And So It Begins

We woke up Saturday morning to about an inch of snow with snow still falling.  We ended up with less than 2 inches, but the same thing happened Sunday and Monday.  Each day it has snowed 2 inches or less but we have probably had 5-6 inches of snow in the last 72 hours.  It is pretty and the kids have been SO excited.  So far the snow has melted the day it has fallen, but before too long I think it will start piling up!

I took Rebecah by surprise so her mouth was closed.  Here the kids are
sporting their winter coats with their new snow pants and boots.  

This time she was ready for me with her mouth wide open!

Joseph, Kimball and Rebecah out on a snow walk.  

"T" is for Turkey

This month we have tried to be festive for the season with our preschool activities.  

One week we made headdresses.  

Kimball and Rebecah wearing their headdresses.  This is Rebecah's typical smile these days for pictures.

 We also made some Harvest decorations since we didn't put up our harvest tree this year.  

Leaf Garland

Give Thanks banner

 One week we focused on the letter "t" and we made two different types of turkeys.

I thought the turkeys made out of leaves were cute until the leaves dried and the leaves started to crumble all over the carpet!  I was glad we could find colorful leaves around our apartment complex.

For Thanksgiving, Joseph had to work 3 hours in the morning and then in the afternoon we had dinner with 3 other families from church.  Our kids enjoyed playing with other children and we all enjoyed being out of our small apartment, although we are grateful that we have a place to live.

Wearing my new apron a friend in Russellville sent me.  It arrived the day before Thanksgiving.  Thanks, Eva!!

Picture break during our Friday Thanksgiving feast.  

Joseph worked the day after Thanksgiving too, but we had our own Thanksgiving dinner made with the foods and flavors that we are used to having.  We are looking forward to a lot of turkey leftovers since our turkey was almost 22 lbs.  

We also made a lot of pumpkin foods this month and we broke with tradition and we had our cranberries and pie early.  Joseph was commenting that we eat Christmas treats all month in December, but in November we just have one glorious day to eat our fill of the Thanksgiving food so I gave in and we had our cranberry salad and pie early...With 3 different desserts for our small family meant we weren't exactly suffering from a lack of sweets.  We had a caramel pecan pie, pumpkin cake, an apple crisp.  For my family-- don't worry, I haven't changed...I still don't like baked apples and I didn't partake of the apple crisp. Joseph requested it so I made it for him.  Joseph said the apple crisp was excellent though and now wants it as a permanent part of our Thanksgiving menu.

Email from Kimball

Kimball just sent me an email from my own email account.  He asked how to spell "love" and "you", but other than that he did it all by himself.  Here was his email:

momiloveyOULOVEKIMBALL

I thought it was sweet and it made my entire day!  

Rebecah

We love that girl.  She is full of fire, but she frequently gets overlooked in the blog posts because right now she is more of a follower and does what everyone else is doing.  She has had some funny moments this week though.

Kimball is in to "bad guys" and he was recently calling Rebecah a "bad-wicked guy".  Rebecah decided that she had enough of Kimball's taunting and she said with indignation in her voice:  "I'm not a bad-wicked guy, I'm a kid!"  It was so funny.

Rebecah has also become very adamant about wanting a dog, a doll, a shopping cart and a stroller for Christmas.  Two weeks ago we actually went to the mall --Joseph and I are not mall people or shopping people for that matter...It's a punishment. At the mall we went into a toy store and ever since then Rebecah has wanted a toy shopping cart because she played with on in ToyLand.

Yesterday, Rebecah and I made a pull-apart pumpkin cinnamon bread.  We planned it for our breakfast this morning.  When I asked her what she wanted for dessert last night she said "what you made".  I didn't quite understand what she meant since I make 99% of the desserts around the house so she took me to the oven where the pumpkin bread was baking.  I had to explain that it was still baking, it was hot and for breakfast so we needed to pick a different dessert.  She didn't like it, but she did.  She kept her eye on the bread all last night.

This morning Rebecah asked for breakfast and I said, sure.  About 2 minutes later she comes screaming down the hall "We have bread for breakfast!"  She had suddenly remembered the bread that was so tempting last night and she could eat it today.  She loved it.

                            

Halloween

I admit it, Halloween was slightly overlooked this year since we just made our big move, but I did try to do a few fun crafts with the kids so they wouldn't feel a complete lack of holiday spirit.  I'm trying to do preschool with Kimball and Rebecah each day since Kimball misses preschool so much.  I decided that we would make pumpkin faces with shapes.  We managed to get 5 shapes in if you count the pumpkin as an oval.  This also enabled Kimball to practice his scissor skills which he was excited about.

I'm not sure why Rebecah did her pumpkin's mouth upside down, but that is Rebecah for you.  I just told her what shape was intended for each facial feature.

Another craft that we did was to make candy corn out of construction paper.  I did the tracing and cutting this time around, but let the kids put them together how they wanted.  Rebecah had some cute candy corn.

Kimball was trilled to finally be able to use his white colored pencil and crayon so he drew a Halloween picture.

In this picture Kimball is on the far right.  Then there is one of his candy corn with his pumpkin face next to it.  It was a cloudy day outside so the clouds are above the pumpkin face.  The far right had corner is a ghost.  I thought it was rather clever of him. 

We put our candy corn on the kitchen cabinets.

And we also hung them from the valance in the living room.

Since Halloween was low on my priority list this year, just pretend that you didn't remember Kimball and Rebecah had the same costumes last year!

Typical Rebecah fashion...mouth wide open.  She has been doing that a lot lately.

Cake Walk...actually instead of getting cupcakes, they handed out stickers.  It was less messy and then I didn't mind that Rebecah won multiple times.

Face Painting

Finished product...a dragon in flight.

On the actual night of Halloween we went to the library to see what was there.  It was a rather un-Halloweenish way to spend the evening, but at the library there was this skeleton where kids could take pictures.

Skeleton Kimball

Rebecah Skeleton

On to Thanksgiving.  I'm going to try to make it a bigger deal than Halloween, but there isn't room in our small apartment for our Harvest tree so we will have to come up with other ideas.