A few November Happenings

The girls are constantly coming home with the funnest crafts from school.  This time, it was the Statue of Liberty, The Mayflower and a raccoon mask.  Sometimes we have to take pictures!

 The Raccoon was from Andie learning about hibernation. 

 Ready or not.  Our condo association started putting this up at the beginning of November.  Any ideas what they are for?  YIKES!!

 It was time.  Little Adalyn's hair was long and beautiful, but in desperate need of a good clean cut!  After 8 1/2 inches, we are both loving the new style and pain free comb through.  She loves its!

And of course, we can't forget Caleb.  Learning to take his first few steps....what a champion!

Showing Gratitude

I can't believe a month has gone by....so fast!  We have so much to be thankful for and we wanted to try and help the girls understand what it means to be grateful, so I created "Our Thankful Tree".  Every day (or at least, that was the goal) each of us would write on a leaf one thing they were thankful for.  The only rule, was that you couldn't repeat yourself.  It was SO great.  Our tree got so colorful with red, orange, brown, green and purple leaves.  It was full very fast, and we even had a slight breeze with leafs blowing towards the couch.  The girls colored and cut out turkey and put them around the tree as well.  It was fun to read and recognize all the many things, temporal and spiritual that we are have in our lives. 

It was a great activity that we will continue every year.

 Can you believe that I never got a picture of our little tree.  I took a picture the 2nd day some of us had done it - then the other two of Adalyn and I are ALL I can find as it happens to be in the background!  Boohoo....that wasn't very smart on my part.  Oh well - you get a slight idea of how it filled up.  Hopefully I'll remember to take better pictures next year. 

Beginning to Read

There are so many things I love about this little video.  Ali, sounding out words, Ali guessing at words, Ali's expressions but most of all, I love that she looks to her older sister for confidence, encouragement and approval.  Sisters are the greatest and I'm glad that these two are such great friends! 

Ali good job at reading - it is such an exciting adventure!!

Halloween 2013

Look at that - the day after the actual holiday!  I'm finally caught up on the blog!  Hooray!  We've had an eventful week and lot's of fun.  Our friends threw a chili cook-off and fall festival get together last Friday night.  They even had hay rides all set up.  It was pretty much a ward function - and we were all bundled up!  (I'm in the pink hat, Caleb is on my lap and the 3 girls are around me!)  I think it was a warm 38 degree's that evening.  But - we live in the North East - and that is NOT cold enough to host most of the party indoors.

 The next night was the ward trunk or treat.  One thing that I'm not sure is unique to our ward, or just to the New England way - but our activities last only an hour...on the dot.  It's like there's this silent alarm 50 minutes into the event and someone starts cleaning up and people are leaving right on the hour.  It's definitely something to get used to. 

 Andie wanted to be a pink and blue butterfly this year.  I found the PERFECT colored wings at Walmart, but she thought people would think she was a fairy...so I made cardboard butterfly wings, having all the paint and cardboard in stock - so it was free! 

 We also had bat girl, belle and our little orange M&M.  We invited a friend from Andie's school class to come with us.  We had them over for dinner beforehand and then went to the church.  They moved her last year from England and had never heard of a trunk or treat.  It was fun to have them join us!

 Those from my old ward might be impressed....I actually decorated our trunk as a fishing pond and had a sign that said, "Fish or Treat"  Yep....moving up in the world of my creativity. (haha)

 Halloween morning, I made pumpkin/ghost pancakes.  Orange for pumpkins, chocolate chips to make a ghost faces.

 Belle got all ready again for the girls parties at their school.  She has the perfect color and length of hair to be Belle this year.  Don't be surprised if a few posts from now, Belle has a new hair cut.  We have been waiting for after Halloween.

 Here is the group again, after school before going out in the rain to visit a few neighbor's for trick or treating.  I am Andie's room parent and so I organized her Halloween class party.  We did pumpkin bowling, pom/pom races, face painting and Halloween "Boo-go" (Bingo).  I had food assignments out and I think there were more parents then kids in the classroom.  I felt like we had a lot of fun things planned and it was okay.  We started 10 minutes earlier than planned, so I felt like the time was dragging on, and the kids were bored.  It didn't feel very organized compared to Ali's class party - but oh well.  I have a better idea of what to do for the Holiday party in December.  If anything, little Belle enjoyed wondering around, eating all the food and leaving the classroom to get lost and brought back to me.  Maybe being a room parent with 2 little ones tagging along wasn't such a good idea.

 After school, we went to Shawn's classes and went trick or treating - only we took the bucket of candy to his students and shared with them.  They enjoyed seeing the kids dressed up.  As we were walking from one class to the next, across campus, Ali was holding the halloween bucket of candy and yelling, "Say Trick or Treat and I'll give you some candy"  A few people caught on and she would give them come candy.  It was fun to brighten up their day!

 It was raining by the time Shawn was done with class and we were headed home for dinner.  We snapped a few pictures, visited 10-12 houses, ate pizza and called it a night.

 Of course, all while striking a few poses.

Happy Halloween everyone!  Hope it was safe and fun!

Fall Festivities

If there is anything to say about New England, I have come to LOVE fall all over again!  Although I love the south and the nice warm weather, I didn't realize (or had forgotten) of the fun and distinct season changes that happen in other parts of the country.  Having lived in the west, on the West coast, in the south west, the south and now the north east - I definitely think the north east wins the prize of "Best Fall!" 

We'll start out with apple picking.  A couple in our ward was kind enough to let us come over one Monday night for Family night and to pick apples.  The girls had a blast!

Sister Davis then came to my house, let me borrow all of her supplies and taught me how to make applesauce.  I know what I want for Christmas!  I loved it and it tastes SO MUCH BETTER!

Work those apples Aimee!

We made 22 quarts of applesauce in just a few hours.  It was so much fun.  The next day, Ali's class had a field trip to go pick apples. 

 Adalyn and Caleb and I all enjoyed the field trip too!

 Adalyn was so desperate to get on the school bus.  She wants to be like the older girls and go to school.  I told her she could go have a seat on the first step and you think I would have just told her she was going to Disneyland.  She was SO excited!

There were so many apples on the ground - in perfect condition.  At 50 cents per pound, I could help but get more apples to make more applesauce.  Why not?  I still had the tools to make it.  So - 22lbs later, I was back in the kitchen - this time, making applesauce on my own!

 Wash, quarter, cook....repeat.  I added cinnamon sticks to the pots for aromatics.  YUM!

 These apples made PINK applesauce and it is so yummy!  The girls loved that it was pink.  I made 12 pints, and 4 more quarts.  :)

That weekend, we took a ride up out of town.  Any road you take out of Keene has a river running by it and beautiful hills and trees.  They are especially beautiful during September and October.

Attempt at a family picture. 

I love the reflections in the lake!  So beautiful.  Imagine this image, 10 times more brilliant!

Ali and I went on a visit up north and found ourselves at Dartmouth College.  So, I snapped a picture from the car at a red light.  Harvard is on the way to the Boston Temple, I would love to stop there and walk around their campus one day!  I would love to walk around Dartmouth too!

With all the fresh apples, I attempted to make apple cider donuts.  The dough was delicious and smelled wonderful - but - once fried, it didn't taste that good.  I don't think I had rolled the dough out thin enough.  I'm tempted to try again, but it was a lot of work. 

We ended up making mostly donut holes. 

Finally the Keene Pumpkin Festival.  It you google and read about Keene, you're bound to learn about the pumpkin festival.  Each year it gets bigger and bigger, and this year it was the goal to get the world record back.  World Record?  What's that.  How many pumpkins have you seen carved and lit at the same time?  We didn't hang around to see them lit, but we saw over 30,000 pumpkins.  I am sure the official number is out there somewhere - but we made the world record again, for the 9th time!

 Each of the schools held a pumpkin carving night.  The girls were very excited to be involved.  I had them each draw their faces that they wanted me to carve.  Pay attention, because our goal was to find them among the 30,500 some odd pumpkins.

 We carved their names on the back of the pumpkin as well.

 Guess who got to finally ride a school bus?  Because our town is a small one of about 25,000 people, the advised us to take the free shuttle to downtown.  Fortunately there was a stop semi-near our house - so we walked on over and rode the bus into town.  Adalyn thought it was bumpy and scary on the ride down - b ut then she got to sit by herself on the ride home and LOVED it!

 Here is the main grand stand in central square. 

 We saw a cute pumpkin snowman that I didn't get a picture of.  We took a few other fun pictures - you name it, and it was most likely carved in a pumpkin.  I liked the stitching on this one.

 The teeth were cool, and the "red hat" society. 

 Do you remember Ali's drawing?  There's her cute little pumpkin face to the right of her head. 

 Then we found Andie's!  YEAH!

 They had all sorts of street performances, musical groups, dancers, story book plays, etc.  We stopped and listened to this a'capella group from University of New Hampshire.

 Adalyn had to have a picture by the princess pumpkins. 

 This one was huge and way cool.  Never thought of peeling a pumpkin and carving it like this.

 This guy was probably 6'8" - at least.  And, he was wearing a cool carved pumpkin on his head, and wrists and feet. 

We had a great time at the pumpkin festival.  There were lots of booths around, with all sorts of food to buy.  HGTV was also there, giving away free stuff and candy bags to the kids.  It was fun.  They did an episode of pumpkin wars with the property brothers last year, where Keene won.  If you watched that - then you've seen our little community.  I am sure you can still find it and watch it.  Maybe someday I will.

We sure have been enjoying the fall weather and fun.  It's moving into the high 40's and sometimes low 50's now during the day and we are very cold.  That was our winter in Georgia.  We can't wait to experience the mid-January where it is -10 for a week and gets dark by 4:30pm (NOT!)  Hope you enjoyed all the pictures...I count this as our family journal/scrapbook.  Great way to record memories.  Enjoy the rest of October!  Halloween is just around the corner!