Halloween

This year has been rushing right along since school started and I'm mostly trying to keep my head above water between the kids and my own school work as a part-time grad student.  Last weekend my mom and Tony's mom came out to visit and stayed with the kids while Tony and I got away and celebrated the wedding of a truly lovely couple.  We are settling back home again and my mom has been able to stay for a bit longer so we go to celebrate Halloween together.

Last night we carved a few pumpkins together.  The girls each drew a design on the pumpkin they picked out.

Then we scooped out the insides and Nana and I carved where they drew.  Ada collected a few seeds that she decided she wanted to grow into new pumpkin plants and we gave the rest to the chickens.

As it turns out, nursing while one-handed pumpkin carving is now one of my talents ;)

William was mostly just hanging out in the K'Tan.

Tonight after swimming lessons, we all got dressed up and headed out to trick-or-treat.  William was pooped so after we got a quick photo he went into the stroller and fell asleep.  The girls got tons of candy and we all had fun.  So glad Nana was here!

I heart my husband

I'm pretty sure everyone who reads this knows my husband.  He's awesome.  One of the most wonderful things he has done lately was to give the girls a little mini vacation (actually 2 mini vacations) up to Door County to play in one of the greatest places on Earth.  They got to have a car trip together, play at the beach, eat ice cream, watched the sunset, and even go to the drive in (or "drive out" as Ada calls it).  I know the girls love this time with their dad.  The fact that Gramma Deb lives there in the summer is a ginormous bonus!

Here's a little snippet of the awesomeness of vacation with Poppa.

The secondary bonus was that I got to spend two whole weekends alone at home with my new little guy- restful, snuggly, quiet time for me and William:)

Ocean work

The shelves at home have been a bit neglected by me since William was born I think I've switched them over twice :(  But we had some ocean work out for a while. I collected a bunch of coloring sheets from the Twisty Noodle with ocean animals, and found other inspiration that I collected on my Ocean board on Pinterest. This is what the shelves looked like.

Make a jellyfish, fish pattern work, shell stamp, play doh with lobster cutter, ocean stickers with # cards, ocean puzzles

And some ocean-y books.

Another tray that was out but rotated in was a water dropper work that Emma loved!  Basically it's some blue water, an old medicine dropper, two suction cup bath things, and a cloth to wipe up the spills.  A HUGE hit!

Waiting her turn :)

The fish pattern work was a mild hit with Emma, not so much with Ada.  That's okay though.

Ada mostly did the puzzles which I have no pictures of.  But here's one with William and a half completed puzzle in the background.

We made some little sailboats out of some corks, toothpicks, and foam sheets.  We floated them around and decided they were the perfect size for our fairy figures.  Win, win!

Counting 3 corks

It floats!

Adding fairies

 And all the while, there was William being awesome.

Fairy Play

It's been a struggle to keep up with this blog I must admit.  I wanted to share a few pics from the fairy garden from the summer.  Most of these photos are from August.  The girls have turned a little corner of the lawn into a fairy garden with glass gems and silk flowers from the dollar store and a little zen garden set I found at Savers- win!

The girls loved it but I could never have expected how much.  Almost every day Ada is out there raking, shoveling, arranging stones and creating little stories for the fairies.  One day she decided there needed to be a sign, so she whipped this little beauty up with some Sharpies.

I'm sure I saw the idea to make a little house someplace, but neglected to pin, sorry.  We used a container from the recycling, shells from Florida, and mulch, bark, and rocks from the yard.  Ada calls it the tornado room for the fairies.

The garden changes daily and is currently decorated with chalk covered rocks :)

Ada found a newly emerged cicada which was very exciting.

One Pinterest activity we did was a cool texture painting activity from "Growing a Jeweled Rose"