Christmas List

We told the kids that they could make up a Christmas wish list. The boys quickly sat down together to corroborate on what they each wanted to ask for to make sure each thing worked with the others' requests...no repeat legos or DS games...

Leah promptly went off into her own space and got her paper and marker and made up her own list. No help from her brothers, no input, other than the 4 years of brainwashing she has endured from them! See if you can't find the brotherly influence in her list. We think it is adorable. I have translated her writing below the picture of the list if you can't figure it out yourself :)

It reads, "Leah's Christmas List"

legos. cat. leapster barbie game. horsey (meaning horse). tinker bell book. scooby doo game. racetrack (she explained this to mean one like Bay's that he never lets her play with)

Bay's Space Room

We are in the process of doing a bedroom swap with the kids. Bay's is the first to be done. This used to be Leah's pink room. Big change! Anyways, he wanted a space theme. I found a really cute quilt at Land of Nod, but they wanted almost $200 just for the quilt, and that did not include me getting window treatments to match, etc...So I looked up space fabric online and found a really cute series to use for his room. He has black fabric with stars and constellations on the windows. My mom volunteered to make him a quilt, so he will have a cool quilt...blue fabric (like the walls) with planets and accented with blue stars and orange pops of color throughout. He has orange sheets and I'll make him a couple of throw pillows to coordinate as well. Needless to say, the whole getup...fabric for quilt, windows, etc. is costing just a little over $200, so that makes me very happy. It is always rewarding when sewing it yourself is much cheaper than buying. It doesn't always turn out that way, but sometimes it really does!

Roman shades over the bed

Here are the shades let down. This room gets the most sun, and the sun is so bright in the morning as it is facing east, so I went ahead and lined everything to ease the damage to the fabric and hopefully make them last a little longer.

Close-up of the roman shade fabric.



The sliding door drapes. These are also fully lined, and is actually the first time I correctly lined drapes, and they turned out so nicely. They hang so well and have a great "drape" to them. Close-up of the fabric. It is black background, clusters of tiny blue stars, and then also gold stars with actual constellations marked on them. Pretty neat!

Once the quilt is done and all of the decorating and organizing is done, I'll take more pictures. I just wanted to show it coming along.

Delight in the Everyday

This school year we significantly cut back our extracurricular activities. We made the decision (providentially) to scale back, and while Dennis' mom was with us this fall, we wouldn't have been able to function otherwise. However it has continued to be a blessing for our family, as we have not been running around every day and evening of the week for soccer, or coop, or swimming, and have been able to enjoy more leisure time as a family and on school without so much pressure! I know it won't always be this way, but it has been a nice break.

This week we got to go on our first field trip of the year, to a local plantation and working farm. Mostly we got to interact with the animals. The kids were given buckets of feed (bits of bread and veggie scraps) and were allowed in the pens with most of the animals and got to pet all of them. Leah enjoyed feeding the goats and the potbellied pigs:

Bay enjoyed running in circles with "Pickles" the pig, and he also found the farm cat. Bay was not too keen on feeding the animals, he didn't like touching the decaying veggie scraps!

Eric was not too excited about feeding the animals, but he had a good time anyways. It was a gorgeous fall day.

Eric, Bay, and friend, Elliott standing by the koi pond in the beautiful gardens surrounding the plantation house.

I had to take a picture of the boys one morning doing math. They looked to be concentrating so hard.

And like I said, more family time has meant more time to play games together. We just taught the kids "Mexican Train" in dominoes. It is one of Dennis' and my favorite games.



And lastly for today's post, Bay finally lost his front tooth that had turned gray when he busted it about 4 years ago! He was so excited to loose that tooth!

Frisbee Golf is finally here! Yay!!!

In the not-so-distant past, an old housing area was converted into a frisbee golf course very near where we live. This is exciting, because we haven't had a course near us since we lived in NC. It is not the best course ever, but it is here and we tried it out with Eric and had a great time. Eric hung in there and made it to about the 15th hole, and we stopped because his stamina gave out. The nice thing about this course is there is a lot of distance between one hole and the next, so you don't have people who are playing behind you throwing discs into you while you are teeing off on the next hole. Anyways, enjoy the pics!

Eric found his way into the rough :)

Halloween 2009

We had a fun Halloween...the post is a little late, sorry.
The pumpkin carving this year was fun. The pumpkin designs are, from left to right, Eric's, Leah's (original hand drawn design on her pumpkin), Bay's, Bay's again (the white one doing the scream) and then Leah's white one is last, with tears. The whole time they were carving and pulling out seeds, etc., Leah kept quoting from Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin, "You didn't tell me they were going to kill it!"

We were invited to a costume party for a friends' son's birthday, so Dennis and I dressed up as Mr. Clean and his wife ;)

Leah in her poodle costume that I made months ago! She is holding her tail around the front so you can see it.

Bay as Wolverine

and Eric as Snake Eyes (G.I. Joe ninja)

Notes

The kids wrote some funny notes tonight. I wish my scanner was working, because to see the handwriting is precious. Anyways, here they are, transcribed.

Note #1
I say that Leah will have a coke if she gives me her lollypop.

___BAY_____
sign name here

Note #2
I say that i agree with Bay to give him my lollypop if he gives me a coke.

___LEAH___
sign name here

Note #3 (given to me to sign)
As the mother of these two children I agree to this deal.

___NO DEAL___
sign name here


I told them good try, very cute...but no cokes for any of my children!