Busy Bees

The end of October is upon us already.
We've been busy raking leaves and getting the outside of the house ready for winter.
It is getting pretty chilly here. The thermometer keeps dipping lower and lower into the 30's.
Last night we carved pumpkins.
Our friends the Brown's were kind enough to give us pumpkins from their garden.
Two of them smelled more like cucumbers than pumpkins.
But they carved up really nice.

Elsa was trying to do her part in helping to carve.

Myles drew a picture for Chris of what he wanted
his jack-o-lantern to look like.

Here are the end results.

This is Myles's pumpkin.

Aeva's pumpkin.
She carved it all by herself.

Rhaevyn's pumpkin.........well she drew up the plans, Chris carved.

On Wednesday my best friend, her mother, and I got together

and threw a Halloween party for our kids.
It was a blast.
I was in charge of doing games and crafts. It was so much fun!
There were Halloween coloring pages, Halloween Bingo, Ping-pong ghost relay,
and spider crawl relay.
For crafts we made these cute ghosts out of milk jugs.
Myles added a mustache to his.
You stick white Christmas lights inside.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find my white Christmas lights.
The little flameless candles I have make the ghosts look orange.

We also made these pumpkins out of card stock and scrap booking paper..

Rhaevyn went to a church activity yesterday where they did Zumba.
She said it was a lot of fun. Next week is self defense and a service project.
Aeva is going to start learning to play the organ.
She gets her first official lesson this coming Sunday before church. She'll get to play before
the prelude music starts. Chris let her try out the organ on Wednesday night, and she came home on cloud nine. She has three songs she is practicing for the organ.
Myles loves spending his time outside on his bike or playing football with the neighbors.
He is up to reading 40 words so far and is able to read the first four pages in the McGuffy Primer. I think besides math, phonics is his favorite part of the school day.
Elsa, I have discovered, loves ballerinas. I put some footage of the NY Ballet Nutcracker on for her, and she went wild. She loves to twirl around on her tip toes to classical music.
I let her try on some ballet shoes at Payless, and she didn't want to take them off. She danced around the store in them. She's pretty fun to watch and reminds me of myself when I took ballet.

I noticed the house was awfully quiet one night and went to find her.
She was in the hall fast asleep.

Chris was out cleaning up the garage and decided to let Myles and Aeva have at it with our old vacuum cleaner.
Myles had a blast taking the frame apart, unscrewing screws and snipping wires.

Myles wanted to add his training wheels to it so it would be a go cart.

Aeva had fun taking apart the motor.

Here is a little video of Elsa on her scooter.
I just laugh sometimes while watching her because
she just zips around the cul-de-sac.

I was in the store with Myles, Elsa and Aeva one day while Rhaevyn was at violin lessons.

Aeva and Myles were reciting a part from one of the Kid History episodes.

Without even a pause Elsa finished it up with "A Ho De Ho!"
I think the kids just like to say this one specific part to hear her say her part.
At home on Thursday they were in the kitchen doing it again, and I see Elsa peek around the door and yell down the hall "A Ho De Ho!"
She cracks us up.
Here is a bit of a video and you can hear her say it.

I always love discovering pictures and videos on my camera that
the kids have taken while I wasn't looking.
This one made me laugh the other day when I was going through pictures and erasing stuff.
Don't mind the laundry piles.

Tomorrow is Halloween.
The kids are really excited, but hoping that it won't rain.
We shall see how long they last as it is pretty freezing out.
We'll have costume pictures on the next entry.

Masked Myles

Myles and Chris have been having fun making masks and helmets.

This is the first one that Myles and Chris designed together.

Then we watched a documentary on the Spartans,
and the two of them came up with this helmet.

They decided a nose protection piece was needed.

Myles decided I should try it on.

Random picture.
We made Halloween sugar cookies,
and Aeva decorated this one.

Any guesses as to who made this lovely bit of mischief?

Family Field Trip Friday

My best friend's mother-in-law had given us tickets to ride the Mt. Hood Railroad. We decided we'd better make the trip before they ended the rides until April.
We surprised the kids the morning of. I told them they all had to go to bed early Thursday night because we were getting up early to clean the house on Friday.
Friday morning came, and Chris woke everyone up by announcing that we weren't cleaning, but going on the train ride.
It was so much fun. The colors of the leaves were so pretty. It was a day well spent with each other.

Here we are waiting inside the old train station.

Pulling out of the train station.

Us girls sat together.

Myles and Chris had two big seats all to themselves.
They had fun watching the scenery,
playing rock-paper-scissors and I Spy.

Apparently, there aren't too many tracks on the west coast that
use a switchback to get up the hills.

We switched tracks, and the engine on the back started pulling us.

There is where we were.

Myles had to use the bathroom on the train.
When he came back to his seat he let me know that it was
"quite a challenge, mom!"

The train rocked a lot.
It really made us sleepy.


After an hour and a half ride up, we had an hour for lunch.

Time to head home.
Elsa took a nap.

It was a lot darker coming home, and having the lights on
in the train added a bit of nostalgia.

On our way back to Washington, we stopped at
Multnomah Falls.
The kids had never been there.

Can you spy Chris, Aeva and Myles?

That was our family field trip in a nutshell.
Such a beautiful trip, and a wonderful memory made.