I Love Fall - Trunk or Treat!

It's hard to believe it's this time of year again!

I love watching all of the kids dress up, and I'm grateful for the safe, 

fun environment that a Trunk or Treat creates for little ones to celebrate in.

This year, Marigold's costume kept changing, because she kept growing!!

She grew 1 1/2 inches in the past month alone, 

and finding a modest princess costume in a juniors size is nigh unto impossible.  

Thank goodness for my sister in law, Harjot, who had a large amount of beautiful Indian clothing 

that Marigold got to choose a costume from.

It came together wonderfully!

She won a prize for most beautiful at the Trunk or Treat,

and while I might be biased, I have to say, it was well deserved ;)

Ashlynn was a fairy - again...

She loves wings and wands, and faceprint with glitter.

She also will not stand still for a picture :)

Caleb was a knight, all in gold armour. 

I had to include a pic of my brother, George and his baby...

their Pirate and parrot costumes were so cute!

Jared and I had the van trunk all decorated, and ready for the activity,

and then the van broke down in the afternoon...

So we opted for the undecorated tailgate option :)

Gotta love those last minute mishaps!

Check back next week for more costume pics, when I blog about our Halloween!

I Love Fall - The Amazing Maize Maze

Our first family outing since Jared came home

was to the Amazing Maize Maze in Lancaster, PA.

We got half off admission with active military ID, 

which made it even more fun :)

Wagon Ride!

Rubber ducky racing

and mini hay maze

The Strasburg Railroad -

the kids stopped to stare and wave each time it went by

We went into the 5 acre corn maze

thinking we might not do the whole thing-

depending on the kids' attitudes...

But there were so many fun activities and photo ops,

that they were busy and happy the whole time!

trying to rope climb like Daddy

"ROW!"

Caleb really liked this rope tunnel

And Marigold liked this rope bridge.

We completed the whole maze in 2 hrs, 1 minute...

just 1 minute over the projected time for a group with kids :)

Then we had fresh baked cider doughnuts for a snack,

and played for a few more hours

Marigold on a bounce pillow &

Ashlynn doing a hay bale obstacle course

Jared taught Ashlynn to finish and then put up her arms and say-

"I'm the best!"

She ran the course quite a few times, 

and sounded more sure of herself each time she repeated it.

Marigold could hardly wait to go on these peddle carts.

I thought it was great that they had them in two sizes,

so Caleb and Ashlynn could try them out too.

5 hours of fun in the sun on a lovely Autumn day-

this might have to be a yearly excursion for our family.

I Love Moving - Jared is home, and we're moving again

Many thanks to my parents, 

who made it possible for me to fly to UT and meet up with Jared when he got home.

Since we were in UT without a vehicle, 

thanks also to the family of another unit member,

who were kind enough to pick me up from the airport, 

and take Jared and I to pick up our moving van.

This will be our 7th move in 5 years!

We packed up, and spent the night in UT-

on our way out of town he next morning, 

we stopped to see my sister Sheri and her adorable family

Seriously - my nephews are so handsome!

And here's a pick of the whole Purser clan :)

The drive across country was a nice opportunity to 

make up for lost time together.

Jared climbed up onto the truck to clean the windshield :)

It was fun being in such a large vehicle - 

it made the trip even more of an adventure.

Below is the view in PA as we drove across.

The forests were full of such beautiful colors!

For those of you who aren't already aware,

Jared has a job in Pa, and we'll be settling there as soon as we find a house.

It's great to be all together again as a family!

We are so blessed, and thankful for this amazing life.

I Love Homeschool - Letter E week

Another 4 day week of school in our house-
due to more moving preparations.

Marigold finished reading "The Dark is rising" this week-

she's really burning through the series!

Egg Day:

We sang Humpty Dumpty

and read Horton Hatches the Egg 

We learned about what eggs are, 

and what kinds of animals lay eggs

My phone was almost dead, so I have next to no pictures :(

After doing lots of worksheets, 

we had an egg hunt for snack time 

I just put small amounts of different snacks in the plastic easter eggs,

and hide them around the yard.

Each kid gets assigned a color to keep them from fighting

They really LOVED this 

We did sight words hidden in eggs as well 

ELEPHANT DAY:

We sang a song about Elephants playing on spiderwebs,

and read Horton Hears a who

Caleb made our board :)

Pattern Blocks

and our Letter E Folder from last year-

with a fun Upper and Lower case letter matching game

Ashlynn loves the little puzzles from the letter folders

Instead of using do a dot markers, we used circle stickers

on our E is for Elephant worksheet.

Ashlynn got her face paint early, 

while Caleb did some math worksheets that were more on his level than hers

-

We had peanuts in the shell for snack time - messy, but fun!

We watched a few short movies about elephants a the same time.

Then we made elephants with play dough

Caleb's turned out pretty well :)

We finished up the day with a pink elephant craft

And Caleb got his face paint too

Oh, and since it was Pizza movie night, we watched DUMBO

EAGLE DAY:

Another day with very few pictures, 

but it was fun!

I had 6 small worksheets,  which taught all about eagles-

Their traits, habitats, life cycle, etc...

They ended up being stapled together to make an E is for Eagle book :)

snack was goldfish, since eagles Love eating fish

I found quite a few great youtube videos teaching about bald eagles.

We watched them, and finished our day with this cute craft

They really enjoy any craft where we can incorporate their handprints 

EYES DAY:

Caleb drew our picture again :)

We rolled dice and glued googly eyes on our "monsters"

Ashlynn wanted an angry monster

Caleb made his a scary one

I found this great skip counting eye worksheet online

Doing an eye unit this time of year was great-

because the dollar store has all kinds of eyeball things

available for Halloween!

We used some eyeballs to do another math game

Then we made graphs and charts to show the eye color of our family members 

Brown is definitely the winner!

We had eyeball snack mix

and then talked about how thankful we are for our vision.

We also played a game I made using Keynote (it's like powerpoint)

One slide would have a picture cropped to show only  eyes,

and the kids would guess whose eyes they were.

The next slide showed the entire picture.

It took only a few minutes to put together, and all of the kids really enjoyed it!