Scarecrow Craft

R and I made this scarecrow craft that I found on one of my favorite craft inspiration sites, The Crafty Crow. Everything on this scarecrow was decided by R except that I insisted that we had to fasten the arms and legs with paper fasteners rather than glue so that they would move--she wanted to glue them together. But I put my foot down on that one, especially after I made J go to Joann's specifically for these fasteners!

R wanted the scarecrow to have a dress, and she mandated for me what color paper I should use to help make the arms and hands (I did those, but only after she told me what to do). She picked everything else out, including cutting the stripes for the scarecrow's dress and gluing them on all by herself. 

Some holiday artwork from R

A Halloween scene she created with markers and several kinds of stickers

And a Thanksgiving letter she wrote to one of her pen pals. I'm especially proud of this because she asked me how to write "Happy Thanksgiving" and all I did was write the words on a separate piece of paper and she copied them. Then, after signing her name, I told her she could write anything else she wanted. She decided to add some hugs and kisses (xox) and then wrote "MOM" which is one of the few words she knows how to write without asking for help. She is really working on sounding out words and trying to spell them herself

Wacky Wednesday

Today is Wacky Wednesday at the kids' day care as part of this week's homecoming festivities. We got in the spirit with some wacky hairdos (RUS's hair is always wacky but at least today we have a REASON for it), some backwards shirts, some pajamas as "clothes," and some HUGE fun smiles. It was really funny to see the kids' classmates and teachers coming in, some with pajamas, lots with wacky hair, and some with just plain wacky clothes on.
Front:

Back:

Thankful Hands

Our window art project for this month is a "Thankful Hands" display. We traced both kids' hands twelve times and R helped me write the numbers 1-24 on each of the hands and stick them to our window--one hand for each day leading up to Thanksgiving this year.

Here she is just after we put the hands all up on the window. I traced and cut out the Thankful Hands letters for the poster and she glued them on for me in the right order. R also traced her own hand (I cut it out for her) and decorated it, writing her own name on it. 

She then made another hand that she traced and cut out entirely independently on which she wrote RUS's name as well as drew herself and RUS.

So far, through the first 8 days of November, the kids have been thankful for: Teeth, Daddy, Flower, Panda, Birthday Parties, Dragon, Vanilla Ice Cream, and Grammie and Grampy.

It's been hard to get RUS to really volunteer much that makes sense so R has done almost all of the identifying things to be thankful for. We then talk about the things they are identifying and describe why we're thankful for those things. It's been a lot of fun so far!

GiGi and PopPop Lean Over to Eat Their Food

So GiGi and PopPop made their annual pilgrimage to Florida and stopped off in Delaware on their way down. We were so glad to get to spend an evening with them, and the kids absolutely ATE UP the attention. RUS in particular has not stopped talking about them since they left. What was so memorable about their visit, you might ask?

While they were visiting, RUS was allowed to have some ice cream (to go with pie a la mode) and GiGi was instrumental in helping him learn the principle of leaning over his bowl while eating. He did SO GOOD! And now every time he leans over he tells us "GiGiPopPop lean over bowl!"

Yes, RUS, that's right! GiGi and PopPop do lean over their bowls! And, now, so do you! Hooray!

I just have to brag about the invitations I made for RUS's birthday party

R and I had so much fun making these cards with stamps I ordered from Stampin' Up as we planned RUS's robot-themed birthday party. I just wanted to brag about them a little bit here, a little late, I know. Oh well!

Trick or Treat!!!

Orchard visit with friends

Early this month we scheduled a trip to an apple orchard in Pennsylvania with friends whose kids are the same ages as ours. This is the same orchard we took Grandma and Grandpa to the first year we lived in Delaware.

This orchard has a ton of kid-friendly activities and things to do, plus animals galore! Of course we had to start off with the farmer cutouts! Here's R as a farmer's wife with one of our friends as the farmer.

RUS has always been totally in love with D-- we used to laugh because often we would pass one another outside walking in/out of day care and RUS would literally lunge out of my arms and into hers. She says she's used to carrying both of her kids and RUS is a lot lighter than her daughter (who is R's age) so she didn't mind this at all.

The play area was a HUGE hit for both of the kids. Here's RUS crawling through a train

and finally arriving out the front. He was so tickled!

And this castle was wild. You had to climb a ladder to get to the second story (a ladder that I didn't climb because of the number of kids also trying to climb, so R had to do it by herself.) She was brave!

Here's a closer pic. She LOVED being at the top of the castle and really wanted me to climb up, but there was no way I was going to fight a sea of under-8-year-olds to try and get up there.

Then we went to where the pumpkins are and tried to get pictures of all the kids--we're only missing one in this picture!

One of the coolest parts of this orchard is that each year they have different pumpkin displays. This one was R's favorite (of course): Pumpkin Cinderella and her pumpkin coach!

And me and the two girls decided to be witches!

While wandering around the gift shop we saw this display of hay bales and tried to get a big group shot. The kids were not real into it! This is the best shot we got.

But R and her friend still wanted to pose so we accommodated them.

Before we left, we got the kids some apple cider for the ride home and R and I shared a caramel apple. YUM. Oh man. I remember as a kid my mom buying the caramel sheets for making caramel apples with. Me and my brothers LOVED those. 

As a side note, for this orchard, there's no entrance fee, but each thing you do (horse ride, face painting, play area, etc.) costs a small amount of money, which adds up. J and I tried to do the mental calculations and figure out whether we'd rather pay a flat fee for everyone to get in and then everything you do is free, or whether we'd rather pay per activity. It kind of worked out about the same for us cost-wise but I think having to pay for everything is a little bit of a pain (pulling out your wallet again and again, etc.)

The Angel Witch

This is the inspiration for R's Halloween costume this year. She wanted to be an "angel" but I didn't really know what she meant by "angel" so I got paper and crayons and asked her to describe for me what the angel should look like.

She said the angel should have a brown skirt with a black shirt, a rainbow nose, red wings with yellow on the outside, and one stripey leg and one polka dot leg.

So. J and I kept our eyes open for elements we could use. We had a lot of them already. She has a brown skirt. She needed a black shirt. We have stripey tights and polkadotted babylegs. We weren't too sure about the rainbow nose or the wings, but we figured we'd figure something out.

Then R and I were at the drugstore just looking around and she spotted a witch's hat in the Halloween aisle that she fell in love with. We happen to have a witch's hat at home but the one in the store had a flower on it. So we made a felt flower and attached it to our witch's hat with a hot glue gun. After that, she started saying she was going to be an "angel witch."

I found a witchy skirt on super-clearance and some butterfly wings that are actually orange and yellow but they made R happy so that was what mattered.

And we'll do the full costume reveal at the neighborhood Halloween parade tomorrow, so stay tuned!

Pumpkin Carving!

RUS and I carved our pumpkin while R was at gymnastics today. Here we are getting started. RUS put on his game face, aka "smile, RUS!" and we got started.

I drew a couple of different faces on paper and let RUS pick the one he liked best. We went with a simple triangle-inspired face: triangle eyes, triangle nose, triangle teeth. Here's how it looked after we got the eyes cut out.

And here's the pumpkin, completely carved. RUS helped by holding crayons and occasionally touching the pumpkin with the crayons. 

After lunch, R and J and I worked on her pumpkin while RUS napped. Here we are pulling out the seeds. J actually did the carving this time.

R was very particular about how she wanted her pumpkin to look. She drew a couple different versions on paper, and J and I worked to transform her inspiration into something carveable. She had full veto power over our drawings and in fact was quite picky. She wanted a biiiiiiiiiiiig mouth and big eyes and a triangle nose "pointing up!" So, that's what we did!

Clearly a princess pumpkin, isn't it??

Apple Cider Donuts at the Pumpkin Patch

Dress-Up Fun in the Target Aisles

In my continued efforts to have fun and get in the spirit of things without actually spending money (although going to Target usually = spending money, so I don't know that this is a perfect solution) here are the kids having fun trying on masks from the $1 bins at Target.

Pumpkin:

Kitty Cat:

Pumpkin + Magician's Hat:

Mouse:

Frankenstein (to be fair, this one is actually meant to be worn like a visor which, yes, is really quite silly but for picture-taking purposes it works quite as well to just hold it over your face as R is doing below):

Monkey:

Creepy Skull:

 Elephant: