Busy Weekend-Halloween Prep and the Spooky Symphony

I had a TON of work to do this weekend, but we still managed to squeeze in a bunch of fun things, as well as prep for Halloween.

We took the kids to Lowes on Saturday morning to build Monster Trucks. Our schedules haven't really allowed us to do their workshops in a while. It was CRAZY, we had to stand in line for 20 minutes to get them. We brought them home to build them, but the kids had such a good time. They were so proud of them that they were able to be nice to each other long enough for me to get this shot:

Since they cooperated, I indulged them with a silly face session. It looks like Summer is going to take a bite of Garrett's arm . . .

but these are always the funniest photos!


While at Lowes, we bought a pumpkin. After much debate we decided to just get one and make it family pumpkin. I suspect this is the last year that is going to work. Garrett drew the face ALL by himself. He drew it on paper then I cute it out and transferred it to the pumpkin.

We took turns cutting it out (Summer obviously needed a lot of help there)

and the kids had a BLAST scooping out the guts.


Finished product.
Why is it so much to ask for EVERYONE to have a nice face?? :-)

Brad took the kids to see a "giant" model airplane show, the three of them had a blast. The weather is absolutely glorious here, its nearly impossible to focus on anything because it was so beautiful outside. But alas, I stayed home and worked.

On Sunday, Garrett and I trekked downtown for the "Spooky Symphony" put on by the Greater Miami Youth Symphony. I love orchestral music and thought this might be something Garrett would enjoy. We met up with some old friends, Jon and Bryland, and had an excellent time. Here they are pretending to be a train on the way to the theater.

How we've spent our summer vacation (SO FAR)

I can't believe there are only 58 days left before Garrett starts Kindergarten. So far, this has been the BEST summer we've ever had. I know that it comes from the fact that this is our first summer since Garrett started school, and that I've been completely focused on being in the moment with the kids as much as possible. Garrett and I take turns calling the shots for the day--he'll pick something fun and when that's done, I'll pick something structured.

We've been reading a lot. We just finished Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and began The Goblet of Fire. In addition, Garrett is working on reading his Bob books and a few very simple Level 1 readers on his own. Everything he reads on his own gets a link for his reading chain.

We're participating in the summer reading program at the library AND Garrett has his reading list for kindergarten, so we also started a reading journal for the books we read together. These are helping him get in handwriting practice, which he really isn't too keen on doing.

We're playing a LOT of games. Uno is by far our favorite. We had a party favor uno laying around with tiny little uno cards and its his favorite thing.

We swim on a daily basis. Thanks to Grandma Sherry, Garrett is signed up for private lessons. The kid is a fish, and we decided we'd see how much he could learn in the way of swimming stokes. He also couldn't really float, because he just can't be still for that long. He can now though. We both love his teacher.

We had decided not to sign Summer up for swimming lessons because she has been a little bit of a scaredy cat in terms of being on her own in the water. But yesterday at the Y she finally discovered she can swim on her own holding on to a noodle and now she loves swimming all over the pool. We'll probably sign her up for some group lessons at the Y once she turns 3, for both social interaction and to get her used to swimming without me. She loves the water.

We do lots of fun things in the back yard. For some reason the kids think hitting the bouganvilla with sticks is one of the most entertaining things ever.

Garrett has taken to climbing the huge oak tree in our back yard. He also likes to "look for dinosaur fossils" in the lake.

And of course we occassionally play in the front too. Summer likes to take Minnie and Mickey for walks in her stroller.
And we've been going to the park occassionally, although it is hot. They BOTH decided to be monkeys at Audubon the other day.

We've been building things with our legos. Here's an awesome boat he got from Ms. Leanne for his birthday.
We've played with our friends a lot. We've had friends over to swim, we've picked up the Shumans early from school to come over to play, we've gone to the zoo with the Davis clan.

Xander's birthday is coming up (in fact his party is today), so Garrett and I have spent some one-on-one time for that--he and I went shopping together for his gifts (which Garrett picked out). I HATE buying gift bags and/or wrapping paper, I think it is the most wasteful thing on the planet, so Garrett and I crafted this cute gift bag out of an up-cycled T-mobile bag. He had a blast putting the presents in once we were done.

And of course we had to make the card too.

We've gone to the free movies at flagship. We go for bike rides, usually to the pool or to the grocery store. We spend a lot of time at the library. We've done science experiments, learned about the phases of the moon, and talked about the diet of almost every animal imaginable. We've enjoyed having no real place to be at any set time. Most of all, we've just enjoyed each others company. It has truly been an excellent summer.

Easter catch-up

We had so many things going on over the past few weeks. Italian dinner fundraiser for Garrett's school, school easter festivities, Easter playdate, etc. And of course work, work, and more work . . . Here are a few catch up pictures. I haven't had time to upload last weekend's pictures (egg coloring and a few other things) yet. I really didn't take that many. We spent Saturday night/Sunday morning dealing with a very miserable little girl who is teething and Sunday was very low-key as we all tried to recover from our lack of sleep.

Garrett and one of his fav gal pals, Alex, at the school fundraiser.

Summer loving on her Minnie and carebear. She likes to take them with us in the morning when we walk the dogs.
Easter cards at school
Cute butterfly craft the kids did.

Off the top of my head I can think of nothing else noteworthy. Things have been utterly insane lately. I'd like to say its almost over, but I really think its the new normal. But we're not just surviving, we're still managing to find time for enjoyment, which is nice.

Balance = Found (Sort of)

Coming off Mondays crazy post, this has been a pretty good week. INSANE, but good. The alarm has gone off at Oh-Dark-Hundred on a daily basis, and I, who love my sleep, have been up before Brad every day but one this week. 4am wake up = not fun, but being able to focus on the kids without freaking out about the obscene amount of work on my desk was worth it. I also planned for child care two days this week, just to make my life a little less insane. My friend Shelah's daughter, Rainee, came and hung out with the kids on Monday, and then Summer went to play with Ava on Wednesday while Garrett was at school (leaving me a little time to be productive when I wasn't dealing with the usual produce craziness).
Summer sure does love her "Ray-ray".

Not only did I get work done, but I didn't feel like I was losing my mind a single time all week. Added bonus, we had time for family time at the pool, I managed some quality time with Brad, and I've gotten in some decent enough workouts. So, all in all, not a bad week.

I also made some headway on the school dilemma for next year. I'm 90% sure that homeschool is the back-up plan of choice. Once I realized I could eliminate a lot of the planning stress by getting a curriculum, the stress of that choice seemed to wash away. I would still prefer he get in to one of the schools we applied for. But whatever happens will be exactly the direction we should go in.

Fun things we did this week:
Summer colored a lot, one of her favorite ways to pass the time:


And we broke out the paints Grandma Becky gave Summer for her birthday last year, along with some of our left over stocking stuffers from Christmas:


Friday was a MUCH anticipated movie night . . . we did Pita Pizzas for dinner, which the kids loved because they could each make their own.
And really, does it get any better than this?
The only time they were truly quiet though was when the popcorn was being consumed. You can see how long 7 children between the ages of 7 and 2.5 lasted :-)

I find the pairings in this picture hilarious--Garrett is hanging out with Angela, our neighbor who is 7. He's always wanting her to come play and hang out, she's one of his favorite people these days. Summer is with Xander, of course. She's ALL about Xander. And Logan is chilling with Brady and Gracie. We're pretty sure Logan and Gracie will get married some day, lol :-) I'm so thankful to have such great friends right in the neighborhood, which makes fun events like this a cinch to plan.

Valentines Day Fun

It may be a more or less pointless holiday, but we sure had fun with it this year.

Silly Garrett landed yogurt on his shirt, which had to be cleaned off, thus the huge wet spot. Of course. Because I don't have that many pictures of them together. Going to have to get better about that. Grandma Compton sent the bears, which they LOVE because they make this cute little kissing noise.

We made a LOT of sweet treats in the past week. Cookies, Molded Wilton Chocolates, and cake balls for Garrett's school. Kids had loads of fun.


With the Wilton molds, I got a kit for $4.99 on clearance. At first I tried to actually do them as pictured (painting the details into the mold) but apparently I'm not that talented, so I let Garrett go to town and do them himself. He had fun, and they turned out looking cooler than the ones I did myself.


Cake Balls and goody bags for Garrett's school

The goody bags were fun to do--I tore out pages from our old coloring books and managed to both declutter a bit AND re-up some things that would otherwise have headed to the recycle bin.

We worked on our valentines for school all week. Garrett insisted on writing his name on about half of them before it got old (and he got tired of trying to fit his name on all of them-not enough space for his crazy handwriting). He also wrote half of his friends names too. He did insist on assembling EVERY SINGLE ONE all by himself though (tearing it, taping in the tattoo, folding and putting on the heart sticker.

I took a canvas, covered it in some cork board, Oklahoma State fabric, and ribbon to make Brad a fun little place to stick notes/pictures/etc at work. The kids made little cards for him that then got tacked to it. Garrett's was too cute for words-he wrote everything (Happy V-day and his name) all by himself, and made a picture of himself with daddy. He's getting SO BIG! Summer had to pose with the board, of course, because she's silly.



Brad wouldn't clue me in on our plans for Valentines day evening. Turns out he bought a fondue pot. So we spent 2 hours eating cheese fondue, a main course, and then dessert. YUM. Very good, but WAY too much food. He got super creative with the dessert though:

Garrett ended up with tons of candy (of course) from school, so we're reusing the Pumpkin Fairy idea from Halloween. Garrett selected 10 pieces to keep, and the rest went in a bag to give to the Valentines Fairy. In exchange, she is leaving him a book and an awesome Bumble Bee track I bought super cheap at Christmas time.

On top of the V-day prep this past weekend, we had a crazy busy weekend. Brad took Garrett to see Monster Jam along with a bunch of our neighbors. Garrett had a blast, but Brad got a parenting FAIL for not taking a single picture for me. I took one for the team and missed out to stay home with Summer and the neighbor's infant since her hubby was out of town. The best part was apparently not the actual monster trucks, however, but the remote control ones they saw during the "Party In the Pits". Silly boys!

Brad and I also went rock climbing this weekend for the first time in forever, as an "active" date day. The kids went and hung out with the Shumans while we went and climbed 30 foot walls for a few hours. Thanks to my mom for the awesome birthday present of rock climbing club for the semester! We followed it up with burgers from 5 Guys, so I get a healthy eating FAIL, but you know what, I don't even care. It was so yummy, and on the rare occasion we go there as a family, Summer and I split a burger. So I enjoyed having one all to myself :-)

More fun planned for this very short week. Brad is taking Thursday and Friday off. Thursday after school he and Garrett are going to the boat show. On Friday Garrett is off school and Brad's grandparents are coming for a short visit, which of course Garrett stoked about. Fun, fun, fun.

Multicultural Day at Garrett's School (1.31.11)

Garrett's school did a Multi-cultural day at the end of January. The kids had a ton of fun with it. Garrett's fabulous teacher let me help dig up materials and activities, which made me feel like I was contributing a little. It turned out great. Its fitting that Garrett's class did Australia. I have always been obsessed with that country since I was a little kid.
Garrett's is the 2nd one down, left hand side, under the word Australia
They got their cute little faces painted like aborigines . . .
and did aboriginal cave paintings . . .
and made boomerangs . . .
and made didgeridoos. It was pretty funny when Garrett came home and explained what they were to Brad--he didn't have a clue about what a didgeridoo was.


Yes, Garrett is the one with his pointing STRAIGHT in the air. He was also the loudest. By far. No surprise there.

And they said "Gooday, Mate" when their friends came to visit. They even made cute little passports that they got stamped.

Weekly lesson plan (fun to have to look back so we can remember what they were doing)

MLK day coloring (G's is 2nd row, 2nd from the right)

And last, but not least, Summer made herself right at home. She built a tower with the duplos and then said "Mommy, take a picture!" She's also saying CHEESE, of course. Clearly I take too many pictures.