My hunters

Last Saturday was opening day of rifle season, and Heath brought home some meat for the freezer!





And yes, Cash wanted to ride in the back of the truck with the deer on the way down the driveway.

Wordless Wednesday

Monsters and m&m's

Looking at the Letter of the Week curriculum that I pull our "school games" from, I saw that the letter M activities were based on m&m's. If you know me at all, you know that I love chocolate, and my favorite kind of chocolate is the irresistible, colorful m&m's. I was excited! I had also found another set of activities that were based on monsters. They went along great with the Monsters, Inc. movie that Cash loves, so I incorporated them into our week as well. On top of that monsters and m&m's fit perfectly into the week that started with Halloween! Here's a look at our week full of all things M!

Do you ever visit the dollar bin at Target? Love it! I was there a few weeks ago and found these foam hammers. I picked up two, one for each boy, but didn't know how I'd use them at the time. Then these monster cards surfaced and I had an instant game. 

We spread the monster cards out on the floor, I would say a letter, Cash would find it and then pop that monster with his hammer. Yes, it's a little "violent" if you want to think about it long and hard, but to Cash it was great fun, and to me it was a great way to work on letter recognition!

Cash colored his m&m sheet. I decided to make it easier to remember the colors of the candies, we needed to snack on some while we colored. :)

Baylen agreed!

Grammy found these great magnets at the Dollar General in Glasgow. Cash used them this week on his monster magnet page.

B played with them, too. Like I said, sometimes he loves doing what Cash is doing, and other times he's not a bit interested in our "school games!"

Bubba (my sister) gave the boys marshmallow monster suckers for Halloween. How perfect!

They loved them! (Can you tell I was ready for a mess? I totally stripped them down before they started eating them!)

More fun with m&m's. We sorted our m&m's, too. Cash was such his mama's boy when it came to this. He'd sort some, and then he'd say, "Now I'm just going to eat this one orange one, mommy."

We practiced making patterns...

and making designs with our m&m's. We wanted to make it look just like the picture, but we didn't have enough yellow ones. Close enough...

Baylen was very close by every time we did "school games" this week that involved eating chocolate!

We also visited the pet store in town to buy some food for Ruth this week. While we were there we learned that M is also for MOUSE. They loved, absolutely loved, watching the mice play on the wheel. What a fun trip! We may have to go back next week, T is for turtle!

We ended the week by eating some marshmallows (with graham crackers and chocolate!) while watching one of Cash's favorite movie, Monsters, Inc.

Handsome boys

What a better time to take pictures of my handsome boys, than right before church, right? They're fresh out of their Saturday night baths, best clothes on, and bright and happy in the morning...

at least that was my idea. Here's how the photo session went.

They found their favorite outside toys and both decided to burn off some extra energy before getting in the car.

 Doesn't B look all grown up? Where's my baby?

Cash loves his new "church shoes," as he calls them. They're size 9 1/2. Big boy!

They took turns trying to crash into each other. Thankfully, none of the collisions were too bad. :)

That face...

and that smile make my heart happy.

 

This guy was stirring up some leaves. Look at that dump truck go!

Whether on the go or sitting still, I do believe that I've been blessed with two extremely handsome, fast-growing, happy boys!

Halloween day fun!

The weather for Halloween was set to be absolutely perfect for being out, so that morning, we ate breakfast, opened our treat bags from Grammy, enjoyed one piece of candy from it, and then set out for a  morning with PawPaw. 

Here's 'lil man with his goody bag. It was full of Mickey stickers, bubbles, a monkey toy that went round and round in circles, and of course, candy.

Here's B with his treat bag. My mom is always so good to make sure the boys have something special for each and every holiday.

After eating lunch in Scottsville and visiting Aunt Ali at her work, we hung out with PawPaw at his house. Of course, since we weren't going to see him later, Cash and B wanted to show him their costumes.

And for dressing up, Valerie gave them each a piece of candy. Yum!

 

My little pirate is getting harder and harder to capture on camera. A half-hearted, "Cheese!" is usually what I get these days.

This one was a little too busy with his candy to really give me any attention, too.

We had fun with PawPaw. We decided that we'll definitely have to make weekday visits more regular!

Pumpkin carving

You really know you're behind on blogging when you post pumpkin carving pictures in the middle of November...

The night before Halloween this year, we decided to carve our pumpkins. I had a special book this year that I was excited to share with the boys. The Pumpkin Patch Parable by Liz Curtis Higgs is a book that I highly suggest you look into if you've got little ones. It takes the idea of the jack-o-lantern and makes it into an awesome way to share the story of the Gospel with your kids. It includes scripture at the bottom of each page, too - got to love that!

Here's the best picture I got of the boys before we started our pumpkin carving. Hilarious! As you can see, they were excited, but they both sat pretty still as we read our book. I bought the board book version, perfect for my guys.

Cash was pretty bummed because he broke the handle off his right before we started carving, but he was still flapping his arms and excited about it.

Oh, my! 

I didn't have high hopes for this part. In the years past, Cash hasn't gotten into the pulling-out-pumpkin-guts part, so I didn't think he would this year either. I did remember to bring the pumpkin inside early to warm it up, but it didn't help much. He stuck his hand in ...

and didn't like it too much.

B didn't even stick in his hand. He was more interested in his pumpkin's top. Oh, well. Heath and I got in there and scraped them clean!

Here's Heath and Cash with lil' man's finished pumpkin face!

Next it was B's pumpkin, but he was in the living room playing with puzzles, so Heath took over.

Yay for pumpkin faces! B didn't seem to mind that his was an "angry face," as Cash called it. They both looked great all lit up!

And here's our end-of-the-night picture... "you have to smile, Baylen."

Fall

I'm a little, actually a lot, behind on posting some "school games" pictures. I realize I have a few weeks of pictures and haven't posted any of them. So here's a look at some of our fall activities. It was so nice the week that we learned about fall, we spent the majority of our time outside!

We talked a little about scarecrows. I tried to explain them to Cash, but the conversation consistently went towards "Daddy shoots those crows with his gun." Here's my lil' man working on a scarecrow puzzle. There's numbers on the sides of the pieces, so it helped him put the puzzle together.

Our "school games" time during the day is sometimes ruled by this little guy. If he wants to sit and participate, it's great, but if he wants to terrorize the table, it's not so great. Sometimes Cash is working on school games while B and I are playing nearby. I go back and forth from school games to playing. It keeps me on my feet!

We also sorted leaves into three categories, large, medium and small.

Later in the week, we worked on our patterns. Cash loves to say the pattern aloud. "No, no, Mommy. I'll say it. Leaf, pumpkin, scarecrow, leaf, pumpkin, scarecrow. What comes next?"

Cheese!

Mickey was also a big help this week, as you can tell. He was ready to learn all about fall!

I even caught Thomas and Mickey in a game of Memory. (Cash loves Memory, and he's getting really good at remembering, waiting his turn, etc. I find pictures of what we're studying and make two copies - instant Memory game!)

Love this guy's smile!

This was a quick activity that I've since put in the diaper bag for when we're waiting at restaurants. It's a circle divided into six pieces with fall pictures on each one. Cash clips his number clothespins to each piece according to how many items there are. Simple, but fun!

We've continued talking about fall. As the temperatures get cooler, the wind picks up and Thanksgiving gets closer, we've been talking about what all fall includes!