Fall Fun Blows In

 In the span of one week we went from a spattering of leaves on the front lawn to piles of leaves. I convinced Darren that he would cause himself injury if he tried to tackle the job with rake in hand and sent him to buy a leaf blower. Even with the leaf blower, it still took him nearly 3 hours just to do the front lawn, but the kids loved the tornado of leaves it created and played in the piles almost as long as Darren worked.

 Watch out! Here comes a tidal wave of leaves!

 Degen & Kyrie do their best to push the leaves towards the street using their hands.

Darren modeling the latest in autumn accessories!

 The beautiful maple responsible for all the leaves (look how many it still has! wow!).

 Kyrie swimming in a sea of leaves!

 Momma's buried treasure!

 Kyrie helping out! So strong!

 Up to our neck in leaves!

Whoa! Here comes the leaf blower again!

Small Wonder

 I am a bargain shopper! Finding a deal is practically my favorite pasttime. I reckon that I save my family a couple thousand dollars every year just by being thrifty. I love clipping coupons and I adore shopping clearance, especially at the grocery store. I know that plenty of people look down on buying day-old baked goods or "manager's specials" from meat & produce, but for us it is simply a way of life. (I put the meat in the deep freeze as soon as we get home.)

One thing that I like best about shopping clearance at the grocery store is that a lot of the food we get is stuff that I would normally walk right on by, if not for that happy, orange sticker with the reduced price. We eat top quality steaks & chops, crab legs, tuna steaks, lamb and more from the meat deparment. And I am often able to pair our meat with a delicious assortment of "gourmet" vegetables like these delicious (& adorable) baby squash. This past week, we had grilled top loin with herbed, roasted red potatoes & baby squash... all bought on clearance and all super-delicious!

Mini-Halloween

 Well, the kiddos are not going to get a full Halloween experience this year. We are excited to be heading to Kansas for all the Neewollah festivities, but we will miss out on trick-or-treating here at home and in Kansas because of our travel schedule. Sadly, we have also been too busy to make our way to the pumpkin patch. Still, there's a lot of Halloween fun to be had. This past week, Kyrie went to the library to read pumpkin stories, sing pumpkin songs and paint a pumpkin to take home. She had a great time!

 We love the community center, not only for our swim & dance classes, but for the fun art classes. This fall, Kyrie (and her longtime friend, Belle) took a Halloween art class. They made a Halloween centerpiece, sculpted & painted clay figures and enjoyed some spooky treats. On the last day of class, the kids went to class all dressed up for some trick-or-treating. The class was full of princesses, but the two prettiest were Snow White & Cinderella. (Thanks to Nana Billie for this super-cute Snow White outfit!)

 The girls' art teacher is wonderful! They have taken several classes with her and have a blast every time. The kids looked so cute going on their trick-or-treat parade around the community center. Here they are stopping at the front desk for some Halloween goodies!

We're leaving soon for our Neewollah adventure! Everyone is very excited to see family & friends, and enjoy all the Neewollah fun! Before we go, we will have our play group Halloween party! 

Here Fishy, Fishy, Fishy!

We just finished the first session of fall swim lessons! This was definitely Kyrie's session to shine! She really gained her confidence in the water with the help of her awesome swim teacher and some new goggles. Though Kyrie still needs to work on a few skills, she can now go underwater comfortably and swim independently with a life vest. She accomplished her underwater feat a few weeks ago in the bath tub, and then excitedly shouted that she couldn't wait to tell her swim teacher. We are very proud of how well she is doing!

Kyrie is at that wonderful age where friends can be made anywhere & everywhere. She really enjoys spending time with the other kids in her swim class. Her teacher told me that Kyrie does a great job of encouraging the other children to be confident in the water, too!

Dear Degen Richard! This little boy has plenty of confidence in the water. He's been taking swim lessons for about a year now with Mommy (or Daddy) in the water with him. This session, he showed even more gusto for swimming, but a lot less patience with following the teacher-led activities. He is definitely showing the on-set of the terrible twos. I had my hands full with a squirming (and sometimes screaming), little guy who wanted only to crawl out of the pool or go round & round the whirlpool or sit in the bubbles. I am actually a little worried about what will happen with him during the next session, though he sure is cute in his swim trunks.

Soup's On!

I LOVE autumn! I love the cooler temperatures and the gray days and wearing jeans & hoodies! I also love cold weather cooking, and one of my favorite dishes is soup! As the weather gets colder, I will make a big pot of soup at least once a week. Soup is easy and usually healthy and full of comfort-giving properties. I typically use the crock-pot so that the flavors have all day to meld, and the house smells delicious with the smell of herbs and vegetables.
Yesterday, I made a chicken tortilla soup. This is actually a soup that I will serve in the summer, but I serve it just-warm (rather than hot). What I really like about this soup is pairing it with fresh ingredients: tomatoes, toasted tortilla chips, cilantro, cheese, Greek yogurt (instead of sour cream), hot sauce(s) and jalapenos. The blending of the textures and flavors really puts this soup over-the-top for deliciousness! It also allows for me to create a dish that everyone can tailor to their own tastes. The kids don't do spicy, but Darren & I do, and I hate having to prepare an alternate dish for them. I think that Kyrie likes the idea of adding the ingredients she likes to create her own soup, too.

So, here is my delicious bowl of chicken tortilla soup! The colors are beautiful... really too pretty not to take a picture of (or at least that's what I thought)! My mouth is watering just thinking about it!

We're Goin' to the Zoo, Zoo, Zoo!

We are lucky to have a really great zoo in Columbus! In fact, it is ranked the number one zoo in the country(though I have to say that after growing up in Omaha, I find that it falls a bit short of the Henry Doorly Zoo). We always have fun when we visit the zoo, which is at least once a month. Going to the zoo so often (& having a zoo pass) affords us the leisure to see as many or as few exhibits as we would like each visit. This past week, we took advantage of some warm, autumn sunshine and headed to the zoo for a few hours. We stopped at the petting zoo and to see the polar bears. The kids really enjoyed playing on the polar playground near the bears' exhibit! Here are some photos of the fun!

 This was the first time that Degen interacted with the goats at the petting zoo.

(Kyrie took this super picture of Degen & me!)

 Degen was too nervous to go down this slide by himself. Kyrie was a GREAT big sister and went down with him every time he found his way back to the top!

 I LOVE this picture!

This was the first good look we had of the polar bears since the exhibit opened. It was always hard to see them with the summer crowds.

On the Go! (Transportation Unit)

For the past week and a half, we have been talking about transportation and space. Most of our games have been space-related, but our crafts and activities have been about transportation. Of course, we are on-the-go a lot, so just going about our normal week we are able to talk about transportation and vehicles. This is also a good unit to precede our annual trip to Kansas. One thing that I really enjoy about homeschooling is how the units can be fully integrated into our lives. Last Sunday, Darren and Kyrie built a large train track in the rec room while Degen found his favorite trains to push around. The kids were just having fun, but they were also learning about how trains go!

We LOVE food at our house, especially sweet treats, so I love coming up with food crafts that fit our units. Our crafty snack for our transportation unit was Twinkie Racers. This was super-easy and lots of fun! We started with a Twinkie as the body of our car and I used kitchen shears to halve 2 marshmallows (this gives you one sticky side). Kyrie added the marshmallow wheels to the side of the Twinkie and stuck in 2 m&ms as the headlights. Then I used the scissors to cut off just the end of one more marshmallow (again to make it sticky), and Kyrie used food markers to make her marshmallow driver's head.

Here is a bit more of the integration that I love so much! Taking advantage of a beautiful, fall afternoon I took the kids to the zoo. We spent quite a bit of our time at the zoo's new "Polar Playground" near the new polar bear exhibit. Part of the playground is a tundra explorer. Degen loved 'driving!'

Okay, so I told you how much we like sweet treats! Well, lucky for Kyrie that I had another great transportation activity involving one of her very favorite things: candy! I picked up some gummy rings at the store in preparation for our unit, but didn't quite know what I was going to do with them. Then I remembered that the book Bears on Wheels (Berenstain) was on our reading list. The light bulb went on and our next trip to the store I grabbed a bag of gummy bears. Kyrie was familiar with the book, which involves bears & wheels in varying numbers, from previous readings. I gave her gummy rings (wheels) & bears and told her that her task would be to use the candy to recreate the action in the book. She did a great job counting and using reasoning skills! This was a super-fun activity, especially at its completion when she was allowed to eat a few of the treats!

I'm always on the look-out for art & craft ideas to support our learning. Several months ago, I caught a clearance sale at one of the craft stores and bought a few things that I knew I could use. This purchase included 2 wooden vehicles. Both kids love to paint, and it's always fun to paint something other than paper, so they really enjoyed doing this project. I love how much concentration they put into this project (Degen, too, for a 1 1/2 year old). I was really impressed with how Kyrie took her time to attend to the details, carefully choosing her colors and being careful with the brushes. This was a great end to our unit!

These are just a few fun crafts from our previous "At the Pond" unit. I'm always tweaking and rearranging my units and next year, I will combine this unit with our Camping unit. The first craft is a frog Kyrie made by painting a plastic tub then adding eyes and pipe cleaner tongue with glue. The second craft is a 3-D paper pond. I used star, heart & circle paper punches that we folded and decorated or cut to make lily pads, grass, frogs & turtle shells. Kyrie likes this pond so much that she keeps it on her dresser.

Play Time!

Here are some pictures of the kids doing various activities. The first is of Kyrie making apple beads out of clay. This was a sick day at home, so she's in her pajamas and a bit disheveled.

 A quiet afternoon last week, I took the kids to the science center. They had a Clifford exhibit that the kids really enjoyed.

 One of our fall themes was camping & bears. One of our related activities was making 'sticky bears' for snack one afternoon. I made cocoa krispy treats, and Kyrie added marshmallow ears and m&ms to make a face. This snack was so much fun that we made them again for dessert that evening so that Darren could have one!

 One of our neighbors gave us this little power wheels car that their daughter outgrew. It is too little for Kyrie (who was disappointed), but a great size for Degen, with some room to grow. He is not the best driver, but has a lot of fun in his little car!

 I was very impressed that Degen built this tower with mega blocks all by himself! Afterward he found the duplo blocks, but got frustrated because they didn't fit together as easily.

 Degen loves toys with buttons, and he really likes this little cash register.

 This was an activity for our unit on autumn. The kids used fall colors to paint "leaves."

 Degen loves this little top that lights up when it spins. He will have you spin it over & over again.