Happy November

Today I took some pictures of the boys after church in an attempt to get a good one for the Christmas card.  As usual, I took over 100 pictures and it seems like at least one of them is either making a goofy face or not looking at the camera in each one.  Neither of them likes having their picture taken so it's a big task to get a good one.  I bribed them with a small candy cane and tried to get smiles out of them with ridiculous phrases like "captain underpants."  So those were my children yelling captain underpants outside church (captain underpants is a book series for kids, always gets a laugh).  

I got a few of Will that were pretty good.  Luke seemed to have trouble keeping his eyes open while smiling.  

Yesterday we went to a movie and out to lunch.  We saw the new Disney movie, Big Hero 6.  The boys liked it, though Luke got pretty antsy sitting in the theater that long.  Will loves seeing movies in the theater and sat for over two hours without moving or talking at all, unusual for Will since he's pretty active.  

We're enjoying nice fall weather in Alabama.  We've been talking a lot about Thanksgiving and the boys know all about the Mayflower, pilgrims and Indians.  Will even wants to "invite some Indians" to Thanksgiving dinner. The boys are counting down to Thanksgiving.  Will makes sure to tell me often that he will eat turkey but he does not want any pumpkin pie.  Luke keeps asking when it's "Turkey Day."  They've been watching Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, which they love.  

Will has a strong sense of justice and gets upset when things don't seem fair.  He sometimes asks questions about his favorite President, Abraham Lincoln.  This week he was asking about who shot Abraham Lincoln, why he had to die, what happened to the man who shot him, etc.  He knows all about it now and was pretty upset that someone killed Abraham Lincoln "when he was just trying to watch a show."  He also was upset to hear a Bible story about an innocent man put in jail.  He's troubled by things that don't seem fair.

Will has made tremendous progress with social skills.  Several times over the last two weeks I've been surprised to see how easily he's interacting with kids his age and older.  He started a conversations with a group of boys at Lego club and he was showing some boys the transformers he built waiting for science class to start.  Turns out the other boys were Rescue Bots fans too.  Will is asking and answering questions much more often and appropriately.  It's nice to seem him enjoy other kids his age.  Like a true introvert, however, he needs his time to play alone every day to recharge a bit.  But it's nice to see him come out of his shell a little.  

Luke is as sweet as ever.  While Will sticks with "I'm thankful for my Legos" Luke likes to tell me he's thankful for me.  He loves to hug and cuddle.  Unfortunately, though,  I keep waking up with a little cuddler in my bed every night.  I keep having to take him back to his room.  

Here are the photos from today's photo shoot.  

I love this one

The "winning" Christmas card photo

One of the few he actually has his eyes open for.

Happy Halloween!

 

Happy Halloween!  The boys have been in the Halloween spirit this week.  Making haunted houses and asking to "bob apples."  This year Luke is the Man of Steel.  And Will is a basketball player, which is a nice change of pace from the last two years when he was a football player.  Actually, he's wearing a football jersey, but he thinks it's a basketball jersey.  Luke benefitted because I splurged a bit on his costume because Will's costume cost nothing.  Will says he just likes sports costumes.  And he says next year he's going to be a "soccer ball player."  

Tonight we had the Fall Festival at church where we ate dinner (chili and corn dogs) and did the "Trunk or Treat" where adults decorate the trunks of their cars and hand out candy to trick-or-treaters.  Will was excited about it all day.  There was a bouncy castle with a slide, games and, of course, lots of candy.  They had a really good time.  Though Will was a little upset that people kept thinking he was wearing an Alabama jersey.  They don't see too many Hoosiers around here.  

We will trick-or-treat on Friday but we usually don't do too many houses.  I probably won't even bring a camera so I can keep up with the kids, so this is my Halloween pictures offering. We carved pumpkins a couple of weeks ago.  The boys just couldn't wait and, as a result, the pumpkins have already rotted and been thrown away.  We have a couple of smaller, uncarved pumpkins still on the porch though.  Last Friday we went to the zoo for Zoo Boo, the Halloween event at the Zoo.  We rode a hayride, played lots of games and went to the Creatures of the Night presentation, where the boys got to see a bat, a sugar squirrel and a snake (all nocturnal animals).  There was an owl as well but the lady was a chatterbox and we wanted to have time to do other things, so we didn't see the owl.  Still, Will loved seeing the bat, which he says is his "favorite nocturnal animal."  The boys are also enjoying the Curious George Halloween movie on Netflix.  It's about a scarecrow with no head, called "No-noggin" that knocks people's hats off as they walk by.  The perfect level of scariness for these two boys.  It's what they've asked to watch every day for the last week or so.  They like to take their flashlights and hunt for No-noggin and Will even made a farm with a scarecrow with no head out of Legos the other day.  

One quick story about Will- We've always known he has a fantastic memory.  Yesterday he asked me what a skywalker is.  I asked if he was talking about Luke Skywalker from Star Wars.  He said, "No, the skywalker who walks on the line."  I asked if he was talking about a tightrope walker and he said yes.  I asked what made him think of a tightrope walker and he started talking about a man walking on a tightrope between buildings and the police wanted to arrest him.  Long story short, we read a book last spring about a French man (Marcel something or other) who walked a tight rope between the towers of the World Trade Center as it was being built, and then got arrested for it.  We read the book once several months ago and have literally read hundreds of books in the meantime. But Will remembered the details of that one.  Sometimes it's just amazing what he can recall.  

Hope you have a Happy Halloween!!  

Found these football pictures on the camera and thought they were cute.  They're from a couple of months ago.

Neither of the kids was a fan of scraping out the guts of the pumpkin.

Sliding at Trunk or Treat

My hero.

Fear not, citizens.

Playing games.

The basketball player had to play the basketball toss game.

trick-or-treating

Pumpkin Patch Express

Today we went to Calera, AL to the Heart of Dixie Railroad Museum to ride the Pumpkin Patch Express.  Calera is about an hour away, just south of Birmingham.  We got there early and looked around the museum and at all the trains on the grounds.  We saw a narrow gauge track, which we'd never seen in real life before.  The boys each picked a toy train at the gift shop (can never have too many of those).  We boarded the train and it was about a fifteen minute ride through the woods to the pumpkin patch.  

Once we were at the pumpkin patch, the boys jumped in a bounce house, went on a hayride, went through a "corn maze" (without the corn) and each got to pick a pumpkin.  Then we boarded the train and rode back to the station.  We had lunch at a nearby Cracker Barrel.  Below are some of our pictures from today.  

Will enjoyed playing at what he called his "command center."  He was talking to the Rescue Bots over this microphone.  

A couple of faces only a mother could love.  

Checking out the narrow gauge track.

Heart of Dixie train

Inspecting up close.

The "corn" maze

Victory!

Watching the woods zoom by

First Day of Kindergarten!

  

It's our first official day of homeschool!  I couldn't resist the obligatory first day photos.  We're starting out slowly- trying to get the hang of a routine.  Will is pretty advanced and we have plenty of time, so we're not in a rush.  The kids were up pretty early today (before 6am) so we got started early and were finished before 9:00 am.  We'll gradually increase our time spent on "school" but for now we're not doing more than one to two hours of scheduled "school" work and activities.  Will is a hands-on guy and doesn't like worksheets so our only hiccup today was when I wanted him to do a phonics worksheet.  He didn't complain about the math worksheet but he was definitely more interested in the hands-on activities.  It is not hard to find ways to keep Luke busy while I'm working with Will but it is a little difficult to keep Will focused on his work while Luke is doing something fun across the room.  I think we'll eventually settle into a good groove.  

The boys have a few regular activities lined up for this "school" year.  Will is in a Lego club through a local homeschooling group.  They meet every other week for Lego building challenges.  We'll also do park days and field trips through this group.  After Labor Day the boys will start weekly science classes where they do age-appropriate experiments and activities through a business called 3-2-1 Blast Times.  Will will also begin weekly homeschool P.E. classes at the YMCA where he'll get together with other kids to do sports and other physical activities.  We also will have our Wednesday night activities at church starting up again soon.  We're excited about our year!    

I won't have the time or energy to regularly blog about our homeschooling, but I wanted to commemorate the first day.  

The boys had chocolate donuts with sprinkles to celebrate the first day of school.  And then I was actually able to coax a smile out of Will!

Working on the Shape of the Week

Building our sight words- working on color words this week

Putting together a number puzzle

Free play with the felt board after "School"