Marketplace

Since Claire is now in Kindergarten, she gets to go to Marketplace at our church on Sunday mornings (during the church service). It's like a real live marketplace during biblical times, sometimes complete with animals.

The rule is that when your parent works in Marketplace, you can dress up with them. This past Sunday, Will worked in the carpentry shop and Claire got to dress up and help. She was super-pumped. A big thank you to my friend Kelli who helped Claire get dressed (since I teach a class in the nursery at the same time) and took these pictures.

I was secretly trying to figure out how I could sneak up there and get some pics. I thought the preschool director would probably frown upon me leaving my class of 2 years to run upstairs and snap a few photos.


Didn't you know they wore silver glitter shoes in bible times?

Here is Claire and Will all dressed up.

Menu Plan Monday: 10/17/11

Nothing too exciting this week ...

Breakfast treat: pumpkin chocolate chip muffins

Monday: Spaghetti casserole, salad, garlic bread

Tuesday: Slow-cooked Asian Beef & Broccoli, brown rice, egg rolls (This has been on the menu plan for 3 weeks now. My beef is in the freezer but my broccoli is about to go bad so I have to fix it this week.

Wednesday: Tacos (I use this recipe to season my beef), black beans, chips & salsa/guacamole

Thursday: Southwest Shrimp Cobb Salad, chips & salsa

Friday: Leftover Wheeler Mountain Chili (I know this recipe is on my blog somewhere but I can't seem to find it. If you find it, let me know and I will link it up.)

Saturday: French toast casserole (breakfast); eat out for dinner

Sunday: sandwiches (lunch); steak fajitas, spanish rice, guacamole salad (dinner)

Check out Laura's blog for more Menu Plan Monday.

E is for Elephant ...

I decided to do the vowels first with David. So we've done A, E, I, O and U and now we've started covering the consonants (in no particular order).

We made this Elmo tot book to review our numbers, colors, shapes, etc. each day. I also DVR'd Sesame Street each day so he could watch Elmo's World. Let's just say, he is not a fan of Elmo (although he did enjoy the tot book).

Do-A-Dot Letter E. David has about out-grown the Do-A-Dot markers. Just in time to hand them down to baby Luke. I'm not quite sure I'm ready to let him get his little hands on them yet though. Maybe next year ...


Elephant color by number. His coloring has greatly improved since we started doing some preschool stuff at home over the summer. This was back in August and it has even gotten better over the last month. I guess practice really does make perfect.



Writing the letter E. I purchased this Dry Erase activity center for David to use for writing (since I didn't have a laminator at the time). You just slip the sheet in, write and wipe.



Upper case E/lower case e sorting from LOTW.


Our favorite activity of the week ... Green Eggs and Ham. We read the book several times during the week and had green eggs and ham for dinner one night. The kids loved it and have asked for it over and over again. Claire kept saying "I love this cooked meat." So funny!!


Our E board. See our E-verse in the top left corner. "Even a child is known by his deeds." Thanks to RRSP for the free printables! Several of our E crafts came from here and here.


Claire helped us with the eggshells on E. It was pretty messy but the kids had fun.




That wraps up our E week.

Happy Birthday Ian!

My nephew Ian celebrated his 4th birthday last month. We had a fun time at his party at Bounce U. Daddy stayed home to play golf so I went solo with all 3 kiddos.

Here is the best picture I got of Claire and David. Claire has got the fake, cheesy smile down pat.


My sister's brother-in-law and two nieces coming down the slide. They had a fun time!


Claire is almost at the very top of that tower. (She has on aqua leggings.) She climbed to the top all by herself and then got to come down a ginormous slide.


Luke had a fun time crawling around in this bouncy. I really think he was just glad to be out of the stroller.


Maggie, Evie and Claire. The "big" girls.


The whole gang. Ian is wearing the super-cool Superman shirt in the back center.


Drum roll for the Happy Birthday song.


Time to blow out the candle.


Evie and Claire ... all hyped up on double-doozie cookie cake. (If you like cookie cake, you must try this cake from Sam's Club. It is delish!)


Happy Birthday Ian!

Claire in Kindergarten

Claire is rolling right along in her homeschool program. We are well into the second 6 weeks and she is going great. I love that her program has Bible each day and she is learning lots of Old Testament history and learning many memory verses (They will learn 26 memory verses over the course of the year along with the Lord's Prayer among other longer passages of scripture.) We have even had a few tests and graded a few papers, which is a hard concept to teach to a 5-year-old. She has done well though.

Here are a few pics from our first 6 weeks.

Claire hard at work on some extra writing practice. The cursive writing has been interesting.




Our first field trip to the zoo. Claire wrote down the name of every animal that she saw in her notebook. I was worn out from all the spelling afterwards.


Finger puppets to go along with "Jesus Loves the Little Children".


David did a fall tree project with her. It's fun doing things together.


Claire is very helpful and will make a great little teacher someday.


Claire putting the fingerprint leaves on her tree.


David's art.


Hat Day for the letter H. We had been to Chick-Fil-A kids' night the night before and had this amazing butterfly hat.


A clown puppet. Not sure what this had to do with her lesson, but I do know that I need to invest in some paper plates to make it through her art classes this year.


That's it for the first 6 weeks!

Fun in the Mud

Will and I ran in the Warrior Dash a few weeks ago. It's website called it 3.17 hellish miles. I wouldn't exactly call it "hellish" but it was pretty muddy. Obstacles on the course included jumping over fire, crawling through a muddy pit, walking across a car graveyard and scaling several walls. Fortunately, the mud pit was the very last obstacle and was about 20 feet before we crossed the finish line, so we weren't muddy the entire time.

We had to sign a release to participate and my absolute favorite thing on the release was "I agree not to dive into or enter the mud pit head first." You know that is on there because someone has done it before. Yikes!



We started the race with two of Will's buddies. I say started because we ran about half a mile with them and then they took off and left us. They finished the race about 10 minutes before Will and I did. My clothes were so plastered to me after I stood up from the mud pit that I actually had to check and make sure my shorts were still on. Firetrucks were present to hose people off after they finished the race.



The best part of the Warrior Dash was these cool Viking hats we got after the race was over. The kids really seemed to like them. They had fun staying with a babysitter all day while we ran the race (an hour away from our house). This was the most expensive race I ran in for sure!

This event is not scheduled to take place near us next year, so I'm not sure we'll do it again or not. We sure had fun and it was way more fun than running a plain old regular 5K.

Menu Plan Monday

I skipped the menu plan last week because my mother-in-law sent me home with a ton of leftovers from last weekend that we ate on all week long. We ate something different every night. I am not joking when I say she sent home a whole Rubbermaid bin full of food.

Even though we still have a few leftovers, I'm going to have to make a plan for this week so I won't be floundering around in the kitchen at dinner time. (I have several meals in the freezer that I will need to pull out to thaw that morning.)

There are also a lot of repeats from the previous weeks' meal plan (that I prepared and stuck in the freezer) because we just didn't get around to eating them for one reason or another.

I really liked the new meal plan (5 meals, 1 hour) as I did prepare the meals in about an hour and then stuck most of them in the freezer. The one night I did cook one of the meals I simply poured it in a pan and cooked it and prepared the sides. It was "easy-peasy" as Claire would say.

Monday: Leftover roast with potatoes & carrots, lima beans, rolls

Tuesday: Steak, baked sweet potatoes, salad

Wednesday: BBQ chicken cups, green beans (or salad)

Thursday: Slow-cooked Asian Beef & Broccoli, brown rice, egg rolls

Friday: Spaghetti & Meatball casserole, salad, garlic bread

Saturday: Wheeler Mountain Chili

Sunday: pumpkin chocolate chip muffins (breakfast), eat out (lunch), leftovers (dinner)

Check out Laura's blog for more Menu Plan Monday.