Fall Fun Friday

On Friday, November 19, Grandpa Georgia called and invited us to breakfast. He caught us on a morning that we hadn't eaten yet, so I said 'sure!' I drove the boys to his place to pick him up, and we rode together to the Willow Street Family Restaurant, one of his new favorites. The food was good, and both boys ate very well - pancakes, Grandpa's toast, and bacon were all pretty well polished off. Afterward, I stopped on the way back through to pick up milk while Grandpa waited with the boys in the car. They played the 'car game' where they tried to guess what color the next car would be to pull in the parking lot. Joshua, especially, LOVED this game!

When we got home, I took the boys for a walk. It was chilly (as you can tell by the blankets), but because I was feeling well that day, I knew it was the perfect opportunity to get outside. The leaves were just breathtakingly beautiful, and I had to snap a few pictures as we walked. We also picked up some leaves to make a craft that afternoon.

When we got back, for the first time (I guess), Joshua noticed that Jack wasn't on our porch. Of course, the pumpkin we carved was thrown in the trash on Halloween (since it was a Sunday and trash went the next morning). I tried to make it sound fun - "Jack went on a trip to the dump." But, Joshua didn't buy it. He cried and cried that our friend was gone. Thereafter, we started our fall crafts, but the boys soon got tired and went to sleep. It had been a busy morning!

But, we finished the crafts later on that week. That morning, we first picked out the color of construction paper we wanted and then glued the leaves on.

Then as they dried, we traced our hand prints on brown construction paper. Joshua has gotten really good at tracing his own hand, and it's one of his favorite things to do! Caleb sat very still as I traced his hand. Then I cut out the hands and glued them to light colored construction paper. That was it for the day, as I put everything up to dry.

That night, we had Miranda come to watch the boys while Shawn took me on a date. He received a gift card to the Olive Garden from his work for being there over five years, so we enjoyed dinner out together. He had hoped to go on to the mall or Borders, but I wasn't feeling well that night, so we opted just to come home. Plus, our babysitter had been to the dentist that day, and she came with her mouth really puffy. I was nervous she wasn't feeling well either, but she seemed fine (as did the boys) when we got home. Hopefully we can have more fun dates in the future! I do love that amazing husband of mine! As I recall, we put the boys in jammies and watched a family movie together all snuggled on the couch that evening, but I don't truly remember, it's sad to say.

The following Monday, we finished our crafts that we had started. First, after getting them in their art apparel and preparing the paint, I took a picture of each boy next to his hand print.

 They posed for the camera quickly before digging into the paint.

 The idea was to make these into turkeys, painting feathers on the brown fingers. Caleb always starts with blue (his favorite color) and Joshua typically starts with green, his favorite.

Each boy carefully painted his turkey the way he wanted it to look. Thankfully, the paint is washable and so is the table cloth as Caleb got a little wild with his paint running off the side of his turkey.

Both boys highly enjoy doing crafts. Too bad the smell of the paint is a little nauseating. But, it was fun, and I painted one as well.

 When Joshua was finished, I gave him a crayon to write his name on the bottom of his paper. I thought he did a great job!

 Here's Joshua's finished turkey, and him proudly showing it off (isn't it adorable?):

 And here's Caleb showing off his finished turkey hand print (I helped him write his name on his).

And here's Mommy's finished turkey hand print, and the three paintings together as they were drying on our kitchen counter.

Next, we worked on making our leaf people. I explained that each person should get a head, legs, arms, maybe feet and hands and whatever else they wanted to give them to make them special. Here was Joshua's, which he completed by himself. Not too bad! He also signed his name on this one, but the light crayon on the dark green paper didn't show up on the picture that I took.

 

 Here were my leaf people, which I did mainly to show them what we were doing with the leaf craft.

 And here was Caleb's masterpiece, which I helped with a little bit to show him. He liked putting big green splotches of color on the bottom, trying to make their faces, I'm guessing. He did decorate some of the other parts as well, though:

And here were the three leaf artwork pieces drying together (which have since made their way to the trash can). But, we had fun that day finishing them all up! We love fall fun!