Katelyn was a Bumble Bee and Madelyn was a jaguar or “Baby Jaguar” from the shoe ” Go Diego, Do”. We had a church Harvest Party at our old church ( more on the reason it’s “old” in another post), and Awana Harvest Family night, a Halloween party at Katelyn’s school, a Halloween themed dance class and then Trick Or Treating. All were fun.

Unfortunately, I didn’t know about the Halloween “party” in Katelyn’s dance class. I hadn’t been there in three weeks since Mike had taken her twice and then we were in Texas. There were no e-mails sent out. Mike said there was nothing about it when he went last time, although there were little signs posted about it throughout the studio. So Katelyn was one of three girls who did not have their costume on. I felt terrible! I seriously wanted to cry. Thankfully, her dance teacher had princess costumes in reserve and handed them out to the girls who were costume-less. And, luckily (or God?) my camera had fallen out of my purse into our van so I had my camera on hand to take pictures!

After dance class we went to the mall for lunch. Have you ever been to the mall on Halloween? Depending on your view of Halloween it’s either awesome or a place to avoid like the devil. The stores were handing out candy to mall trick or treaters. The mall itself had some activities for the kids and were passing out goody-bags. There were kids and adults galore dressed up in costumes. There was the cute, the bad and the hideous. We say a family dressed as characters from “Curious George”. The dad was The Man With The Yellow Hat. His costume was perfect!! Octomom was there too. Hehe. A woman was walking around pushing her stroller (with her real baby in it) and she had 8 baby dolls  hanging from a chord around her neck. She even had the sunglasses that you always see Octomom wearing in the photos you see of her. I am SO going to the mall next year for Halloween! And I’m dressing up too! Of course, Katelyn noticed all the costumed kids and got upset she wasn’t wearing her costume. Again, I felt bad. While we were eating she said ” Mom, all the kids with costumes on are staring at me.”  Oh boy.

I’ve put all my Halloween/Harvest photos on my Flickr album.

Here are a few  for you to enjoy here…(in order of the event)

Our old church Harvest Party

It was a warm day so Katelyn didn’t wear the black long sleeved shirt she  wore the rest of the time under her costume.

Madelyn minus her whiskers

Getting ready for the donut eating contest

Getting ready to hunt for candy in the leaf pile

Awana Harvest Family Night (or whatever it was called!!)

Katelyn and her friends

Enjoying the wagon rides that were offered all evening long.

Unfortunately, I used up all my camera battery so I didn’t get all the pictures I wanted. My inlaws have some on their camera I need to get. What a cute party New Life had! Each room had different games to play. It was almost like a carnival! They won candy for each game they played. They did a little devotional for the kids and their families at the end of the night. One thing that impressed me was how all the Awana leaders were in costume. I’ve been to church Harvest parties where I was the only adult dressed up. So it was nice to see adults dressed up too. Can you tell I love to dress up?

Faulkner School Pre-k Class Party

Waving at passing cars. The “man” with a cane you see is Katelyn’s teacher, Ms. Debbie. She really did look like a man. Kinda scary…. You can see Nana(not to be confused with our Nana. Ms. Debbie’s mom that also works in the room as like a class grandmother) sitting on the front stoop of the school. She was dressed as a witch and had a pretty scary witch mask on! I was surprised.

The class singing on the front stoop.

They sang three Halloween themed songs and were all really cute.

Here’s a couple of video clips of them waving and singing.

Dance Halloween Party

Katelyn’s dance teacher, Ms. Stacy, is in the red on the left. The owner of the studio, Ms. Kathy, is in the yellow wig on the right. Katelyn is dressed as “Snow White”. It was also “bring a friend” day but I also didn’t know that. Some of the girls took their little sisters but Madelyn would not have sat and followed directions like they did. So, I didn’t let her go in. Mean mom!

Trick Or Treating

Madelyn didn’t want to wear her ears.

In a better mood

Ready to go!

]]> http://www.simplymelsblog.com/a-simply-awesome-halloween/feed/ 6 http://www.simplymelsblog.com/schoolwork-and-videos/ http://www.simplymelsblog.com/schoolwork-and-videos/#comments Thu, 08 Oct 2009 12:43:27 +0000 SimplyMel http://www.simplymelsblog.com/?p=501 Katelyn has loved going to school so far. Every now and then she gets a little sad at drop off and doesn’t want me to leave but for the most part she is loving it. I think the structure and focus is really good for her. I’ve  been impressed with the academic side of her school so far. But, with them being there only two and a half hours I would hope they did academics rather than lots of free play! Every day at pick up I check to see what she’s eaten of her lunch(I only send three items and haven’t sent anything with nuts it  by accident again! Yay me) and check her folder for notes and her work. I’ve really enjoyed looking at her work and reading any notes to me. It feels so “grown up” although I’m really in no rush for all the hub bub of elementary school life for Katelyn. It’s still cute.  Madelyn seems to enjoy the drop off and pick up too. She will usually plop herself on the floor or one of the tables and start playing with whatever the older kids are playing with at the time. And then she doesn’t want to leave! I feel sorry for her because she doesn’t understand why she doesn’t get to stay. I make a little “lunch” for her in her lunch box since she gets upset if she doesn’t have something to take too.  You can tell she feels so big carrying her lunch box to the car. I usually let her eat in the car on the way home. And sometimes that is her lunch if we are running errands and not going back home before I pick Katelyn up. They kids are now focusing on letters and sounds each week and the teachers said that by the end of the year most of the kids will be able to tell us what sound each of the letters make. Great pre-reading skill!

Oh, and in case I didn’t explain the Kindergarten thing well here’s the deal. Since she will technically be too young for Kinder next year she will be doing it for two years. If we stay with this school she will do their Kindergarten program next school year. She’ll be almost five. That seems so weird to me!!  And if we decide to stay for another year she would do a more advanced version of their Kinder program the following year. They told us that most of the kids go  into first grade already knowing half of the stuff the public school is teaching them at that level. So we have the option of sending her to the Faulkner Kindergarten program for two years OR sending her there one year and then to our public Kinder program when she is almost six. We’ll cross that path when we get there. I”m not sure yet what we will do. It would be easier to send her to our public program in two years since it’s right down the road from us and is longer hours. So, we’ll see!

Here are some pictures of her work…

The front of her letter “C” worksheet

The back. She had to  circle all the words that started with “C” and color all the pictures that started with the letter “C”. I thought it was funny that she also colored the hand. They get stickers on their papers when they complete their work. So cute!

The teachers sent home these laminated name strips for the kids to practice writing their names at home. They are expected to know how to write their first name by the end of the school year. Their last name is optional. The laminate works like a dry erase board so the kids trace their names with dry erase markers and then we can wipe it off for repeated use. Apparently, I’ve been teaching the Katelyn the wrong way to write her name. Which, was the right way when I was teaching preschool.

I’ve taught Katelyn how to write her name in all upper case since she hadn’t learning lower case letters yet. We had always been told to teach the younger children this way to write to promote consistency and for them to be exposed to the upper case letters all the time to help in letter recognition. Apparently,these teachers and Kindergarten teachers hate this. Because they have to teach the children to write their names all over again the right way. With only the first letter of their name in upper case. Excuuuse me. I won’t be making that mistake again with Madelyn.

This is some of her art work. She painted, cut this out and glued it all herself. It thought she did pretty good with the cutting!

This was her homework! Apparently, many of the k ids with older siblings were asking for homework so they could do it while their older brothers and sisters were doing theirs. So the teachers made up some homework for the kids to do each week. They said it’s optional and that they barely look at it when it’s brought back to school. They just put a sticker on it and tell the children how wonderful they did and hang it on the wall. Katelyn wanted to do this homework but if there is ever a time when she doesn’t want to do it I won’t make her. Since this was Fire Prevention Week they learned a lot about fire safety. So Katelyn had to draw our family meeting spot if our house were to ever catch fire and we were separated trying to escape from our burning house. I told her it would be our detached garage so that’s what she drew. I guess those lines are our garage door??

I created this little corner in our playroom for showing off her school work and for school, dance and awana calendars and notes. I also have a large children’s school calendar to help the girls learn counting, the days of the week, the months of the year and time concepts like “yesterday was”, today is” and” tomorrow will be”. I also have special squares I put on there so Katelyn can see when special events are coming. As you can see by the date I haven’t done anything on the calendar since September 24th!

We hung this neat plastic chain link organizer to show case art work and school work. I got tired of taping stuff on the wall and my stainless steel fridge.

Here are some more videos I wanted to post. These videos are from the day of Katelyn’s birthday party. She got a microphone stand form her Nana and Papa and the girls were having a blast singing with it. Madelyn even put on a little show!

Here they were being silly with their party blowers. Madelyn was really cracking herself up!

Like Mike’s 98 Chevy Silverado that he is finally getting rid of.

Do you know how many good memories I have of this truck? Mike was driving this truck when I first met him. We had many long, pre falling in love, getting-to-know-you conversations in this truck. We had one of our first kisses in this truck.(Not the first kiss, mind you, but maybe the fourth or something like that). We listened to some great music that Mike put together on a special CD for us that I will always cherish in this truck. We drove to Rhode Island and back each week for three months in this truck. This was the first nice, brand new vehicle Mike bought when he got his first a real job with his hard earned degree in Chemical Engineering. Mike was so proud of this thing and put a lot of work into taking care of it

I will miss this truck.

Or what about the box of books and puzzles I found in the garage on Saturday that someone from church gave me when Katelyn was a baby. The stuff in the box was for preschoolers and gently used. This person thought I’d be able to use it for Katelyn one day when she got older. I thought ” That’s so far away. It will be ages before she’ll be able to use this stuff ” and absentmindedly put it in the garage. Katelyn AND Madelyn enjoyed going through the stuff and playing with it all weekend. The time came to play with it way faster than I ever imagined.

Or what about this drawing of Katelyn’s that she drew a year ago on the 14th of this month and had been on my fridge ever since. It was one of her first “real” drawings that actually looked like what she intended it to look like. That year went all too fast. She was a month away from turning three. She had drawn a snowman.

Or these pictures I have of the girls in the pool last summer. Madelyn’s first time in the pool.

And we just had our last swim in the pool two week ago. This summer went by way too fast. Madelyn no longer needs to float around in that thing. She swims around just fine with her swimmies. Katelyn started dog paddling and swimming underwater.

Here are some videos from this summer. They aren’t that old but I wanted to share them.

Sometimes it’s fun to revisit the past a bit. But it’s not good to live there. Sometimes new stuff is good too. Like, our new life in Christ. I’m so glad Jesus hasn’t let me stay my old self with my old nature. Sometimes I let my old self creep up on me but thank the Lord He doesn’t let me stay there. (Like that song by Pink that says ” don’t let me get me”!) Christ doesn’t allow me to do that. He reminds me that I’m a new creature and I have a new life in him. The old things are gone.

^“17Therefore if anyone is ^(A)in Christ, he is ^(B)a new creature; ^(C)the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. ” 2 Corinthians 5:17 (taken from the online Bible source www.bible.com)

“Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead” Phillipians 3:13. This passage also taken from web resource mentioned above.

Some new stuff I’m looking forward to:

-Katelyn starting Awanas this Wednesday night. I decided to sign her up for Cubbies at a church close by. It goes from 6:30-8:00 Madelyn will hopefully stay in their nursery(and have fun!) and I’ll participate in their adult Bible study that I’m looking forward to immensely.

-Going to Texas in three weeks for a week and getting to meet new Brooklyn for the first time.

-Potty training Madelyn( “new” didn’t work anywhere in this point)

-Getting to watch a new season of Heroes, Castle, So You Think You Can Dance, Grey’s Anatomy and Glee. And beginning catching up on Lost.

Nostalgia is great but living in the moment while looking ahead is even better.