Fall and Winter Fun List - The Outcome

With the official start of Spring being a week away (You have no idea how excited I am, even though we didn't really have a winter, at all), I thought I would recap the Fall and Winter with a review of our Fun List. It seems like eons ago that we made it.

Here's the end result:

• Host a Trunk and participate in Trunk or Treat - We didn't get to host a trunk, we planned on it, but when they had to reschedule because of the weather, we couldn't do it. But we did go and had a lot of fun.
• Go to the Johnny Appleseed Festival - Yup, Elijah had his first experience picking apples
• Pick out pumpkins - We did this at the festival
• Take some fun Fall pictures - Fun... Challenging... What's the difference?
• Carve and/or paint pumpkin(s) - Ended up painting, cause it was more kid friendly
• Pick out and cut down our Christmas tree - We did and Katie, Charlotte and Mark came along to take pictures of the whole process

• Have a snowball fight - Maybe if we had snow this would have been plausable
• Take some nice Christmas pictures - Azalea didn't get to come along because it would have been too much going on (maybe next year), but we did do this while we were hunting for Christmas trees

• Decorate "tree" advent calendar - With Elijah's help - By the time I went to buy the advent calendar I wanted, they were sold out and not restocking it. I couldn't find a suitable replacement, so we did a countdown on Elijah's chalkboard instead
• Celebrate Birthdays and Anniversaries - Some were celebrated late, but we did celebrate them.

This is us on my birthday...

• Play catch in the backyard - We didn't play it in the backyard, but we did have random games of catch  in the house
• Make Christmas cards - With the kids help - We sent out Christmas cards, but not the ones I was planning on when I made this list. Maybe I will do the homemade ones next year.
• Help at church - In some way (because volunteering should be fun) - We didn't do it as a family, since we didn't host a trunk, but Joe volunteered as an usher and on the chair team.
• Go sledding - No snow = No sledding
• Put together a 100 piece puzzle - With Elijah's help - We had some ups and downs with the process, but he had fun, in the end.
• Attend the Ladies Christmas Tea (Meanwhile the guys will have a guys day out) - Was planning on going until we found out how much the price of the tickets were. Instead my mom, my sister and I went out to eat. It was the first time in approx 18 years that we haven't attended the tea, so it was sad, but we couldn't justify the cost with what was provided.
• Have a Christmas songs sing-along night - It wasn't a whole night, but songs were sung and a good time was had.
• Play in the leaves - Yes, there was plenty of that going on.
• Visit friends in Pennsylvania - I am actually shocked that this didn't happen. I have no idea why either...

• Go see Santa Clause - This almost didn't happen too, but we went to see him at the last minute. We got the extra enjoyment of a little tour of the firehouse too.

Not too shabby. We also did random fun things, not on this list, like roller skating, get togethers with Joe's side of the family, going to a Harvest Party and attending Winterfest, to name a few.

I don't think I will be making a fun list for the Spring... We seem to have no problem finding fun things to do in the Spring and Summer. We actually have to make sure we don't commit ourselves to too much. However, even though there isn't a list, I plan on updating about the fun we will be having in the coming months. So be sure to come back and take a look!

Leaves...

Elijah got to experience one of the joys of childhood, for the first time, this year. He got to play in a pile of leaves.

At first he didn't know what to do

But he got the hang of it really fast

Then Penelope joined in the fun

And Charlotte too

You can see the joy on their faces

They had so much fun that they did it again this past weekend

In a -huge- pile of leaves, this time.

Even Daddy/Uncle Joe joined in the fun

Caleb "jumped" in too.

He was not thrilled...

Then the kids got put to work, picking up all the leaves

They did a great job.

And seeing how my in-laws still have a bunch of leaves on the tree, that have yet to fall, we might be able to have one more playing session before the season is out. Gotta love fun in the great outdoors.

Until next time...

Harvest Party...

This year we wanted to get more involved with our church, because, as I've said before, there are a ton of people who attend and it's easy to get lost in the shuffle. So when I received a little card inviting me to try out this thing called MomsConnect, I did. MomsConnect is a group that meets once a month. Everyone in the group is a mother of at least one child 5-years-old or younger. I went the first week and had so much fun that I plan to continue to go until they break next summer.

In addition to the monthly get togethers, they have random fun stuff to do a few times a month, that is completely optional. Most of the things we have to miss out on because I work, but we got to attend the Harvest party they put together.

It was at the church on a rainy Saturday morning. It was very warm, cozy and fun.

Elijah got to do a few crafts

In her hand is a handprint turkey with feathers and a googly eye

(a better picture is below)

Then we made a scarecrow out of some of Elijah's old clothes

One little boy had a great idea of putting hay inside a baby sleeper

(like Caleb's size)

I will have to remember that for next time.

Elijah got to hang out with some of the kids.

I think he knew some of them from childcare

Then he made a thankfulness wreath

Caleb hung out the whole time

Can you believe this is one of the only pics of him in his costume?

The parachute (I think that's what it's called) was a big hit

When we got home we hung up his artwork on the clothesline in his room.

Which, by the way, is pretty much done, so stay tuned, because in the next week I will be showing off the rest of Elijah's made-over room.

Until next time...

Fall Photos...

I made the mistake of thinking that taking photos of the boys and Azalea would be easy. So we set out to go to the park near our house that has a big field that hardly anyone uses. We ended up having to take two cars, cause we brought Azalea and the wagon to transport everything. Because all of that would not would not fit in Joe's Toyota Corolla. I'm pretty happy with the results though. Nothing spectactular, but some nice pictures to bring back memories years down the road.

We started walking to the field, Caleb being held and

Elijah helping out by holding the pumpkins and

making sure they stayed in the wagon

We got to the field, set up and realized this was not the best idea.

How was I going to get some good pics with three non-cooperating subjects?

But we rolled with it and it ended up turning out fine.

Caleb was content and ready to go.

Unfortunately he was more interested at looking

everywhere else besides the camera

Azalea was also distracted by a dog that was playing off camera

She did the best she could to stay put.

Then Elijah decided to talk to Caleb for a few minutes

Which was fine with him, cause Caleb loves studying Elijah's every move

Everyone was pretty bored

Then they saw something in the sky

(I have no idea what it was)

So I actually got a pic of them looking in the same direction

Azalea was itching to play, so we let her go

This is one of my favorites

I gave up on the group shots at that point

And decided individual pictures would be the best thing

Even Azalea decided to take a break and pose for a picture

After Elijah and Azalea wondered off Caleb was

left all alone... with just his pumpkin to keep him company.

Pumpkin Painting...

Over the weekend we decided to squeeze in little art project, before Halloween. We decided to paint some pumpkins, since we felt like carving would be more complicated and not as much fun for Elijah to participate in.

First we gathered together the pumpkins and

let Elijah pick the image to stencil

I cut out the stencils using my Cricut

(an Owl from Create a Critter and Happy Halloween from one of the font cartridges)

I taped them onto the pumpkins and tried to tape the inner part of owl

to the pumpkin also, so it couldn't come up when painting

We bought a 24 pack of acrylic paint from Wal-Mart

to use on different projects throughout the year,

so we used black and white on the pumpkins

He got to work, painting away, filling the whole area

Caleb supervised the project

He did a great job

After the bigger pumpkin was done

He moved to the smaller pumpkin

He filled in the whole little pumpkin stencil too

Later, after he went to bed I peeled off the stencil and this is what we had.

I think next time I am goin to dry the paint out with a hairdryer

so it's not so wet when I'm trying to peel the paper off.

But, of course, I love the results anyway, because Elijah painted it

*Now that you've seen the results, I just want to say that I wasn't doing this for it to look perfect. Actually I was just doing it for something Elijah could help with, to decorate for Halloween. If I were to do this for my own benefit I would have done a few things differently. I would have used removable adhesive to hold down everything and I, also, would have used a stencil brush. I feel like that in conjunction with using a hairdryer to dry out the paint before peeling off the stencil would make this project look a lot better.

Did you do any projects for Halloween?

Trunk or Treat...

Last year, during this weekend, my sister was getting married. So Elijah got to dress up and hang out with the adults at the reception. He was Super Why and he loved every minute of it.

Especially when he thought he could climb up the walls



But this year we didn't have a wedding to go to, so we went to Trunk or Treat at our church. We originally planned on doing a trunk when it was going to be on Saturday the 29th. But it ended up sleeting/snowing that day, so they postponed it to Monday night (Halloween). Since I work full time we couldn't do a trunk and we were disappointed at first, but we had fun just attending.

As we approached the parking lot we

didn't know what to expect

We stood in line for registration, then Elijah got to pick

out some goodies before we got to the trunks

Still snaking around to get to the trunks.

Eljiah looks ready to go.

There was a princess trunk

A hunting trunk

A Smurf trunk

(You can't see it, but the trunk looks like the giant mushroom)

A wintertime trunk

Elijah got his picture with "Oscar the Grouch"

Then he entered the "Heroes spaceship"

There were guys outside dressed like X-Men,

the Green Lantern and all sorts of other superheroes.

This was another really fun trunk

I especially liked this one. Professor Xavier from X-Men

Someone brought a rabbit to pet

Elijah decided to take a rest on the inflatible couch

There was a bee trunk

An Orioles trunk

One of the two Angry Birds trunks

Elijah fit right in with this one

A Masquerade trunk

A Monopoly trunk

The other angry bird trunk

On this one you could try to hit the pig by throwing

the bird (attached to a string)

There was a cheerleading trunk

These were Elijah's "groupies".

When they saw him, they screamed "It's an Angry Bird!"

and ran over with handfuls of candy to give to him.

Then they wanted their picture taken with him.

One of the girls also took a pic of him with her phone.

It was all quite amusing.

I thought this was cute.

Aladdin and Jasmine

A Dolphins trunk

(I actually took this for my friend Linz, cause she's a huge Dolphins fan)

A knitting trunk

(this was a good, warm, idea)

Joe kept getting a hard time about wearing his Steelers jersey.

This guy, dressed as a blind referee, came over

(acting like he was blind, no less)

yelling, "I smell a Steelers fan!"

When we reached the last of the trunks they

had miniature ponies to look at/pet.

This is what Caleb was doing 85% of the time.

I think he enjoyed himself.

He woke up at the very end

Just in time to take pictures in the photo booth

When we got home we took another picture.

For scrapbooking purposes

And dumped out his loot.

He made out really well.

Caleb even got some things. They both got "sippy cups"

and Caleb got giant goldfish graham crackers

They will be saved for next month when he can eat people food.

I expected this event to be fun, but everyone was in such a good mood. You could feel the warmth from everyone you talked to, whether they had a trunk or were doing registration or standing near us in line. That is one thing I love about our church, even though it's -huge- (3,000 people attending every weekend kinda huge) everyone is so nice and friendly that it makes you feel like you're part of one big family. :-)

Until next time...