Thanks giving is almost here but really it kinda feels like Thanksgiving has come and gone. It is so hard not to get so excited about the Christmas season. I really tried to stay away from Christmas anything until after that turkey was served but I failed. This morning we watched Elf on the Shelf and Mickey Saves Santa. There might also be Christmas music playing in my house along with a pine scented candle.

We have been learning about Thanksgiving alittle but tho. Last week at our first church playgroup we sang the song “Count Your Blessings” and we made a Blessing Tree. We traced the kids hands and wrote down what they were thankful for starting with Jesus. Timmy was thankful for oranges {which he won’t eat}, costumes, chicken and ketchup. Gracie was thankful for mommy, max, Timmy and Aunt Jessica. 

 We’ve been reading Thanksgiving books every night in November. Surprisingly we have a lot of them. 

We put crafting into overdrive. 

Thanksgiving day started very early this year. We had to be out the door by 9:30 to get to Aunt Jessica’s. This world has turned a thankful holiday into a shopping holiday. It’s just terrible. I will pay double the price for something before you catch me shopping on Thanksgiving. Never. Unfortunately tho my mom has to work and every year it’s earlier so we are at noon. It was amazing. Seriously probably the best thanksgiving food ever. Look at this big group!

 
My kids had a ball with their cousins. They were both pretty obsessed with Carter. 

    
 Getting a picture of all three cousins smiling was a a total fail. This was the best ones.

    
   
More of the fam 

Just recently Timmy has started praying on his own, unprompted, anywhere and everywhere. It is adorable.

“Jesus please give me all the beetles.”

Or at the museum, “Jesus please give me a dinosaur.”

Last night in bed my husband hears him whisper, “Jesus please make me a dog.”

Today he was sitting right next to me and then all of a sudden he’s in prayer, “Jesus please help mommy make me a cake. Amen.”

Every time his little hands folded and eyes shut. And though his requests are silly to us, the process is 100% right.

My little boy believes with all his heart that he can pray to Jesus for anything and everything, that no request is impossible. I love that his time with Jesus is anywhere he sees fit and that his words are conversational. 

I can’t take any credit for this. We really don’t know where he learned it. He has always been close to God. 

“Mom do you want to spend time together?” Ugh this boy melts my heart.

Grace was a born mama. No doubt. This baby got a very nice warm bath and a towel.  
Timmy looks like he’s working on something serious. He says to me from under this stroller, “Can someone hand me my hard wrench?” 

 
“Goodnight baby I love you. Mom can you say goodnight to my baby?” Seriously these kids are the sweetest. 

The kids woke up especially early today and got into a tickle fight with Daddy. The best. They thought it was so funny.

“I’m going bye bye mommy I’ll be right back.” Dressed her baby and packed her purse. And I can hear her asking her baby if she wants chicken nuggets for lunch. 

“Mommy my toilet is broken!”

Ok I’ll tell Daddy

“Yea because Daddy fixes everrrything!”

D is for Dinosaur! Such a fun theme. Both my kids and my nephew love dinosaurs. There’s a new dinosaur exhibit at the children museum and Pixar has a new dinosaur movie coming out next weekend too.

We borrowed awesome books from Max about dinosaurs and started circle time with that.

First we did our letter Dd block building. And Gracie’s baby came to class.

  
 
We did a letter Dd search. Those lower case b’s were very tricky.  
Timmy did a handwriting worksheet and Grace colored a dinosaur.   
 
Then we went on a D scavenger hunt. Really becoming my favorite activity.  
Timmy did dinosaur graphing with dinosaur eggs {peanut M&Ms} and Grace had to tell us the color of the eggs. She knew every color but green. She said it was blue.   
We did run into an issue with this. If I ask Grace to do something different then Timmy he gets so upset. Like full on tears. Not sure if this is a jealousy thing or what. Even at calendar time, if Grace puts up the month Timmy gets so mad because he wants to put up the month even though he just put up the day of the week. Really going to focus on taking turns in other areas than sharing toys.

Timmy doing his pattern work    
  And Gracie doing her do-a-dot. We didn’t have a dotter handy so she colored all the circles.  
  

Then they both traced all the letters.

  
  I told Grace to trace the dotted lines and she did ALL the lines lol

  
Timmy counted dinosaurs and pasted the number next to them. Problem numbers were 7 and 10.

 Grace separated little d from big D   

They both got a chance to put these dinosaurs in size order. Timmy did his by himself.    

We were lucky to have a field trip to the museum. Grace was terrorfied but Timmy loved it. 

    
 
We watched Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. I actually loved this movie.

Dinosaurs galore. This week lasted about 2 weeks really and now we will take a break until the new year. 

I just caught Timmy praying for the first time. Hands folded, eyes closed, “Jesus please can I have all the beetles.”

Gracie’s scoots over to my dad and says, “Gda I love you.”

She’s just so beautiful.  

Oh. My. Goodness. I just caught Grace nursing her baby doll. She says, “Are you all done baby? Ok let me put my dress back on.” Her mommy game is strong.  

“Look mom I’m Santa Claus!” 

At church today Timmy is talking to Jesus so sweetly saying that he misses him and telling me how Jesus loves him every day all day and then it gets very quiet and Timmy yells, “Mommy I can see Jesus underwear!” 

  
When I came home from my moms only beach day these were on the table. Most beautiful flower filled vase I’ve ever seen. My sweet boy.

Timmy is excited about this letter. T is for Turtle but also for TIMMY!

We started the week with practicing writing the letter T. Timmy already knows this letter well from learning to write his name and Grace was pretty good at it too. Telling me she was adding a little hat to her letter. 

Timmy had to cut out the parts of a turtle to make a complete turtle while Grace did Letter T do-a-dot worksheets.

We did a Letter T Scavenger Hunt. Always fun! 

We graphed turtles and used M&Ms from our trick or treat candy as markers. I don’t know what was harder the graphing or trying not to eat the markers. Timmy did so awesome at this. This was definitely his “got it” week for graphing. When they finished I did let them eat the M&Ms. 

 
During circle time we’ve been going over number flash cards and colored shapes. Trouble numbers for Timmy are consistently 5, 10 and 14-18. He knows all the shapes, the color orange he’s not 100% on but I think it’s because it comes after red in my stack and it looks so similar. Grace knows triangle, heart and star. For colors she is still learning yellow and orange but knows the rest of them. 

I hole punched all my flash cards and put them on circle rings. Total life saver because I can’t tell you how many I have already bought and lost.

Science seems to always find us. This tree frog found us just in time for T week. We talked about what tree frogs eat and talked about the difference between frogs and toads. 

Today we went on a field trip to the Sea Turtle Sanctuary. The Lord truly blessed our homeschool days. While we were at the park waiting for them to open, a gopher tortoise walked by. How awesome that we got to talk about the difference between a tortoise and a sea turtle. Perfect for T week. 

   
Then we went inside and they told us we were just in time for Hatchling Tales. We didn’t even know that was something they did. It was a cute little story time with a turtle craft. 

We had a picnic lunch and visited the sea turtles.

   
    
   
This poor guy got bit by a shark and lost some of his shell.

We learned that beach garbage hurts turtles nesting on the sand. 

While Gracie napped (which is a miracle) Timmy got some one on one time for school. He did a size sorting worksheet and lowercase uppercase activity. 

Then we played a color game. It’s meant to help him recognize the colors as words. 

 
Instead of lacing this turtle he just wanted to cut it out. He loves cutting.   
This worksheet he had to count the turtles and paste the correct number. I’m trying to keep track of numbers he doesn’t know 100%. This time it was 9 and 7.

His pattern work. I wish these were more than just 2 patterns. I might start making more.

  
Then he practiced writing all his letters. So adorable. 

I’m having so much fun with homeschooling. I feel so lucky that my kids wake up and want to know what time school starts. I know everyday will not be like this but I love watching them love school. On our last car ride to Aunt Jessica’s Timmy spent the whole time asking what letter words start with. “What’s airplane star with?” “What’s cloud start with?” Little things like that just make my day.

Well Halloween was celebrated with much enthusiasm, maybe too much. The kids had so much fun though.

Here’s our super hero family! 

    
 
Trick or treating was a blast. We had quite the little crew. Everyone was so eager to knock on doors and ring bells that there was no chance the neighbors were going to miss this bunch. 

 
Aunt Jessica way out did herself with the Halloween night food and decorations. 

    
 
My mom made a cheese dip pumpkin and homemade leaf shaped chips! I have a very talented family and clearly it started from the top. 

 The dads in our little group all dressed up too. I love that they are all about it. 

 
The kids took a shot at their first apple bobbing and was I surprised. Both my kids got it right away. 

   
Max was the cutest little Oompa Loompa  

 And Memaw the prettiest little puppy. Grace was in love. Walked her around all night so proud.

We had 3 parties leading up to Halloween. One with our original baby playgroup. We all had babies around the same time and we’ve been friends foreverrr.  

Timmy was a little bent out of shape because this day is really all about these babies that I guess really are not babies anymore 😭 

We painted pumpkins, made some handprint crafts, played pin the hat on the witch and shared some smooches. 

We met the newest addition to the group little Jolie. Grace was obsessed.

The kids even had a themed lunch 😊   
 

Partying continued the next weekend with a visit to the farm for pumpkin picking, face painting and train rides.

    
    
    
 
Then we had everyone over for pizza and pumpkin carving. 

    
   
Then the kids have a glow in the dark sword fight and the dads finished up the pumpkins. 

    
 
The parents may have had a little fun too. 

We got boo’d this year! I love my neighborhood. The kids thought it was the Great Pumpkin who brought them the basket. Huge Charlie Beiwn fans over here. 

 
We boo’d two new neighbors. I felt like a Halloween Santa sneaking up to their doors and leaving these basket so.

Happy All Saint Day! We had such a great day and I gotta give it all to God. When we start our days with the Lord the rest of the day just falls perfectly into place. 

Tim took the early shift at serving coffee and bagels at church and I took the 10 o’clock. My priest calls it Holy “Grounds” ☕️☕️ ugh I just love that me and him are on the same level when it comes to cutesy stuff. The kids went to Sunday school and we went to mass. Sunday school is our greatest blessing. I love that we get to hear the message while the kids get their own version on their level. 

After church Tim took Timmy to the Air Show and me and Grace had a tea party with her new tea set courtesy of Memaw. I love the one on one time. She just crawled in my lap and said I want to snuggle you mommy and we watched Cinderella 😍. Dreams do come true.