Pumpkin Patch

This weekend we went to Sweetberry Farms in Marble Farms with our good friends, the Rankins, to pick some pumpkins. We had so much fun. We went on a VERY dusty hayride, had a picnic lunch, and found some great pumpkins.

Wyatt instisted on pulling his brothers all by himself.

Baby Sterling is as cute as a pumpkin : )
Seth loves Mr. Russell





Ready for our hayride

Grilled Bananas

Well, I guess in Texas and Australia we'll grill just about anything. We picked up a book at our YMCA a couple of weeks ago during "Healthy Kids Week" that had healthy foods from around the world. One of the recipes in it was for Bananas on the Barbie from Australia. I decided to give it a try because it was super easy and seemed like it would be pretty good. Basically, you mix two tablespoons of lime juice with one tablespoon of honey, split the bananas lengthwise down the center and brush them with mixture and then put them on the grill. I kept brushing the lime/honey mixture on them while I was grilling them. I thought they'd be good with some ice cream too, but in keeping with the "healthy" part we went with frozen yogurt instead. They were really good and everyone liked them except Wyatt, but he doesn't like bananas under normal conditions anyway. We'll definitely be making them again.

Happy Birthday Gram!

Last week we celebrated my mom's birthday. Somehow I didn't manage to get a good picture of what the boys made for her. Below is a tiny glimpse of it (it is sitting on the counter on the right hand side). She loves plants so we got a potted plant in fall colors and then a pot and I painted the palm of their hand orange and then their middle finger up to their first nuckle green. So, it looked like a pumpkin. They each did two pumpkins on the pot. I labeled each one with their name so she would know which pumpkin belonged to which grandson. I had a little cut out scene of a fence and pumpkins on orange cardstock that I wrote "Happy Birthday Gram! From all the Pumpkins in your patch." I stuck it on a wooden stick and put it in the plant. I think it turned out pretty cute. I have to say that I came up with idea totally on my own and I'm pretty proud of it. : )

The Elusive Hummingbird

We have a couple of hummingbirds that eat from our feeder on the back porch and I've been trying to get a picture of them for months. Unfortunately I never have my camera around when they're feeding. However, I finally got lucky and had it at just the right time! I was so excited. I was even able to open the door and get this shot before the little guy flew away.

Wyatt's Castle

Wyatt has been talking about castles a lot lately and he drew this one on the magna doodle. I wish he would have drawn it on paper so I could have saved it.
I love the details. There's a queen on top of the castle and the king is on the ground. There's a sun and the moon is over by the tree on the right. Do you see all the M shaped birds? This boy is drawn to art (pun intended). It's no wonder though, Jerad's mom painted a lot, and my dad and a lot of people in his family are very artistic. I can't wait to see what he does with any talents God might have given him.

Color Arranging

I've seen this color arranging activity on several blogs and I've been wanting to do it with the boys for a while. I finally made a trip to Home Depot and got the supplies and made it.

First I picked out which colors I wanted to use. I chose purple, blue, green, yellow, orange and pink (I would have chosen red instead of pink, but they didn't have red).

Then I used my paper cuter to cut them all into 1.5 inch strips and cut the paint descriptions off the end.
Then I cut them apart and cut off the little white segments in between.
Then I numbered the backs so that the boys could self check once they arranged them.
I explained to the boys that I would let them pick which color they wanted to work with and that they would arrange them from darkest to lightest. I showed them once with the pink color and then chose a color (Seth chose blue and Wyatt chose yellow) and they got to work.
Wyatt got them all right except the last two and honestly the last two are almost identical. I told him he did a fantastic job. After that he chose orange and he got them all right. Wyatt did a great job with the self check so I didn't have to help him to see if he got it all correct.
I had to help Seth by reminding him what they object was. I would say, "which one is the darkest?" and he would say, "this one," and so I would tell him to take it and he would. Then I would say, "which one is the next darkest," and he would say, "this one" and I'd have to tell him to take it and he would. We worked like that to get the project done, but he got them all right and then did it again with purple and got them all right, but two.

I'm really happy with this project and we'll definitely be adding it to our "school" work rotation. I also love that I was able to make it on my own for FREE!!

I've Been Linked

I've had my first official "link" from another blog : )
There is a blog that I read called The Write Start and I think it's great because she's always coming up with great ways to get words, letters, etc into kid's everyday life in creative ways. Well, I have it in my Google Reader so everytime she posts something new it just pops right up and I can go read it. A few days ago she had a new post about how she wanted to put letters in her son's food and how she had found a good post about using pancakes. I thought, "Hey, I did that," and I clicked on the link she provided. Low and behold it went to my blog about when I put our initials in our pancakes!! I was so excited I ran downstairs and made Jerad quit watching tv to come up and look. Anyway, I know it's not a big deal, but I really like what she does on her blog and was honored that she would like what I did.

A Boy and His Bugs

Wyatt loves bugs. He's constantly on the look out for rollie pollies, catapillars, ants, etc. He seriously LOVES them.

On this particular morning there was a bug on our back door window. He told me he thought it was part beetle and part grasshopper. He probably sat looking it over for at least 45 minutes before I made him get dressed because we had to go somewhere.

At Aunt Tamara's birthday he found some sort of worm that he name "Hermie", from our "Hermie the Catapillar" movies. He carried it around all night while we were outside and then had to find the PERFECT leaf to put it on when we went inside for dinner.

Unplug Your Kids-Fruit

This weeks theme for Unplug Your Kids was Fruit. After last weeks failed attempt I was bound and determined to be successful. So, we did two projects.

The first one was a matching game with fresh fruit and dried fruit. I used muffin tins and put the fresh fruit on one side and the dried fruit on the other side. I explained to the boys that when you take the water out of the fresh fruit you dry it and it ends up like the dried fruit. So then I had them match up the dried fruit to what it used to be. They did really well. I only had to help them once (with the raisens). We had grapes/raisens, bananas, strawberries, apples, and pineapples. After the game they enjoyed the food for a snack.







Our second project was butterfly feeders (thanks Unplugged Mom for this inspiration). I let the boys get busy cutting strawberries (butterflies are supposed to be attracted to red) and they were really excited about using knives. I never let them use knives and I think my sweet husband was utterly appauled when he found out. We also put out some old plums and oranges. From what I read several internet sites the more rotted and nasty the fruit the better, so that's what we went with: nasty old plums, strawberries and oranges.

We hung the strawberries from a latern over a bush that I see a lot over butterflies hovering around.
I placed the plate of plums and oranges in the small bush.
We watched and watched and only saw one small yellow butterfly on the orange. I was surprised because we see butterflies in the backyard ALL the time. HMMMM....oh well, the boys had a lot of fun with the project anyway.

Muffin Tin Monday-Shapes

The challenge for this week's Muffin Tin Monday was Shapes. Since Wyatt is always asking what shape any given letter is I decided that I would make that our challenge. I made the boys' names our "shapes".

Wyatt's Muffin Tin had:

W Shaped PB&J Sandwich, Y shaped String Cheese, A shaped Raisens, and 2 T shaped Z Bars

Juice, Pineapple chunks, Animal Crackers, Spoon

Tortilla Chips, Hummus, Cottage Cheese, Strawberries

Seth's Muffin Tin had:

S Shaped PB&J Sandwich, E Shaped String Cheese, T Shaped Z Bar, H Shaped Raisens

Juice, Pineapple Chunks, Spoon, Animal Crackers,

Tomatoes, Tortilla Chips, Cottage Cheese, Strawberries

Can you tell how excited they were about their names in their food?

A few tips: The letter sandwiches work much better if you use a rolling pin to roll out the bread nice and thin and then put the two slices together and cut out the letter shape. All the other shapes are held together with toothpicks.

Veggie Tales LIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!

We took the boys to see the Veggie Tales in Concert today. We didn't tell them we were going so it was a total surprise when we got there. They were so excited. We had so much fun. It was a great concert.

The Boys Waiting for the Start of the Show

They opened with The Boyz in the Sink
Reece, Mr. Boogie, had the best time. He danced almost the whole time.

Bob and Larry

The boys enjoying the concert
Waiting for Daddy's surprise after the concert
Two Larry Boys and a Bob
One very happy little man

Aunt Tamara's Birthday

Last night we celebrated Aunt Tamara's 25th birthday at my parent's house. We had a great time playing outside and enjoyed some yummy fajitas and cake. Since my parents have moved the boys have alot more room to roam around and play chase with Piper. We're blessed to have them so close.

Wyatt, Piper and Daddy

Seth coming in from checking on the horses, Bella Bella and Benny
Reece wanted to wear the Birthday hat
Aunt T and Seth making mandatory funny faces
Happy Birthday Aunt T


Ryan (Aunt T's Boyfriend), Aunt T and Seth
Reece enjoyed his piece of cake
Enjoying Cake