Halloween

Finally here are some Halloween pictures. We had a fun time this year.

Here's Doug putting up our cobwebs... I'm not sure he was happy with the job, but that's what he gets for being over 6 feet tall and for marrying a wife who's a lot shorter.

Here's my favorite ghost house. I had to actually have a candle party several years ago to get it, but I love it. There's a ghost up top that spins around when you have a candle burning in it.

I actually made this pumpkin at Super Saturday this year. I'm not sure it turned out all that great, but the material is cute.

We made sugar cookies. Don't be alarmed. The colors on your computer are working just fine. The cookies are actually yellow. That's what happens when you convince yourself that it was the blue food coloring that the kids used up a few weeks ago when in fact it was the red. Then when you want to make orange frosting you can't do it so you have to settle for yellow.

This is Adam eating his cookie... Well technically he's licking the frosting off of his cookie. He also eats peanut butter sandwiches this way. He insists on having them open so he can lick off a bunch of peanut butter before eating the bread too.

Here's our little Bob the builder, fairy queen, and knight. I know Mary does look more like a princess than a fairy, but she insists that she's Queen Titania, the queen of the fairies in some books she loves to read. Queen Titania doesn't actually have wings in any of the pictures. Don't ask me how she flies.

All in all we had a good time.

Flashcards

So I finally have a few minutes to update the blog a bit. I'll get to Christmas later some day, though probably not today.

Mary's been learning multiplication this year in school. She started just a bit at the end of 2nd grade so we worked on them during the summer as well. Her math teachers this year had them all make flashcards to work on the stuff at home. Of course they were plain and boring because they were just written in pencil on plain index cards. (I certainly don't blame her teachers. They have enough to do without making fancy flashcards for everyone.) It was torture to get her to do them several times every day. So I had to come up with an alternate plan.

I looked all over the internet for some fancy flash card ideas, but I couldn't find anything I really liked. So here's what I came up with.

I cut up sheets of different colors of construction paper and wrote the problem on the front in different colors of marker and the answer on the back and then I laminated them.

Then I stick them to the wall with blue painter's tape. Then as she does each one she pulls it off the wall and throws it on the floor. Sometimes I make patterns on the first set, but on the other sets I usually just put them back however I happen to pick them up. Frequently I time her to keep her on task.

The first part of the year they worked on 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, and 10s. Then they went worked on fractions and geometry stuff for a while. She got pretty good at this and could do a whole set of all of them in 2 minutes.

After Christmas break they're moving on to the rest of them.

Apparently she made them look so fun Alex wanted to get in on the action. Since he's in kindergarten and learning to read we decided to go with word flashcards for him. Mary made a lot of them for him.

He loves rhyming words so we usually make them up in sets.

Dinosaurs!

Mary's class studied a lot about dinosaurs during November. They even made their own fossils! We never did fun stuff like that when I was a kid. Of course we got more recess so maybe I shouldn't complain.

Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving this year we went to visit my parents. Technically it was Doug's mom's turn to have us, but she kindly let us go to my parents' house because they are leaving in January to go be missionaries in Mexico City. We'll go see her next Thanksgiving.

Before we left I got one of my birthday presents a few weeks early and got a new camera at Big Lots for $40... Not the best camera out there, but who really wants to spend over $500 just to get an awesome camera when I'd still manage to cut people's heads off and stuff.

I was a little camera happy on the trip down (and then forgot to use it much later), but here are a few cute shots of the kids as we headed south.

I love sleeping kids!

She wore her soccer shirt and soccer shorts from almost 2 years ago rather than wear the burgundy colored pants I bought her a few weeks ago... At least they came from a thrift store so I don't feel too bad about it.

That's my boy!

Mary and Alex both love playing with my mom, especially Mary. I had to remind her to let Grandma get other stuff done.

I didn't get any pictures of them playing Go Fish, but I bet they played it a minimum of 50 times. Alex has an uncanny knack for winning even when he shows everyone his cards on a routine basis. (I don't think it's all pity either.)

We had a great time. The weather was excellent aside from some wind. As always the food was top notch, especially the pies. I detest making pie crust so we don't get pie too often, but my mom makes the best. Don't let her modesty fool you!

Fact or Fiction??

Several months ago I came across an article in a magazine at the doctor's office or some type of waiting room. It had a whole list of "myths" that your doctor will tell you. One of their so called myths was kids getting a "sugar high." According to them kids don't really bounce of the walls if you give them too much sugar.

I beg to differ...

Today Alex was fortunate enough to get a rootbeer. It's an extremely rare occurrence that I let my kids have pop (you say soda, I say pop).

Not long after he was bouncing up and down in front of the TV flapping his arms and making funny sounds.

A few minutes after that he came in my office and seemed to be trying to pull his own ears off. After repeatedly telling him to stop it to no avail I simply told him that if he couldn't stop pulling on his ears he'd never get pop again... He immediately stopped.

So you be the judge... Sugar high, fact or fiction???

Silent Monks Singing Halleluia