Thanksgiving

For this year's turkey day we drove north to Raleigh. We met up with family and friends of family, cooked a lot of food, met at someone's clubhouse, gave thanks, and ate!

The kids just enjoyed being with cousins! John deep fried one of the turkeys (we had three turkeys and a ham!) What are you most thankful for? Everyone wrote on a post-it and put it on our wall posters. (See it there beyond Anja & Jill?) We had everything from my family to legos to I don't know! As for me, I'm thankful for my husband, my children and the peace of the Lord, Jesus Christ, which surpasses my understanding but gets me by day after day!

Leaves, trees and seeds

The kids LOVE fall! The leaves are beautiful on the trees and soooo fun as their falling and piling high! Capitalizing on their love, we spent some time learning about leaves and how to use them to ID trees. They now recognize maples, oaks, magnolias, and others (I must admit this was all new to me, too. In California I could only ID palm trees :) Together with some friends we visited a local nursery where we had a variety of trees to compare. We learned to use keys to identify the trees. We then did leaf rubbings, leaf collecting, pressed some leaves and created a leaf person. We even planted acorns we collected so we can grow our own oak trees!And to finish, we're putting together a great tree notebook with all of our creations. Now we just have to patiently wait for spring so we can learn about flowers. I can't wait!

Our Pumpkins

October came and went very fast and alas we forgot to buy pumpkins but Andrew was running errands November 2 and found a church giving their leftover pumpkins away. It's still fall so we figured why not? With the help of many pictures on the internet, each kid picked their own design. Andrew then got out the power tools (how else do you cut a perfect circle?) and voila...beautiful pumpkins! There were four pumpkins but Jill's didn't get carved so here's what we've got - Adam wanted a funny pumpkin and picked this face from a bunch of samples...We showed him a youtube video of Jack Skellington after the pumpkin was carved...we couldn't believe he picked that face while wearing that shirt but he didn't really get it, he just liked his pumpkin. The irony was lost on a three year old.Beth liked the dog face pumpkins and helped Andrew create a design that would look just like Cocoa...It doesn't show up very well until you add the candlelight!And here's Cocoa to show you just how much it looks like her - mostly in the ears :)Jason couldn't find the design he wanted so he drew his own creation on paper - a one-eyed mean mouthed spiky nose jack-o-lantern. He got exactly what he drew. Yea, for independent creativity!!!Pour Jill didn't get her own pumpkin since we were done after three but the candle in Adam's sure enticed her...
Happy fall to all and to all a good night!

Name that kid...

For their first birthday, three of our kids wore the same birthday shirt...can you identify each one?

And then there's Jason...we didn't have the shirt but here he is at one year old.