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.

Yay! P for Pumpkin! We have definitely learned this letter extensively. We did endless pumpkin activities and had so much fun.

Added to our morning circle routine was the “Five Little Pumpkins” song. They both loved it.  

One of the days we did a craft to match! 

We did a Letter P scavenger hunt and then they named what we found and I wrote it down. They loved this. It helps that every toy we own right now is perfectly spread out aka total mess.  
We did a number match game. Timmy has trouble with numbers 6 and 9.  

Grace was so serious about this lacing pumpkin. When I would try to take a picture she would say not yet mom I’m not done. She’s so cute and I love how she loves to learn.

Timmy did a size sorting activity while Grace did the lacing pumpkin. I’ve started giving him direction and walking away and then come back to check his work. It is amazing to me how much he can do on his own. He only got one wrong. 

 
Timmys handwriting and scissor cutting skills have improved so much since August. He did this entirely by himself. 

   
Now when I gave him this pattern worksheet and he did it correctly this mama was amazed. There is no better reward to this “homeschooling” thing than when you see your child get it. When I first tried to explain patterns to Timmy in the beginning of the school year I thought for sure this was out of our league. But nope. Look at this. 

   
While Timmy was busy with his work Grace did a color matching activity and she did it perfect. 

 
Look at that face. So focused on staying in the lines.   Here we separated uppercase and lowercase P. 

This activity was cute. I put the number up and they added the correct number of pumpkins. Then vice versa.
  
We did soooo many crafts since it’s Halloween week also. Here are some of my favorites:          

“Timmy can you push me up to the sky?”

“No Grace because I will miss you and so will mommy.”

Timmy caught his first baseball last night! 

And a not so sweet memory lately is Graces obsession with clothes. It’s driving me nuts. There is a wardrobe change every 20-30 minutes. I don’t know what to do other than to lock up all the clothes. 

“Grace that’s a chocolate kiss. That means eat it and give me a kiss!”

We were saying the Lord’s Prayer and when we got to “Thy Kingdom come” Timmy says mom we just saw the kingdom the yesterday at Disney. Hmmmm Guess the kids think Disney is heavenly.

At the dinner table tonight, “Timmy you’re the best brother in the whole whole world!” 

When your son puts his arms around you to watch a movie. Melt. 

 
When you and your little girl have matching mini Elsa braids. Heaven.

  
What a blessing today was spending the afternoon with our church family having a picnic. 

 
& being a little naughty at the priest dunk tank! 

We took a mini family vacation and a few friends came too. To be honest I wasn’t exactly thrilled about going. My husband purposely putting himself on a track with other inexperienced drivers racing at speeds well above 120 doesn’t make me jump for joy. However when we got there it all came back to me. 

The reason we do this, how it all got started, was my Dad.

My dad loved to race and even when he would go off for his weekend races me and my mom would cringe with worry. I got into it for a short while but I think women find the idea of possibly crashing your own car a little less fun than men do, at least I did. Anyway my dad got Tim into it. At the time I thought it was cute seeing my dad, my brother and my husband go racing. Now we have 2 kids so it’s not as cute. My dad has since grown older and can’t race anymore. But just being back at that track filled me with all our old memories of me and him racing together and of me and my mom nervously watching the boys race from the pool deck. 

Our view from the room was perfect. I mean it wasn’t your 4 star beach view but as far as racing goes it was top notch. 😊

 
The way my kids lit up to see their Dad racing was all worth it. Timmy was so proud cheering him on from the balcony.  

 
When did my baby boy become a kid who is big enough to help with the luggage.  

The kids spent time in the pool with their friends while the parents kicked back a couple bottles of walmarts finest vino.

First place in our hearts. #126

Uu! The last vowel! And then we are on to Letter P for Pumpkin!!! But let me not get ahead of myself.

I need to work on my circle time, add some new songs. Right now it’s pretty basic: pledge, calendar, weather and Chicka Chicka boom boom and then I introduce the new letter we are working on. We sing the days of the week and months but I need something new.

Bible study is also lacking. It’s definitely time for a restart in that department. We have our weekly verse but that’s it. Last year I was way more on top of that. I’ve been so focused on my own relationship with God that I’ve forgotten that the kids need it too.

Monday was all fun. We did or letter blocks first. I find this is the best way to introduce a new letter. 

 
We did some gardening which wasn’t necessarily “u” related but it needed to be done. 

    
 
I let them have a free for all with the art supplies. I knew I would regret this but it is Messy Monday!  

   
Ultimately a horrible idea because this is what I’m working with right now. 

 
Then we had a “u” bath. I drew u’s with shaving cream and bath paint and let them play. Then I turned on the shower and had them use plates as umbrellas. 

We also watched Up. Timmy loved it. It was his first time seeing it. On an adult level tho, what a depressing movie.

We made these cute cotton ball ghosts from my friends Pinterest board because it’s October!! My favorite time of year. The next few weeks are dedicated to Halloween fun. I love a craft that they can do all on their own. This way they really feel like they created it.

 
We did letter review by matching sticker letters to written letters. Timmy does this very easily but its work for Grace. 

Tuesday we spent almost an hour singing Jesus songs and playing instruments. 

My phone went for a swim courtesy of Miss Grace so I’m alittle behind.

I have hardly any pictures because they are gone with the phone.

Big news.. Grace is reciting parts of the pledge. She says the word America like a hard core redneck. “Amurrrica!”

Letter O is an easy letter to learn to write because well it’s a circle, so check on the handwriting portion.

We did Octopus theme. We made octopus puppets out of brown paper bags and octopus out of paper plates. We used pipe cleaners and macaroni for tentacles.  

 
After we watched videos on the octopus. One ate a shark! 

It rained here so we caught some pretend octopus of our own. 

   
We counted lots of Cheerios and ate some.

We constructed our own Chicka Chicka Boom tree out of old cardboard boxes. I cut, the kids painted and they are oh so proud! At the end of the week we are going to be adding our new letters. 

I hate that I wasn’t able to write about this week as I went because now I’ve forgotten about all that we did.

Listening to Timmy read pete the cat to Grace when they wake up in the morning before they even come wake us up.

Tim Heard Timmy saying sit sit sit no that’s bad siiiit! and he walks around the corner and he is talking to a fly.

Then I heard him saying okey-dokey artichokie and I look at him and he is talking to a beetle. I don’t even know where he learned that phrase.

His new word is embarrassing and I’m not sure if he knows what it means totally. Last night he couldn’t turn off his toothbrush so I turned it off for him and he says oh now that’s  embarrassing. And Grace just peed on the floor and he comes over and says oh wow that’s embarrassing. 

All morning he’s been begging me to go outside and splash in mud puddles but I’m just not up for that mess.

Grace is too sweet. In the mornings she squeezes my face and says, “I’m your best friend mom.” True statement.

This week is Letter I for inchworm. After circle time we got right to our theme mostly because I was so excited to show them gummy worms!

We used the worms to make the Letter I and then Timmy used measuring tape to see how long they were. 

    
 Sidenote: Gummy worms are not great for little ones to eat whole, learned that the hard way. Poor Grace choked on hers so we turned hers into mini inchworms.

Next we did some alphabet review games. I wrote all the letters on rocks. No matter where my kids go I will be sure to find rocks in their pockets so I knew this would be a hit. Anyways so they had to match the letter rock to the flash card and whoever got it right could put the rock in their dump truck.  

   
Then they had to match foam uppercase letters to their lowercase clothes pin. This was harder especially with letters who’s lowercase looks so different. It was still good for Grace’s fine motor skills even though she wasn’t matching the right letters.

 
Now Grace is begging for some Charlottes Web. This makes me so happy. 

On Tuesday we had a lot of fun. My most proud moment has to be that Timmy is almost saying the entire Pledge on his own. Luckily I got it on video! 

   
I made the Letter I with painters tape and had them trace it with their cars.  

 
We reviewed our letters we’ve learned so far A, E and I by doing a letter search. They had fun with this.  

 
We did an apple craft because they ate apples for snack and were dead set on doing something with the seeds. I just quickly cut up some construction paper ta da Apple craft.

  
The most fun of all was playing grocery store. I remember loving this as a kid too. I found a fake money kit at Dollar Tree and then I set up my grocery store with all their kitchen food.  

 
Then a monkey got involved and it was a very hungry monkey. Timmy was trying to make him a special smoothie but he wasn’t fast enough 😂 

On Wednesday we went to a princess tea party. The city puts it on with cupcakes and a real princess, this time Tinkerbell. Timmy was in love. 

Grace dressed up as Minnie Mouse but ultimately ended up in a cape and some heels.

 
Thursday has been our longest school day yet. Everytime we finish something they are asking for more school.

We did out letter I do-a-dot and poking worksheet. It’s interesting to see the difference in their work.  

They colored and inch worm sheet and Timmy wrote out his numbers.  

   
They played some more with the left over gummy worms. We played outside with the spray bottles and window letters. 

They love board games. So far today we’ve played perfection and hi ho cherrio.
We did a hungry caterpillar puzzle, measured it because we have to measured everything these days and then we read the book. 

On Friday Daddy joined us for circle time. Then we made our memory bracelets, traced the letter I and sorted upper case I from the lowercase i.  

 Then Timmy worked on his pattern worksheet while Grace sorted inchworms by size. 

   
Then we had leaves bitten by little inch worms and we had to match the number of holes with the right number inch worm. 

 
We had a straw kit from Dollar Tree I let them put together at snack time. Very cool for $1 project.  

Grace always with a baby. And always thinking outside the box.

Now we are painting egg carton inch worms. If the had to choose crayons, markers or paint hands down paint wins every time.   

 Timmy painting with his mouth..interesting. 
  
Another happy homeschool week. This week I read an article about how wealthy families in Boston and NYC are homeschooling now. One of the girls the story was about just got into Harvard! It’s so awesome how even Top 10 schools are accepting homeschooled applicants. It excites me!

G-da is visiting for the week and he was sitting next to us while we read Charlotte’s Web. Typical G-da says, “Timmy do you know what manure is?” He so confidently says, “Yes it’s a vacuum.” And my Dad is like no buddy it’s poop. Timmy thought he was CRAZY!

Timmy and Grace are sleeping in the same room these days. Bedtime is glorious. At 6:50 we start our routine of teeth, stories and prayers. By 7:15 this house is silent. Sun still out. Tonight Timmy wanted to sleep on Gracie’s mattress. That’s a no no for us especially since he just started not wearing pull ups to bed {🎉🎉}. Anywayssss the sweet part is that Grace says to him, “Look Timmy I’m gonna sleep right on the edge.” So seperate mattresses, still close. 

The love they have for each other is so beautiful.