Fall is in the air!!

I love Fall time!  As soon as the pumpkins came to the store me and the boys got some and brought them home.  I then found some old planter boxes sitting up next to a dumpster so I grabbed 3 and that is what is displaying the pumpkins....(I was not dumpster diving, they were just next to the dumpster... :)

It has been incredibly Beautiful the last couple of days

 and this is us chilling in our backyard enjoying the cool grass.  

Bridger is hilarious right now.  He makes all sorts of faces....I can hardly ever get a straight face from him :)

This is one of his favorites....Acting sad and then he busts up laughing after he does it....Silly Silly Boy!

Gideon Boy!

Cooking in the kitchen

My new set up.  I was craving change so I moved a few things around.  Where the lamp is will become a computer center for the boys that way they have their own space when doing their computer time.

The other end

Some fall flowers I couldn't resist at the store....I think gardening and yard work is very therapeutic for me.  I definetly don't do it often but when I do it feels so good and refreshing.  Saturday morning was spent cleaning up our yard and getting ready for fall time :)

Gideon at a friends house (Brock) for his B-day party

The party

Ok so I cannot go into too much detail because he has not received the package yet but I sent a special package to my hubby the other day filled with 24 envelopes filled with games, love notes and goodies for him to count down his last few weeks till he COMES HOME!!

This is us after PE class eating some yummy homemade burritos and then headed off to our next class, Sign Language.  THe homeschool groups have a co-op on Fridays and it is so nice to get together adn have some fun learning and being active.  

Bridger playing with a ball at PE (in the gym on base) 

Silly as always

Gideon doing his leg in the relay...hold a ball between your legs and hop across the gym.... :) You can't help but smile

Bridgers turn

Marshmallow on a spoon

THe group is a good size.  We have around 10 kids from 2-7 and then a group of 20+ older kids to highschool teenagers.  It is so fun to combine it because they help eachother out.  This guy was great with Gideon and he felt good with getting attention from the older kids.  Love it!  It is great to have the support in something your doing and feel good about.  

The gym!

This is Joe.  We have been sitting him for about a month now and will have him for a couple more weeks.  He snuck out of the house last week and I didn't know it till the following morning and so long story short he finally came back after 24 hours......I was pretty stressed.  Glad he found his way back.  He is so curious and is always itching to be outside.  He caught a mouse for me too yesterday.  I have never even seen a mouse here but he found one.  Good Kitty!!

Me and my boys!  We support each other, love one another, are each other's best friends and will do anything for one another.  I love You boys!!

This picture is for our loving husband and father who will be with us very soon.  (YEAH!!)  Thank you for serving our country and sacrificing so much to help make a difference.  I miss you, Love you and can't wait to have you in my arms again...Safe and together as a family once more!

Our little Discovery!!

So we went into the garage the other day and found this......

Now look at it again.  the first thought that comes to your head is Spider right!?  Huge horn like fangs!!  It has 8 legs so it must be a spider... right!?  Well this isn't a spider.  This is a Harvestmen Opilioned.  It is part of the Arachnid Family but in the order of the "above name I just mentioned".  So here are the differences.....

Harvestmen (HM) have only one body part.  The head and abdomen are 1 where as the spider has 2 an abdomen and head.  The HM legs are attached all along the body where as spiders are attached only to its head and the abdomen is free of legs.  Spiders have silk properties where HM do not.  Spiders have venom, HM do not.  Spiders have 8 eyes, HM only have 2.  HM eat decaying animal and insect matter as well as plants.  Spiders lay egg sacks spun in silk and have spider-lings but HM digs a hole and lays there eggs into the ground kinda like a turtle and they hatch in the spring.  Interesting right!! 

Harvestmen Opilioned 

A spider......  See the difference? 

This is how I demonstrated it to my boys and taught them the differences.  It was really fun to learn about too.  I had no idea!

It is so fun to learn and to discover with my boys :)

My Agenda for Pre-School Today

So to all of you moms, I have started a pre-school co-op that we started today and it was so fun.  I totally recommend doing it with a group of your friends.  We are doing it just 1x per week and a mom is in charge of her week.  We have a weekly theme and they can choose how they want to teach it.  So I don't teach again for 7 weeks because we have 7 moms involved.  It's Great!!  This is a run down of how it played out today...  

 First hour 

  10am-noon

·       Recess till everyone comes

·       Opening- Pledge, Calendar, Weather, Names

·       Name Game: We went around the circle and I started with myself and said "my name is Ms. Camille and I like motorcycles..... 'Vroom vroom' for a motorcycle then we repeated it and went to the next person.  We learned each child's and then repeated till we learned them all.  The kids loved it and it was entertaining.  This helped the children get to know each other and loosen up.

·       Scavenger Hunt around the house- for Triangles, blue, #1, A My lesson for the day...It is amazing what you can find around the house that has these things :)

·    Song: Apples falling off the apple tree (tune: popcorn popping..I made it up.)  Goes as follows...

   'I looked out the window and what did I see

   apples falling off the apple tree

   fall time has brought me such a nice surprise

   apples falling right before my eyes

   I can take an arm full and make a treat

   Apple cider that tastes so sweet

   I know it is so and it seems to me 

   apples falling from the apple tree'

   

·    Apple plates noise maker (craft)- Take 2 paper plates and color them to look like an apple.  put a handful of beans (or bells or any other noise maker) inside and glue and staple the edges.  You can add ribbon to give it a fun musical feel.

·    Apple Games

o   Hot “apple” (potato),

o     How many apples tall are you?- Lay on the ground and lay apples next to the child to measure how many apples tall they were.  They loved this too.  It took around 10-12 apples for pre-school age kids.

·       Fable Story!

Little Red House Fable  found on http://www.everythingpreschool.com/ 

Submitted by Karen

Once there was a little boy who came to visit his grandparents in Norway. Well, the small child gets bored as there is not a lot of excitement in Norway.. The boy asks his grandma what he can do. She said to go out in the town and find a round, red house that has no doors, no windows and has a star inside

The little boy ponders the idea but cannot figure out what he is supposed to find. She decides to go ask farmer John from next door, as he seems fairly smart. She ask farmer Scott but he can't figure it out but he has an ideal.

He says, See that apple tree in my front yard, go sit under it and think lots of great ideas have come under an apple tree. So the little boy goes, sits under the tree and is about to fall asleep when out of nowhere a huge puff of wind comes. The tree began to sway and an apple fell out of the tree landing right next to the boy.

The boy picks up the apple looks at it, and suddenly it hits him; An apple is round, red, has not windows, no doors, but wait is there a star inside. He runs to his Grandpa and asks him to cut the apple in half and sure enough, there is a star insider the apple (at this point cut an apple in half and show the star)

·       Snack time- Cut apple slices and show star -Cut across the belly of the apple to find the star

Second hour

·       Hide Mr. Alligator (who has Mr. Alligator)- I had a picture of an alligator on the back of my clipboard that the kids could see and I asked "have you guys seen where my Mr. alligator went?" they were pointing and I looked behind me and played with them for a bit until I saw it on the clipboard. This got the kids into the mindset of Alligators.

·       Song-

5 little monkeys swinging in a tree,

teasing the alligators, you can’t catch me, you can’t catch me….

Along came an alligator quiet as can be….

And snapped that monkey right out of the tree

·       Tag- can’t get me Alligator

·       Lie on grass and talk about what is Blue…  The sky, eyes…

·       Things that are triangles

·       Recess!!

·       Go Home~

    It was a fun day!  I was too busy with the kids to get pictures taken... :(  You'll just have to imagine.

   But at breakfast Gideon wanted me to take a picture of him and one of his best friends...... Wolfy :)   He got this wolf when he was 15 months old when we lived in Wyoming...Too cute!

Videos....

I finally am able to upload pictures to the blog so here are a few.  I think I have been trying in the past and have not been able to because the files were too big so some of my favorites I can't upload so you'll have to settle for these :)

This first one was from the Manderscheid Festival and they are putting on the act of sword play.  The one who wins is the "bad guy" so he isn't very nice.  I liked this video because Bridger is so excited in it and you can see some of the sword play they did.

This is our Mentos in pop experiment and sorry i had the camera turned the wrong way for it.  But it is pretty cool.

1st day of school and another wasp sting!

Bridger stirring the waffle batter

Gideon pretty excited to start class time

Yummy Waffles....with dragons of course

Yum!!

THe first day of school we decided to make a time capsule.  We made a few things to go inside of it too.

Like our hand prints and outlines of our feet, a piece of yarn to show how tall we are, questions of things we like and a note from me to put down what their academic abilities are right now.  This way we can see how much we have learned and grown at the end of the semester or end of school year.

This is Bridger after he has picked me something and bringing it to me......If you look closely he has them hiding behind his back :)

"Ta Da!"  He says.

I love my boys and how thoughtful they are.  They are always telling me how they love me and always bring me flowers.  They are the best boys a momma could ever dream of :)

So I went shopping down in Ramstein and found a clearance item.  Martha Stewart bed set for $25.  I was so happy to be able to find what I set out for and get a good deal..... but the bad thing about it was while I was in the Clearance section of the bedding department my boy starts to scream...

I turn around to him holding his leg and see a wasp flying off.  Yes he got stung by a wasp inside the store.  I was so mad.  The poor kid just can't get away from them.  Just the day before he got stung on his finger.  He now has been stung 6 times and they seem to get worse.  Poor boy!

I don't know if you can tell the outline but it is the size of my whole palm and it is hard and hot.  I just finished a baking soda treatment which helped and it looks a lot better today.  The wasps better watch out because I will have no mercy anymore.