Basement Remodel

Here are some pictures of our basement. We are in the middle of finishing it off. We put in 2 bedrooms and are moving both older boys downstairs and then there is a room for a TV/play area. I will actually have a laundry room down there as well. I am so excited!

We really need the space since we only had 3 bedrooms upstairs. Kinda crowded for 6 people let alone another baby joining us in a couple weeks. This will make such a difference and it will give the boys a little area to themselves when they have friends over or just don't feel like hanging out with Mom and Dad.

An empty basement. I should have taken a picture when it was full of stuff. Here it is after they framed all the walls.The drywall got finished today! It is textured and ready to be painted. I can't wait to see how the colors look. Once we are finished painting the electrician will put in our wall outlets and lights and the trim can go up.

Jakes room is on the right and Tonys room is on the left. I am standing in the TV/playroom.Jake finally has the walls he has been wanting! This picture is standing inside his room. The closet is on the right and the door out is on the left. This is like a dream come true. I have wanted this to be finished for the past few years. Finally it's happening! I will post more picture as we get paint and carpet done.

Letter C

Here are a few of the crafts and projects we did with the letter C. I cut out large letter C's and glued them onto construction paper. The kids then got to pick a couple colors of paint and run their cars through the paint and onto the paper. (Not sure why Blogger is now rotating my pictures).We read "Who Took the Cookies from the Cookie Jar" and made these cute cookies. The kids painted the circles, cut them out and then glued on the "chips". We also baked homemade cookies that day.This was my favorite craft. We read "If you Give a Cat a Cupcake". I printed off these cats and then made my own construction paper cupcakes. The kids colored their cats and then glued the cupcakes together and got to add sprinkles on top.We also did our counting cupcakes file folder game. Again with the rotation of the pictures!

Mini Pumpkins

Here is my pumpkin patch! A few years ago I grew carving pumpkins and they did great. So great that we didn't need to visit the pumpkin patch that year to pick pumpkins. I was not the favorite mother. I had no idea going to the pumpkin patch and picking pumpkins was something the kids looked forward to each Fall. I vowed to never again grow carving pumpkins.

So this year I grew mini pumpkins. Jack-be-littles. Aren't they cute? I have gotten a lot already and still have more growing on the vines. These make for great decorations.I have them scattered all over the house.

Homecoming Parade

Homecoming week we attended the parade with the younger 3 boys. Jake and his football team got to be in the parade.Drew dressed in his Spiderman costume that I bought for him earlier that day at a garage sale. I had no idea he would attract that much attention. I think everyone who went by said "hey there's Spidy". Then they would throw large amounts of candy his direction. With his mask on it was a little hard for him to see. Thankfully he had brothers and cousins around who could help collect the candy.

Homecoming 2010

Saturday night was Saydel's Homecoming dance. Jake attending with some buddies of his. I must say I was a little teary eyed when I saw the pictures Will took of him. He looks so handsome and grown up.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear

For our letter B week I had lots of activities planned but we didn't get to alot of them. I am figuring with the way Drew is participating lately we will be revisiting all these letters again anyway so I might as well save a few ideas for later. We have moved some of our learning time to the mornings so Brodie can participate too. I think he was starting to feel a little left out and he really loves reading and doing crafts.

Our main theme for the week was Brown Bear, Brown Bear. The kids have always loved this book and it is picked frequently to read. I planned alot of our activities around this book. I made this great Tot book last year. You can find all the downloads for it here. Drew really enjoyed this. He is very much a hands on kid.We did sequencing with these bears.We painted an upper case B on the easel. Another favorite activity we did was this. I placed number cards on the floor in front of him. He would tell me the number and then place the appropriate amount of bear cookies on each card. At the end he got to eat them. He loved it.We made these cute teddy bears. I used a brad to attach the head so that it could move. Drew's is on the left, Brodie's on the right. Drew was really insistent on cutting out his own bear. And he is always wanting me to help him color, so I colored the head.

Friday Night Football

We had Jake's first high school football game a few weeks ago. It was fun to see him play under the lights of the big field and hear his name announced over the intercom.

He is #12. He is the deep guy on kick off return and caught the ball once and ran it almost to the 45 yard line. It was pretty exciting.

Unfortunately Saydel isn't know for their high scores. They ended up losing 44-0. Oh well, it was still fun to watch.

The next game was against Colfax Mingo and they won 36-12.

This past week was another heartbreaker and we lost 38-0. Jake had a really good game though and made some good tackles and even caught a pass.

That's One Huge Egg

The other morning around 6:45am I was awoken from a deep sleep to a BAWK BAWK BAWK BAGAWK! It went on for a few minutes so I got up to look out the window to make sure the chickens was secure in their coop. Everything looked ok and after a few minutes she stopped. About an hour later I sent Tony out to check things out and he came back in the house with this fantastic egg!Isn't it huge?? I guess this is why the hen was so noisy. She was sure proud or sore about this egg! When we cracked it open this is what we found. Double yolk, awesome.

The Berry Patch

The kids and I headed to The Berry Patch in Nevada the other day. We have been talking alot about the letter "A" and of course apples fall into that category so a trip to the apple orchard seemed appropriate. We had a good time despite the cool windy day. Along with apples we picked a little over 1 1/2 lbs of raspberries. I was hoping to pick more but there just wasn't much there. We did get about 15lbs of apples. Their Honeycrisp apples are wonderful! And as a bonus if you picked off the ground they were 1/2 price. We paid only $1 a pound for the Honeycrisp and $.50 a pound for the other varieties.

Drew's New Bike

Drew has decided that he really enjoys riding Brodie's "big boy bike". It has been an issue for a few months now. Fighting, yelling, arguing over who gets to ride the bike. I finally found one just like it at a garage sale, it was even Dora his favorite. The only problem is that the wheels just didn't work right. After much work and many frustrations working on this bike Will decided to just buy Drew a new one.Now he can ride a "big boy bike" just like his brother.

A is for Apple and Alligator

Here are a few of the activities we did this week for the letter "A". Our theme was alligators and apples. We read the book "There's an Alligator Under My Bed" by Mercer Mayer and Drew loved this book. We read it multiple times daily! I made up this little craft to go with it. I found the directions for the alligator here. Then I just cut out the pieces for the bed from construction paper and Drew glued it all together.This was definitely his favorite craft of the week. We also made this alligator. You can find the template here. You can find lots of alligator crafts and printables here at this site.We did all sorts of stuff with apples. We had a matching of upper case and lower case A's. We made these really cute apples. We just wadded up newspaper, filled a paper bag, closed them off with a green pipecleaner and the boys painted them red. We also made apple prints with cut apples dipped in paint. We talked about the different colors of apples and taste tested a few to see what we liked best. We even made a trip to the Apple Orchard, I'll post more about that later.

This post is linked to The Preschool Corner.

First Week of Preschool With Drew

I completed my first week of home preschool with Drew last week. He did pretty well. He definitely has a completely different learning style than Brodie does. Drew is very independent, stubborn and really only wants to do what he thinks is fun. Pretty normal for a 3 almost 4 year old I guess. He isn't interested in writing much, he will do a craft but only if he is in the mood. His basic interest right now is reading books and puzzles.

He is loving all the attention from me though. I thought he might have a hard time with Brodie being gone a couple hours in the afternoon to attend school but it hasn't seem to bother him. He gets mommy all to himself for a little while and he is soaking it up!

My goal for him is to learn all of his letters and the sounds that go with them, as well as learning to write them. I would like for him to count higher than 10 (this is how high he counts now) He is already pretty good at shapes and colors. I figured I am in no hurry though, I will just move at his pace and see where it takes us.