A Happy Halloween! Pumpkin Carving

We had a great halloween this year.  It was fun dressing up two little girls and going out to get candy.  But that will have to be for the next post.  We carved two pumpkins this year, both of which we found at the pumpkin patch. 

Whitney and Rachel both giving some loves to their pumpkins. 

Rachel seemed to really like just touching the pumpkin.  She gave us lots of cute smiles whenever she was around it.

It took a lot of convincing to get Rachel to want to put her hand in the pumpkin to feel the goo.  She would do it for like a second and pull her hand out as quickly as she could.

However, it didn't take any convincing for Rachel to try to eat the pumpkin; she did that all on her own.  She even got a little bit because she spent awhile trying to spit it out.

Whitney got to carve her pumpkin, with a lot of help from dad.

She did a good job during the whole process.

Not quite matching faces with her pumpkin, but a very good try.  Whitney was very proud of her pumpkin.

 

Will also carved a pumpkin.  He did the cool lightening symbol from metroid.  Anyway, carving was fun.  But we couldn't find our candles so we didn't get to light up our jack-o-lanterns.  We will have to do better next year.

F is for flowers

First off, I want to thank Matthew Guptill for coming up with some great ideas for my letter F alphabet days.  I decided that I really liked the idea of F being for flowers.  I think the kids really liked it too.

We started off by coloring the letter F.  I found a picture of a letter F with Zoe from Sesame Street holding a flower.  Whitney did a good job with her picture.  She is getting so much better at staying in the lines - when she wants to.

We also put flower stickers onto picture frames.  I picked out three different picture frames from the store and let the kids pick the one they wanted.  Whitney thought putting the stickers on was pretty cool.  Although it was Emma that had to cover her entire frame with stickers before she could be done.  There was not any space left for any more stickers.  I printed out pictures of the kids to put into their frames too.

Here is Whitney's one all decorated.  I thought it turned out pretty good.

Then we planted flowers into pots.  Each kid got their own pot and I put some potting soil into a bowl on the table and gave each kid a spoon.  There was a lot of flying dirt everywhere but the kids really liked being able to put their own dirt into the pots.

Whitney is waiting for a turn to get another heaping spoonful of dirt for her pot.  Each kid got a bulb to put into their pot and then they covered it with more dirt.  If we are very lucky, maybe we will get a flower come spring time.

Then we moved away from the flower idea and we fingerpainted footprints.  I traced the kids feet and then we let the kids fingerpaint.  Whitney didn't want to get too messy I guess because she only used like three fingers for the paint and managed to keep herself as clean as possible.

And for snack we had fish crackers and fruit snacks and fruit cups.  It was a really fun alphabet days.

Pumpkin Picking

We went pumpkin picking on Saturday out at GreenBluff farms.  It was a really cold day, but it didn't rain on us like the weatherman was predicting, so we were very grateful for that.

The donkeys were very patient and let lots of little children come up and pet it.  I made sure the girls only pet their backs and not too close to their mouths.

Even Rachel seemed to think petting the donkey was okay.  Its skin is rougher than I imagined.

There were a lot of fun little tractors and pretend wagons and places for kids to sit and pretend to drive.  Whitney loves pretending to drive.

Sorry that we didn't get a closer picture, but this is the famous punkin' chunkin' machine.  You put a little pumpkin inside this cannon like machine and it shoots out thousands of feet.  You have to keep your eye on it or you will totally miss it in the sky.

Of course, you have to stick your head into the funny board.  Whitney got to be the cannon and Rachel was the pumpkin.  I didn't do a good job of placing Rachel's head into the whole, so it is a little hard to see her.

Rachel did not like this bale of hay, so we sat on it just long enough for this picture.

There was a little hay maze for kids.  Whitney and Will went into it.  They actually came out the same way they entered, but Whitney didn't seem to notice.

I love, love this picture.  There was a spot by the hay maze for throwing hay.  Will and Whitney had a hayball fight.  But I love that I was able to capture both of them mid-throw with hay all over the air.

Whitney told me that she was looking for a happy pumpkin.  I let her pick her own pumpkin - she picked a huge one that was like 25 pounds.  We had to pass by all the sad pumpkins in the patch to find this perfect one.

We went to another farm and got to pick apples.  We were pretty late in the apple season, so there weren't many kinds left.  But we did get some romes and some golden delicious.  Whitney was very helpful at finding apples for our bucket.

There was a lot of playing done at the apple orchard.

Whitney loved this horse swing, plus all the slides and bikes.  So we had a really fun Saturday.  Now we just need to think of what to carve into our two pumpkins.

Preparing for Halloween

We have done a couple of Halloween craft things over the last couple of days.  Mostly it is because the weather has been chilly so we have needed ideas of things to be done indoors.  Whitney is pretty artsy and likes coloring and painting and anything like that.  Rachel was just there because I made her.

Will and I made sugar cookies for Relief Society Enrichment.  We had a couple of leftover pumpkins, so the girls got to do some decorating.  Whitney was very good at frosting her pumpkin.

And she loved putting on marshmallows and chocolate chips covering the entire surface area.

Then she only ate one bite because it was too sweet for her and Whitney doesn't really like frosting.  Like my parents would always say -  'she must have been adopted'.  I had a hard time not just scarfing down all the cookies before taking them to enrichment.

Rachel had lots of help frosting.  She got to taste a little bit and she made kind of a funny face.  So I am not sure what she thought of it.

There was a little unhappiness with putting the chocolate chips onto the cookie.  Rachel really loves chocolate chips and would have preferred eating them.  But she did get a couple of them onto her cookie.  Good job girls!

Whitney is coloring a picture of a pumpkin.  We found this little pen that does four colors depending on which side you push down and it is Whitney's favorite thing now.

It is hard to tell, but Rachel really did color this pumpkin.  I think no crayons were consumed during the process, success!

We also painted with some halloween colors.  It is suppose to be a spider.  Whitney loved loved painting and kept wanting to do it some more.  I bought a couple of paintbrushes and paints a little while ago, so I guess we will be painting this winter.

And look at how happy Rachel is to be painting.  She did a pretty good job.

All of us smiling for a Happy Halloween.  It only took us like five shots to get this picture - a pretty good job if I do say so myself.

C is for Cookie

So I was in charge of alphabet days last Wednesday and we did the letter 'C'.  Of course, everyone knows that C is for Cookies - just ask the cookie monster.  So I based my alphabet days on cookies.  We started off with dancing to the C is for Cookie song.  The kids all really love dancing.

Then we worked on making chefs hats.  They are just made of folded paper (which I spent like an hour doing the day before) and the kids got to decorate their hats.  They got to use cotton balls and markers and glitter.  Whitney especially loved this colorful pen that can do four different colors.  We had quite a fun glittery mess to clean up afterwards.

I wanted a picture of all the kids in their hats.  They aren't all looking at the camera, but they wouldn't hold still for very long after the hats were made, so I have to be happy with what I can get.

Then we made the cookies - chocolate chip cookies.  The kids took turns dumping in ingredients and then everybody got to stir.  I think that was their second favorite part, after eating the cookie dough.  Whitney would have been happy to just eat cookie dough all day long.

We colored with crayons while the cookies baked.  Whitney is getting much better at coloring.  I love these 'C' pictures with the cookie monster on them.

After the kids left, I made the rest of the cookies with all that extra dough.  I made some huge cookies for our date night that we had on Friday.  We made cookie ice cream sandwiches.  They were really rich and delicious; I could only eat half of one.  It was a yummy treat.

Anyway, the kids had a blast with the letter 'C'.  Now I don't have to worry about anything for a couple of weeks.  But I would appreciate if anyone had any ideas for the letter 'F'. I was thinking of maybe basing it on farm things, but I am not sure what that would entail.