn't get a picture of all our friends we went with to the station, but here are a few we shared the experience with.... They also sent us home with some goodies...pencils, coloring books, and their very own firefighter hat.
Carolyn's friend, Kaylen, trying on the hat- I couldn't' believe how heavy everything was that the firefighters wear - they said all their attire weighs about 50 lbs!
Angela and her good buddy, Tyler. Angela's most FAVORITE part of the whole experience was the juice box she got :) At the end of the day when we were sharing our highs and lows of the day, Angela very energetically told us that her happy part was "juice!" I think I know what I'm asking Santa to put in her stocking this year :)
Carolyn and one of her very best friends, Kaylen.
Let me know if any of you want to join us for another adventure to the firehouse...we want to go again....soon :)