Pumpkin Carving

 Today, we headed out first thing in the morning to drive through the tunnel to the other side of the island and go to a pumpkin carving festival/fundraiser for the kids' preschool program :)
And I'll pop a photo of myself in the car here because... there are no other photos of me in the rest of the post, haha.

The kids were so excited to pick their pumpkin out, and finding our assigned table in the crowded mall was a little adventure. 

 And then we sat down and Daddy got carving!

He had very willing helpers :)

Molly and Zion were very good while he carved, they chatted with other kids around us, trick-or-treated a little as costumed festival volunteers walked through the crowds...

 I think our pumpkin turned out great! We ended up putting a face on each side of it, just for fun :)

 

 Isn't it cute?
It's fun to have a jack o'lantern around.

Gotta share a snap from our beach afternoon with uncle A on Friday :)

Until next time,

Some Days... and the other days (preschool at home)

Some days...

 Molly helps with dishes...

 and we build block towers at program...

 We do chores together...

 We hit the park.

 We play and learn...

 We look adorable...

 So adorable! ;)

 We take the recycling in...

 We play with play-doh...

 We paint...

 Molly loves to help her kumu lead circle at program...

 (Zion's favorite stations at program are the sand table and water table)

 We bake cookies together (math!)...

 We make beautiful art.

And then other days...

We watch a Leapfrog video together cuddled up on the bed.

And they build a pillow nest to read in together. And that's okay. Because it's preschool. And it's fun. And mama has food poisoning so easy is good.

A Homegrown Harvest on October First

It's the first of October!

I decorated a little bit!  Just a little bit, because we're not buying anything new this year decoration-wise (what with the downsizing in preparation for our move - which is a move via plane and we are bringing as little on the plane with us as we can!). But I'm happy with it.

After the little bit of decorating, we headed outside to see what we could harvest.

It's avocado season and my in-laws have three (THREE!) avocado trees right outside their house, so we hit those up first.
We got five big avocados.

And then we picked strawberry guavas! It was so fun to pick pretty red berry-like fruits off the trees along the driveway.

It reminded me of picking berries (huckleberries and blueberries mostly) with my brothers and sisters in Northern BC...

We got about two pounds of fruit and it was a great time. 

After taking recycling to the depot and taking the kids to a park for a while, we came home and while the kids watched a cartoon I did some experimenting in the kitchen...

And I think my experiment turned out pretty delicious! I will be trying proper jam and/or jelly soon but today I didn't have pectin or gelatin so, sauce it was. I also made homemade pancakes (which were DELICIOUS with the sauce) for dinner that the kids devoured.

Five giant avocados, a jar of fruit sauce, and did I mention seven dollars from our recycling trip?  Not a bad harvest for the first of October! Until next time,

Back With The Program! (Preschool)

We don't only do school at the kitchen table.  Sometimes, we go to class! And our wonderful programs have started up again! We're so excited!

We had orientation on Tuesday, just an hour of meeting the teachers, seeing the space again, meeting classmates. And then Thursday - Thursday the fun began.

Miss BooBoo is the oldest child in the program this time around, as I expected, but she's so sweet and funny and loving with younger kiddos! And she had a great time playing with the other two older girls (i.e., they're four-turning-five) and will have a great time while we're in the program this year.

 And just look at the adorableness of her dress-up fun!

I loved watching her sit with her classmates, the three of them drawing together and chattering like little magpies <3 <3

This guy had a BLAST going from center to center and just as I thought, he was allll about the water table, the play-dough table, and....

The sand table :)

Remind me, please, to keep an extra clean dry shirt in my bag for him on class days... ;)

Next week, we're fully into the new routine with two class days and three home days :)

Until next time...