Jack O' Lanterns

For Family Home Evening last night we carved our Halloween Jack-o-lanterns.  Bryan is so nice to scoop all the guts out for the kids.  Then they get to pick their own design.  I usually draw the design on the pumpkin and then they do the cutting (Bryan helped Bree with her cutting.)  

Bree and Miles did faces and Tess did a bat.  They turned out cute.

I sure love these sweet, happy smiling faces!  What a lucky mom I am!

Dentist

Well, I finally got around to taking Bree to the dentist for the first time!  She probably needed it sooner, but I just haven't done it.  (In truth, she did see a dentist last summer when she bashed her teeth into the piano bench.  She got x-rays and the whole she-bang--and she did super!)  This was her first actual cleaning.  She has watched Tess and Miles before though so she was totally fine with it.  I am very very thankful that--knock on wood--my kids have all been pretty brave in new situations.  Like going to Nursery or Sunbeams or preschool, or staying with babysitters, etc.  I've never had a huge screamer who freaks out in these situations, for which I am very grateful.  I've seen the moms and dads clinging to their babies in Nursery for months on end while the child screams its head off.  It does not look fun!  Anyway, Bree hopped right up in the chair and thought it was all pretty cool.

The kids happened to have no school yesterday, which is also a day that Bryan did not have to work, so we made a day of it...first all 3 kids went to the dentist (no cavities!  Yay!)  And then the whole family went to Rite-Aid for flu shots.  We called around to see who did the flu mist for kids and surprisingly lots of places only did it for kids 8 and older, or 12 and older, etc.  But we really thought that would be mean to just let Tess, or Tess and Miles only, get the mist while Bree had to have a shot!  So, finally we found out that Rite-Aid does the mist for anyone over 2.  Sold!    (No mist for Bryan and me though...we had to be brave and get the shot.)

I was standing at the pharmacy filling out all our paperwork while Bryan took the kids and perused the store.  They found an Olaf doll and some sweet reindeer antlers.  (And please ignore Bree's clothes...she loves to pick out her own clothes everyday and she comes up with some interesting combinations!)

Then we got a RedBox and a pizza and headed home for a pizza picnic in the basement.  It was a fun and productive day.

Black Island Farms

For a Joy School field trip we went to Black Island Farms.  First we loaded up on the big trailer, pulled by a tractor.  Here are the kids in Bree's class:  Alex, Ali, Avery, (me), Bree, Elsa, Andrew, (Amelia and Luke not pictured) and their wonderful moms too!  During the ride we got to see the fields out on the farm; we got to eat some fresh cabbage and see the carrots.  Then we stopped at the pumpkin patch to choose our own pumpkin.

Then we were off to the play/exploration area.  They had lots of farm animals for the kids to see; here they are looking at the donkeys...

Here's a nice spot for a photo!  Cute little sister Kaleia is watching as Avery, Elsa, and Bree pose.

They had play equipment in fun shapes.  Here's Bree on a tire-swing shaped like a moose...

...and riding the bull...

They also had big slides, a bouncy house, a corn pit, a train, and other fun things.  The weather was beautiful and warm too.  Such a fun day!

(On my way home I happened to see this poor onion truck on its side with the onions everywhere!  What a bummer!)

WSU Physics Open House

I heard about the Weber State Physics Department open house from my sis-in-law and she said it was good fun for the kids.  Bryan was elk hunting (he got one this morning!) so I took the kiddos up to see what it was all about.  They had so many fun, hands-on activities for the kids that were also really interesting for the grown-ups as well.  They had rocket building and launching, but the line was super long, and since we did it just last summer , I talked them into moving along to some of the other things.

Here is the water balloon catapult:

Here the kids swirled the colored water around from one bottle to the one beneath it and learned about what happens to the air during a tornado.

 The always popular "try to make the top of the wineglass 'sing' by moving your finger along the edge" trick:

The amazing gigantic bubbles!  These were super cool!

Here they are with their holographic glasses on.  (I don't actually think that is the right term...Hmmm...when you put them on you see prisms & rainbows around every light source you look at.  That's not a holograph though, is it?  Meh, you get the idea.)  Plus I love the pic of Tess--that's a good blackmail pic right there. (She was squinching up her nose to keep the glasses on.)

In this room we learned about the center of gravity and the kids all liked balancing the heavy bird by his beak on the tip of their fingers.

This was the magnet room.  They built all sorts of fun creations using these magnets.

And lastly we learned about circuits.  Tess loved learning about these and manipulating them to turn on different lights and motors, with and without switches, using switches with 2 different lights to do 2 different things....  I couldn't get her outta that room!

They had other things as well but we kind of ran out of time (and Mom ran out of gas) after a few hours.  It was really cool though and I think we'll be going again next year for sure.