Happy Halloween

We celebrated our Halloween a little early since this year Halloween falls on a Sunday. Our kids didn't seem to mind at all. Our celebration started over a week ago with a trip to a small Pumpkin Patch in Coppell. They actually weren't open, but we took pictures anyway and after asking permission in the church who was running the pumpkin patch we got two small pumpkins and left the money under a brick on the check out counter.  I made Jovi's skirt using the very last of one of my favorite fabrics, some very cute orange corduroy with black polkadot fabric.  I used this pattern, one of my go to patterns for cute skirts.





On Monday we got bigger pumpkins and carved them.  The kids helped take out the pumpkin "guts" and got to choose the type of face they wanted on their pumpkins.  I wielded the knife.  That night we set them on our walkway and put candles in them.  The kids loved it.



The rest of the week I frantically sewed together costumes for the kids.  I'm kind of proud about how they turned out since I didn't use a pattern for either of them.  Jovi wanted to be an Egyptian since we have been reading a lot about them in our history book.  I thought it was a great idea and looked up some info on this very helpful site.  Using some cheap linen look fabric from Joann and metallic fabric paint for the collar I feel I made a pretty cute costume.  Jovi's favorite part was the wig.  Corbin wanted to be a bug until his oh so helpful sister said, don't you want to be someone from Star Wars?  Corbin LOVES Star Wars, so of course he wanted to be Luke with the all important blue light saber.  Honestly, his costume took less time than Jovi's.  I used a kid's Chinese robe that we had as my pattern (by the way, those robes are made of all rectangles, super easy) for Luke's shirt, made a little belt and added some tan pants and boots and we had a Luke costume.  Corbin loved it.  On Friday we went to our church Trunk or Treat.  The kids had fun until Corbin saw someone dressed in a scary costume and he freaked out.  He seriously acted like one of his worst nightmares came to life.  He hung out with me and helped pass out candy after that, but we did end up leaving a little earlier than planned.  Jovi had a great time with her friends and got a lot of candy.







Happy Halloween!!!!

Thursday was Apple Orchard Day

On Thursday we went to our monthly Justin group field trip.  This month we went to Henrietta Creek Orchard.  I've been wanting to visit this orchard since I found out about it two years ago.  At the time Jovi was three and I was teaching preschool.  I called to see if we could go and the owner strongly suggested waiting till the kids were at least four.  I thought that was odd since I thought kids of every age could enjoy an apple orchard.  I now understand.  The orchard was beautiful and we had awesome weather for our trip.  We started in a pavilion with a school group and several homeschooling groups where the owners gave a very informative 45ish minute lecture.  THAT was why they suggested the kids be older, our 4 and 5 year olds had trouble sitting that long especially since they were at the back of the audience.  The younger kids, like Corbin just wandered around the orchard area behind the pavilion.  I got some very cute pictures of the younger kids.  Here is Corbin with Sara who he called Rosie the whole time.  I totally didn't get it till a friend pointed out that was Caillou's sisters name.  Then it all came together, Sara was an adorable little girl with light red hair just like Rosie.





Corbin and Carver watching an airplane.




Then we got to take a guided tour of the orchard.  Part of the tour included picking an apple or two, washing them and eating them with honey from the farm's beehives.  The kids loved picking the apples.







We had a good time, but it wasn't what I expected.  I was thinking that there would be more apple picking and less touring.  We had a wonderful picnic afterwards though.  It was a fun field trip although I don't think we'll need to go back anytime soon.

Wednesday was State Fair Day

The kids and I went to the State Fair on Wednesday with my mom and dad. This is something Jovi and I look forward to all year.  She loves the rides, the petting zoo, playing in the new cars and the enormous sandbox.  I love the arts and crafts section (I keep meaning to enter, but always forget), the live infomercials and the food.  We got to do it all this year and had a great time.  Corbin liked everything too except for Big Tex.  He was very scared of "the big man" and needed to be held by me or Ganna or Grandpa anytime we went near enough to see him. The weather was wonderful, sunny and cool with a breeze and it only started getting crowded an hour or two before we left.

Here are pictures of the petting zoo.  Jovi requested it be the first place we went. Corbin was reluctant to get near the animals at first, but he ended up liking to feed them with the provided shovels.  Jovi liked feeding all the animals, her favorites were the baby goats.















Next we went to the kid farm where Jovi and Corbin got to be farmers. But first Jovi wanted to try out being Big Tex. It's a good thing Corbin didn't recognize him.













Here is a group photo from the day.


Corbin liked trying out the cars.


Jovi really enjoyed the rides, but Corbin did not. We ended up having to stop the ride and get him off because he started crying. Perhaps next year he'll be ready.


After the fair we went home and crashed. A trip to the fair is a lot of fun, but very tiring. My mom made this awsome YouTube video of our trip, thank you mom!

Homeschooling Now

A friend expressed an interest in knowing how our homeschool adventure was going.  I thought some other people might be interested and then maybe I might be interested in remembering in the future so I should probably write about it.  The best of intentions often fall apart when things get too complicated and I unfortunately seem to like to complicate something that could be quite simple.  My original plan required me to do several hours of planning each week and about 30 minutes of "getting ready" every evening or morning.  I couldn't sustain it.  Sure it wasn't that much of my day/week, but it started to feel overwhelming especially when life interrupted my carefully planned week.  It's pretty sad what that says about me.  I want to be a scheduler, I want to organize my day, but it seems to just make me feel stressed out trying to get everything in and then overwhelmed when I can't seem to finish everything.  Yes, I am crazy.

After six weeks of school I stopped planning, but I've only recently started to feel that this is OK.  We didn't ever stop doing school, I just stopped planning it.  Instead of having a daily plan, 3-5 days a week during the morning or afternoon I would tell Jovi it was time for school and she could choose Math, Reading or Handwriting/Journal to do first and then we would proceed to complete a page of each.  We have also started reading The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child: Volume 1: Ancient Times: From the Earliest Nomads to the Last Roman Emperor, Revised Edition because she does activities from it with the homeschooling co-op we joined.  But I felt guilty about not doing our Five in a Row lesson or our Science lessons (which are very good, but require alot of teacher prep).  Then I looked back at my goals for her for the year.  They were pretty simple.  I wanted her to be able to read, spell and write CVC (consonant vowel consonant) words, I wanted her to be able to add and subtract single digits, count and recognize numbers to 100 by 1s, 2s, 5s, and 10s and I wanted her to be able to recognize Texas on a map of the USA and the USA on the map of the world.  (I have since added that I would like her to be able to name and recognize the 7 continents and 5 oceans of the world).  What we were doing, without daily planning was directly correlated with most of these goals.

So, I no longer feel guilty about not planning.  This method works better for me.  I still do an occasional Five in a Row lesson, but without planning ahead.  This week we had planned to go to an apple orchard on Thursday so we read How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World (Dragonfly Books)  several times during the week.  Then on Friday we shopped for apple pie ingredients and made a pie crust.  Today we cut up several types of apples and our whole family did a taste test of what type of apple we liked best (everyone preferred Gala over Fuji or Red Delicious).  I even made a quick graph showing the taste test results to hang on our wall upstairs.  Then we made the apple pie together and everyone ate it (a big deal since Jovi doesn't usually like pie).  It was a lot of fun, but I didn't write down any of it and I didn't feel pressured, except by excited children, to do any of it.  Here is a picture of Corbin with the pie, Jovi didn't want to be in the picture.



Just to brag a bit, Jovi can read!  It is has been so wonderful to see how it all came together for her, letter sounds, to words to meaning.  Just this week she started reading  Bob Books, Set 1: Beginning Readers, after she moves through set two I will start her on Starfall books (starfall.com).  We will probably go back to Phonics Pathways: Clear Steps to Easy Reading and Perfect Spelling  for more practice or to introduce more advanced concepts, but the books are much more motivational than the reader at the moment.  She has started sounding out words as she writes too.  She comes up with some very interesting spellings of words, but is so great that she is trying.  I love being part of her ah ha moments.  I hope we will have many more together. 

The DIY Dish chance to win SEWING MACHINES

The DIY Dish is back for its second season and they have one AWSOME givaway for the first episode. They are giving away an embroidery machine, a serger, and two $100 gift certificates to youcanmakethis.com and swakembroidery.com. The contest is open until the end of November so there's lots of time to visit the site and enter.

Funeral and Family

Two weeks ago Juan's maternal grandmother died.  She had been very, very sick for several months previously.  I know that this life is not the end and with that knowledge all I can think is that at least she is no longer in pain and has found peace.  I didn't know her very well, but from what I knew of her she was a wonderful lady.  She was the mother of 9 children, 1 boy and 8 girls (in that order).  She loved her family, children, grandchildren and great grandchildren and loved for them to visit.  She love sparkly things and Christmas.  And she always made a granddaughter-in-law who only spoke a few words of her language feel welcome and cared about when we visited.

We were asked to wear pink at the funeral so I spent the day before we went to the funeral shopping for pink clothes for everyone.  It is hard to find a men's pink dress shirts in fall, fortunately my brother-in-law lives near a JCPenney outlet and was able to find some very nice ones for a great price.  We traveled to a small town halfway between here and Houston where the funeral was held.  We stayed in a hotel with rooms right next to Juan's mom and siblings and their kids which my kids thought was the best thing ever.  Corbin called the hotel "the building" and his cousins were "my friends" and was constantly wanting to go back to the building to play with his friends.  It was very cute.  We were able to take some nice family pictures while we were there.


The Flores kids with their Uncle.




The cousins (aka Corbin's friends)




The girls


Da boys






Jovi trying to get Corbin to smile. I was so sad that I missed the money shot on this one when she was actually holding his lips like a grin, very funny!

I got to meet one of Juan's aunts who I had never met before and lots of cousins and second cousins. It was a wonderful, although sad family get together to remember a wonderful woman and her life.