teepee craft

We spent the whole day crafting yesterday. One of the things we made were teepees.
I found a chart of Native American symbols and had them try to draw some on their teepees. Josie's has the sun's rays which stands for constancy, Georgia's on the right has many different symbols such as a bear track which stands for a good omen, morning stars which means guidance, a horse means journey, the medicine mans eye on the door means wise and watchful. Let's see what else.... the arrow means protection. She has many more symbols but I'll spare you. I have yet to ask Emmy what her pictures mean. Oh wait a minute, they aren't symbols, she says she put jewels on it.

St. Leo the Great

Way back on November 10 was the feast day of St. Leo the Great and in honor of him, because he promoted the various works of mercy, we made a really nice works of mercy lapbook. This one is from lapbooks for catholics.

homemade caramel corn

I've been telling the girls forever now that we will make homemade caramel corn after they have enjoyed my Aunt Joann's at various get-togethers. We finally got around to it yesterday. Popcorn is not a usual thing at our house so we borrowed my mom's hot air popper and I think it really scared Margie at first. She was standing right in front of it and it all of a sudden blew hot air on her, making this ticking noise as the kernels swirled around inside.
As soon as it started popping it was like fireworks. The girls all squealed and jumped around. What did they expect??

My first batch got a little too dark and some pieces had a slight burnt taste. We waited for dad to come home and showed him the amazing hot air popper and made some more!! PERFECT. Here is the recipe:

8 cups of popped popcorn

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

1/4 cup butter

3 TBSP corn syrup

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon vanilla

pop the popcorn

melt the brown sugar, butter and corn syrup on low heat

after it boils cook with out stirring for 3 minutes

remove from heat and add baking soda, salt and vanilla

mix into popcorn to coat evenly

place on a cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for around 13 minutes

put it back into bowl and stir/shake until cool

postcards from home contest winner!

We got a call the other day saying Georgia won 2nd place in a "postcards from home" contest that the paper was sponsoring. Here is a link since I can't get any pictures to upload to the blog.

http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/wdt_repository/advertising_files/20101111_postcards.pdf

Well as you can see I got it to upload. I scanned the copy from the paper therefore it is not very big. xo

Grandpa

Grandpa, wishing you a speedy recovery. Hope you are feeling well and please know that you are in our thoughts and prayers. Grandma make sure you relax too!! xoxo

Just a cute poem about Grandpa's. I remember LOVING the walks we used to take Grandpa, watching you wrangle big water snakes and snapping turtles, taking me to the beaver dam, .... it was so much fun.

I like to walk with Grandpa,

His steps are short like mine.

He doesn't say "Now hurry up!"

He always takes his time.

Most people have to hurry,

They do not stop and see,

I'm glad that God made Grandpa"Unrushed"

and young like me.

– Rodney O. Hurd

Tessa's gift

We were invited to a little girl's, whom I consider to be my half niece, birthday party over the weekend and I attempted to make a name plaque for her. (She is considered family to me because her Grandmother, mother and aunt took me in for a while and just plain loved me.) I have done them before but not completely out of paper. I wish the name was more pronounced but I'll know next time.

All Saints Day printable

I found this simple printable on the Catechist website. If interested it was under the catechist keyboard tab.
It has 8 pages about the steps in being publicly recognized as a saint.

We printed it for All Saints Day. We're sure trying!!

Halloween night

Georgia was a cowgirl for trick-or-treating. I made the costume out of paper bags. I greased the bags with crisco to get a leather look and used brad fasteners to look like studs. I think she looked darn cute!
Josie was a spider princess. This is my dress but I made the web for her back and then made the crown with strips of metal and beads.

Margie is a hand-me-down elephant. Thanks Stacy for letting us borrow it. She wouldn't wear the hood for the picture because she was adamant about eating the lollipop she found and mean mom said no not until later!

Then the little fairy. Emmy just LOVED this costume. She flitted and floated around all evening!

Here we come - Trick-or-Treat!!

St. John's first annual Halloween Party?

Mom put on an awesome Halloween party this past weekend at St. John's. I put a question mark in the post's title because I wonder if it will become an annual thing. It was very successful.
Here is the gang. Make sure you take a peek at Margie here in her angel costume. She would NOT stand for a picture later on.

Bobbing for donuts!

Waiting oh so patiently.

GO!! Come on Jo catch it!

Floating hand punch....eeewwww!

Russell organized a trivia game of Halloween facts.

The big hit was mom's ghost bowling with pumpkin gourds.

Knock 'em down Emmy.

Then, there was ring the witch hat. We also played throw the roses to St. Therese but I didn't get any pictures of that on since I was manning the game.

Little close aren't you Em?

Blurry, darn. The kids LOVED sticking their hands in the boxes and feeling parts of some guy mom called Herbert Smears. (Although mom Georgia said on some of the labels you had Howard Smears and others said Herbert Smears. Must have been his alter ego :)

Lots of smiles and "eeewwww"s!

Look at the Saints. We have Emeline as Mary the Blessed mother of Jesus, Josie as Saint Bernadette and Georgia as Saint Rose.

Jack-o-lanterns 2010

Here are the pumpkins for 2010. I had a kit that I bought last year with the new little saws and templates. I didn't even use one template that came with the kit but I decided I would let the kids decide what they wanted and look for one online. In that endeavor I found success. Margie had Dora, Emmy, Snow White, Josie a cute ghost, Georgia a horse, and Dad the Dallas Cowboys helmet. The helmet was a surprise for Dad when he got home from work. They came out really nice but it did take me 3 HOURS TO DO IT! NEVER AGAIN. The darn saw knives, whatever you want to call them kept bending in half as I cut, the template poker all of a sudden lost its poking ability and it was surprisingly hard to find something around the house to take its place and I was pretty close to crazy after doing just a couple. The only good thing about it was that we were able to gut and carve the pumpkins outside so that saved me from cleaning a big mess inside! Have a great one tomorrow! xo

What is it?

I saw this bird a few days ago and can't for the life of me figure out what it is. I took the pictures from the house in the pouring rain. There were two of them. I didn't see them fly but Brad said he saw them since this day and they were flying. They looked like a big bodies bird with fluffy feathers (saw one shake itself out), and a weird almost beaver looking tail. Of course the tail only looked solid it may not have been. At first glance I said oh a young turkey is coming into the yard. Then after I came to my senses I knew it wasn't a turkey. Then I thought it was chicken, but soon saw its head and noticed it had what looked to be a bill like a duck. We have some people down the road that raise fowl. Maybe something got out. I'm thinking that I discovered a rare new species or perhaps one that was thought to be extinct only to be very, very elusive and only my expert bird watching eyes have spied. :) Help me!! Sorry about the picture quality. I zoomed all the way in and cropped some so it lost some of its clarity. Like I said though, it is from the house through pouring rain.

Fall Luminaries

We made some more luminaries. I like this set better than the ones we made last year. Our Church's Harvest Dinner is coming up and during the dinner we host a "Country Store". I think I will donate these for the sale. We used all real maple leaves with a tinge of orange and red. They are held and painted over with watered down glue. With wet glue over top of the leaves we glued down small squares of white tissue paper. They come out very nice.

St. Paul of the Cross

Our tribute to St. Paul of the Cross! We learned that he made a journey barefoot across Italy. He did this as a sacrifice to Jesus and the suffering he endured. I told the girls to run out side to take care of a couple things for me, barefoot. They thought I was nuts. It was a chilly day with wet yucky grass. Look, they didn't even wear coats.
There they are. Maybe they will always remember St. Paul of the Cross. Of course, the awesome stories of his miracles were enough to remember him by.

Sacrifice Beads

We ordered some sacrifice beads from The Little Ways after celebrating Saint Therese of Lisieux's feast day. They arrived, and we didn't waste any time putting them together. I attatched a clip at the end so that the girls can clip them right to their pants to have them readily available and in sight all day long. The best part about these beads is guess what.... they are working!

Fire Safety Lapbook

For our fire safety studying this month we had an actual fire girl. Yep Fire Girl Emeline came to teach us about fire safety.
We also made this fire safety lapbook.

It is full of all the basic information needed to stay safe during an emergency such as our plan, meeting place, who to call etc. According to the kids they had the heeby geebys a few times while learning this subject. Better to know the info than not to know!

Brendan's 3rd Birthday Party

Brendan's third birthday party was the past weekend. He had a superhero theme! Look at him as spiderman!!
This is during a freeze dance game.

Then Stacy had a parachute to play with.

Keep the balloon on the parachute kids.

Poor Stacy, being the wonderful host that she is, didn't have any time to take pictures thus the photo heavy post.

Little kids, sit under the parachute and we'll lift it up and down over you now.

Sorry about the red-eye. I forgot.

I think Margie wants to help. She had already helped someone lick a little frosting off one (or maybe 3) of the cupcakes while sitting there by sticking her little fingers into them.

Army guys.

Russell is a bug caught in a web. Wrap him up Georgia.

More more more more more....anybody got any tape now??

Shoot the silly string at the bug game!

Emmy wants in (or maybe out).

What a GREAT party Stacy. xoxo