Goldilocks And Her Three Bears

This year Emily and I searched online and in stores for the perfect costume.  After much talking and thinking Emily decided to be Goldilocks.  She has always liked the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears but I think the fact that this costume came with 3 bears was definitely a selling point.  Emily got to wear this costume 3 times this Halloween season.  She wore it to a "parent's survival Halloween themed night" at Little Gym,  to a Halloween party at The Little Gym, and for trick-or-treating with friends.  Here is our precious Goldilocks with her naturally golden locks.

Here is Goldilocks with her trick-or-treating buddies.  A witch, Captain America, and a cute little pumpkin.

Like last year, Emily took her trick-or-treating seriously.  She wanted to run from house to house and we kept having to ask her to slow down and wait for her friends.  She also wanted to be the first to be at the door.  We had talked about how if the porch light was on at a house that usually means that they have candy and if someone is not home or doesn't want trick-or-treaters to come they will usually turn off their outside lights.  She couldn't understand when people didn't follow the "porch light" rules:)  We didn't have any trouble finding houses to trick-or-treat at.  We have soooo much candy!!!!! 

Here are some trick-or-treating pictures.  It was a chilly night and Emily had many layers on, but thankfully we had no rain.

Tomorrow is trash day for much of our neighborhood so the dads found a couch by the curb to sit down on and relax for a few minutes.

We had a great time!!!  Here's a picture to sum up how Emily felt about her night of trick-or-treating.

We left a big bowl of candy out for trick-or-treaters at our house while we were gone but Emily was excited to hand out candy when we got back home.  Unfortunately, most of the kids came while we were gone.  Emily wanted to wait outside for more trick-or-treaters.  When they did come to our house she met them at the end of the sidewalk with handfuls of candy.  Here she is sitting on the porch just waiting for someone else to come to our house.  She also ate some candy while she waited:)

Well, she actually ate a lot of candy over the course of the evening.  All the excitement and the candy caused Goldilocks to have a melt down at bedtime.  Even with the melt down we had a great Halloween. 

Emily was excited to cut the bears out of her pockets once Halloween was over.  I know Goldilocks is supposed to sleep in the bear's beds but this Goldilocks invited the bears to sleep in her bed.

                                                      Happy Halloween!

Our Big Jack-o-lantern

Emily was so excited to carve our big pumpkin "Jack".  We wanted to know exactly how much this pumpkin weighed so we got out the scale.

It appears that "Jack" weighs almost as much as our black lab and way more than our 4 year old child.

So in order to carve our 54.8 lb. pumpkin, Jeff had to get the right tools.

Power tools make him happy!

 

 

Emily and I got to clean out the pumpkin.  This was the first year that Emily wanted to get her hands dirty with the pumpkin gunk.

 

Then the carving began.

 

 

Meet "Jack"...our pumpkin is now a jack-o-lantern.  Isn't he cute?!?!

 

In honor of our pumpkin night we baked some pumpkin cookies.

We had a fun night carving our jack-o-lantern.

Here he is with Emily in the daylight.

Fall Carnival

Saturday Jeff had to work most of the day so Emily and I went to a party and then headed to a fall carnival at a local school.  It was totally spontaneous and lots of fun. 

Emily rode rides.

She climbed and jumped on inflatables.

We met a really cool bird.

Emily even got to hold the bird on her shoulder.

We saw more pumpkins:)

There was face painting.

I think that Emily had the most fun on the super slide.  For 4 tickets, she could slide as many times as she wanted to.

The think that scared me about the slide was the super high stairs she had to climb to get to the top.  I was so afraid she would fall down the stairs or trip over her potato sack but she did great.  She took her time going up the stairs each time.  Several times bigger kids would come running up behind her and try to push their way past her. I would see her turn around and tell them to stop and she didn't let anyone get past her.  She made them wait their turn.  She knows how to stand up for herself.  Here she is climbing the stairs.

We had a great afternoon and evening!

Reading

Here is Emily reading her at book.  I am so proud of her.

The One...

Today I pulled out our wedding video (DVD) for Emily to see.  I realized that she had never seen it.  I really wasn't sure how interested she would be but I thought she'd like to see the younger Mommy and Daddy all dressed up.  She LOVED watching it and kept placing her finger over her mouth saying "shhh" everytime we talked.  After we watched it, she had us play wedding.  She performed the ceremony.  She called us by our first names, like the minister did..."Jeff, place this ring on Ashley's finger...".  We actually had to give her our rings to use in the "ceremony".  It was so cute!!!

Later that night while she was brushing her teeth we were talking about weddings.  I asked her who she was going to marry. She said, "The one God chooses for me.  You know like God chose Daddy for you."  AMAZING! 

   I had told her at least 6 months ago, when we were talking about what it meant to be married, that God had someone very special already chosen for her. The fact that she remembered it from so long ago and articulated it so well putting together the fact that Jeff was chosen by God for me.  I'll say it again...AMAZING!!!

Projects

When Emily was a toddler I began doing "projects" with her.  Projects are activities that we do to help her learn or practice skills or problem solve.  Some of the projects have changed as she has gotten older but she continues to love doing them. Our projects include art, sensory activities, puzzles, the calendar, number and letter activities, cooking and science.  As she has gotten older we have added worksheets and more preschool type things. I know that learning happens all day through playing and everyday activities but these projects help me to take the time to play with Emily each day with a more specific purpose in mind.

Let me tell you, this child loves these projects.  She asks everyday what we are doing for projects and when we are doing them.  Sometimes I think I've created a monster but I am so happy she enjoys learning and spending time with me.

Here are some pictures of some of the projects we have been doing lately:
   Letter "P" dot painting: We thought of lots of "P" words and then she decided to do a pattern.

Pumpkin Graphing: I find a lot of things on line.  There are some great resources out there.  I found this one here .

Team Umizoomi math pages:  These are fantastic!

We have been doing word families and I found these great little books on line but I can't remember where.  This is one of the pages from the "at" family.  Emily went through and circled all the "at" words. 

She can actually read the "at" book by herself.  I will post a video soon.  I am so proud:)

Word puzzles:

Shaving cream painting with paint mixed in.

This is our calendar.  We try to do it everyday.

We did our fall leaf collecting and activities that I wrote about here.

I have letter and sound drawers.  Each drawer is filled with objects representing the letter sounds.  I got this idea from this blog.  

We do games where we pick  some of the drawers and empty them and mix up all the items and then Emily matches them back to the letters they belong with.

More word family fun.  She glued the missing letters in order to spell the word correctly and then colored the pictures.

Emily cut out this apple, I helped with the leaf and stem, and then she painted it.

Past Projects

Here is Emily doing some projects when she was about a year and a half.

 

Isn't she adorable?

Here she is at almost two and a half.  Yes, she still does the same letters puzzles.

  When I look at these pictures I can't believe how much Emily has grown but I'm glad that she still loves her "projects".

Autumn Leaves

Monday was leaf day!  Emily and I spent most of the day collecting leaves, reading leaf books and doing leaf activities.  First we got the wagon and went on a walk to find leaves to bring home.

Here is a beautiful maple tree we saw on our walk.




The wagon started to get filled quickly.

Emily made a picture with some of her leaves and acorns.

I found this leaf collecting book on Nick Jr. 

Here are a few of the pages in the book.  It was a great way to learn about the different kinds of leaves.

 Then we did leaf rubbings.

Next Emily cut out a leaf and marble painted it.

We finished up the day by baking leaf and pumpkin sugar cookies.  Emily made the jack-o-lantern face with candy corn.

We had a fun day together learning about leaves!