Beautiful Butterflies

Beautiful butterflies

so excited to be dressed up

and anticipating lots of candy!

Here's one of our conversations from today:

Me: "Girls, remember when you get candy from people tonight always say...."

Emma Lee and Kerri: "TRICK-OR-TREAT!!!"

Me: "No! You're supposed to say thank-you!"

A Tribute - Part II

The girls were in love and completely fascinated by their hermit crabs. The very next day, they insisted on taking them down to the ocean and playing with them in the sand and water (which I believe could be classified as cruel and unusual punishment for a hermit crab!). It wasn't until that night that I noticed that, somehow, there was only one crab left in the cage. I knew that they hadn't been out of the cage since we had come back to the house, so I could only assume that Shiny had seized the opportunity and made a break for it (or was left buried under the sand somewhere...can hermit crabs dig?).

Not really surprising that one little crab got lost in the mix of all this!

Especially when its owner did this the entire time!

The dilemma that Andy and I were faced with was buy a new "Shiny" to secretly replace the lost one or let Kerri in on what happened and let her pick out a new one. The decision was taken out of our hands when we realized that they stores were already closed, so admit it and move on was our strategy.

I should have known better than to worry. In typical Kerri fashion (after being assured that she could get a new one), she just shrugged it off with some type of comment about Shiny finding her family out in the ocean and that was that. Her new crab still doesn't have an official name, but it's been called Hermie, Sebastian, Buddy, and Crabby. More often than not, though, it just "my crab."

The crabs lasted the rest of vacation and the trip home, although one had to be rescued from being dropped under the seat. We also did some reading up on hermit crabs and what they need. What they don't tell you in the store is that those tiny cages that they come in are too small for them to live in (well, maybe it's too small to be happy in....if you look long enough you'll see that there are some people crazy about their hermit crabs!). We decided to make them a bigger home, and spent quite a bit of time searching Goodwill and Walmart for a new home with plenty of accessories and ended up with quite a cute little environment for them.  

to be continued...

If you missed part I, read it here. 

A Tribute - Part I

While we were at the beach we had one of those "divide and conquer moments" with the girls. We were shopping, and they had their own money burning a hole in their pockets. Of course, what immediately struck Kerri's interest (with Emma Lee quick to follow) were the hermit crabs. So interested were they in these crabs that they refused to spend their money on anything else in the store (and I did try my best because surely something in a junky beach store has to be tacky glitzy enough to compete with a hermit crab). We left empty-handed with the girls continuing to plead their case all the way home. Finally, tired of being the "bad guy," I said that they could ask daddy when he got back and if he said yes then they could get hermit crabs. I then proceeded to warn them in advance that there was no way in a million years that he would ever say yes.....and then promptly forgot about the situation.

Guess who didn't forget? Kerri was lying in wait the moment he walked in the door. In a rush of words full of excitement and even going so far as to bat her eyelashes, she made her request - being sure to add "Mommy said we could if you say yes!" At that moment, I'm sure somewhere froze over, because with a casual "Sure" the deed was done. With the quickly pronounced and newly acquired title of "the best parents in the world," off to the store we went. It was a long, big decision, but finally "Shelby" and "Shiny" were the newest members of our family. 

to be continued....

Finally

You probably don't remember, but at the beginning of the year I blogged about my empty above the mantel space. I'm embarrassed to say that it has remained empty up until last week! I came up with a grand plan at the time, but it involved projects and buying things and time (you know how that goes....). Then I thought, "Well, we'll just be moving in a few months, anyway" (which we aren't now - we decided to just stay in this townhouse for one more year while we settle on our other options) and nothing ever happened...until last week.

There's something about fall in the air (which we've only gotten a slight taste of so far!) helped along by my new-found addiction Pinterest, that just gets me in a crafty/decorating/sewing/project kind of mood. Here's what I came up with!

 It's nothing grand or showstoppingly different, but it's not empty! I made the burlap wreath, used some left over fabric scraps in the frames, and pulled out some of the hurricane vases I already had. I bought the candles, leaves, burlap, and that adorable little pumpkin (all on sale), so it turned out to be a pretty budget friendly decorating attempt.

I'm wondering if it needs something in the middle?? I tend not to like the overly decorated mantel where everything is completely covered (unless it's with greenery at Christmas time...), but it is my first time having a mantel, so I don't have much experience with it. What do you think?

Between this and whatever I come up with for Christmas, it at least buys me a few months to work on my original plan.

Journaling

The girls started journaling this past week. They are so excited about it! Emma Lee keeps making comments like, "I wish it was tomorrow already, so I could write in my journal again." and "WHY is it not a school day?? I want to write in my journal!" Kerri's been exclaiming, "I can write about this in my journal!" anytime she gets excited about something. The requirements are that they have to spend at least five minutes alone with their journal and write at least a few sentences (they can also draw pictures).

Here's Emma Lee's first entry. Can you tell how excited she was about it - she didn't want to stop writing! She had a bad dream the night before and finished the night up sleeping in our room. She decided she wanted to write about her dream in her journal.

Kerri spotted an opossum right up at our back door the night before. Of course, that's what she was most excited about and just had to include that in her journal.

10-11-11

Well, let's just pretend that this was posted yesterday - in time for my monthly photo challenge.

While we're at it.....let's just pretend it was taken yesterday too (instead of last week)!

School Recap: September

It's a little late since we were at the beach all last week (more on that later), but here's what we were up to last month.

We did a lot of graphing. One of our projects was to eat 10 apples (guess what we had a lot of for snack!) and record the number of seeds in each apple. We then arranged the numbers in order and made a graph showing the results.

*I even learned something: The amount of seeds in an apple correlates to the health of the tree!

Other math highlights for the month included learning about wholes and halves. We put it into practice using the speed slice game on the wii. They had to shout out "half" or "not half" as they cut their objects, and then we moved on to some real-life slicing in the kitchen (using pizza cutters - much safer than giving Kerri a knife!). We also did some "guesstimating" activities with pennies.

The girls now know what it takes to make a complete sentence (and one of their new favorite words is "fragment"), and they also know what nouns and verbs are. We done some "classifying" work where they ask the right questions to discover the subject/verb in a sentence, but we've also made things a little more fun by going on noun hunts, making "noun soup," and acting out the verbs in some funny stories.

We read Flat Stanley and incorporated that into our study of the United States. We mailed out Flat Stanleys to friends all over America and are eagerly waiting for them to all return with info from the states they visited! In the meantime, they're becoming familiar with the names and locations of all 50 states. 

We've enjoyed watching and learning about our ants. They're much farther along now than in this picture. In fact, I've been debating whether it would be cruel or helpful to them to dump more sand in their home just to give them something to do.

We've expanded our Spanish from numbers to numbers and colors. We've played lots of games, together and online. Their favorite was probably "backwards bingo" where I called out a color in Spanish and they got to remove (eat) the m&m of that color and see who cleared a row first. We also pulled out the "edible paint" again since they enjoyed it so much last month. This time we painted marshmallows with it.  

Emma Lee's cursive is coming along great. Here are her first two cursive sentences! She's also made a 100% on every math test and every spelling test! She loves test time - at least for now!

As much fun as we've had, we've also learned that everything can't be all fun and games all the time. After a rough day, where I didn't exhibit as much patience as I should have and the girls both ended up crying and frustrated at different points in the day, we came to the point where we just stopped and talked about what was going on. I promised to do my best to make learning as fun for them as I can, and the girls promised to do their best with good attitudes when it comes time for the "boring" things. I also rearranged how we go about the day, and now we get those "boring" things over with at the beginning, while everyone has a lot more patience! Things have gotten a lot better since our "deal." I actually haven't heard one complaint from them since - I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it will last!