November Photos :: Christina's Phone :: 2017

I thought I would do one big post of photos I took from my phone in November.  Here it goes:

It was quiet in the house, and you know what that means.  I don't remember what Jeralyn and Joshua were doing (maybe they were outside).  I quietly crept down the hall and looked into the kitchen and found Joel the mole eating cereal on the floor.  Silly boy!  And see that step stool?  Joel + step stools = mischievousness.

I'm so proud of Jeralyn!  And she is pretty proud of herself!  She completed her first lesson for All About Reading.  She's amazing!

Joshua has really been enjoying building all sorts of things with Legos.

Joel wearing Joshua's cowboy hat.  I guess since we live in Idaho now we have to have cowboy hats.  It's part of the deal, I suppose.

In September, I discovered that Jeralyn already had her lower adult baby teeth coming in.  They are called "shark teeth".  In November she finally lost her first tooth.

Jeralyn peeled the apples for our Thanksgiving apple pie.

Our Thanksgiving dinner.  We had prime rib, mashed potatoes, candied sweet potatoes, green beans and cranberry salad.  Oh, and applie pie and brownies for dessert.  It was delicious!

Jeralyn made name tags for where we were sitting at the table.  I love the turkeys she drew--even though we didn't have turkey.

The Saturday after Thanksgiving we drove to Forest Service land to look for our Christmas tree.

Here's the crew.

Jeralyn sawing at the tree.

Quent quickly finished the job.

Quent took some photos of the kids with the lights, but this was my favorite one taken with my phone.

And this is what happens when Jeralyn is really into an audio book.

For school, I read The Rainbow Fish to the kids and we did a craft.

Joshua was into the craft too.  He impresses me with being able to follow along with the craft and his attention span.  He pays attention to detail too.

And this was silly Joel.  He played with the scraps.

We played at the park and this is sweet Joel.

Halloween :: October 31, 2017

It was our first time participating on Halloween.  Jeralyn had been asking to trick-or-treat and I thought, "Why not?"

Joshua was a construction worker.

Jeralyn was a mermaid.

Joel was Joel.

After this little photo shoot, we went to a trunk-or-treat held at a local church.  We quickly zipped through that and then we came home, had a quick bite to eat, and then Quent came home and we walked around the neighborhood.  The kids had fun trick-or-treating.  At almost each home, Joshua would ask the home-owner, "Do you have any kids?"  It was so funny!

Jeralyn's lot of candy.  This doesn't include Joshua's.

Leaves :: 10.29.17

Words cannot describe just how happy I was to have autumn arrive!  And leaves!  Colored, beautiful fall leaves!  We have a couple of maples trees in our yard that showed off some glorious color.

Not sure if you can spot them, but there are little white dots in this photo.  Those are the smoky-winged aphids that apparently hatch in the fall each year.  I was NOT happy to have these around.  There were literally millions of these little buggers flying around each day for weeks.  I was so happy that it was fall and cooler temps (an no more smoke) and then these hatched.  They are attracted to ash trees (which we have one of in our front yard).  I took a video that I will have to upload some time to show just how many there were.  They totally grossed me out!  I avoided the outdoors as much as possible during this time.  I'm not sure what to think of Idaho: the heat, the smoke, the very dry climate in the summer, and these evil, disgusting aphids. They finally went away after a good frost or two.

Nature Walk :: October 26, 2017

I took the kids on a nature walk at Heart of the Monster to look for seeds.  It was probably our last warm day of the year (which was fine by me).  It was about 70 degrees.

We found a few seeds and brought them home to inspect them and sketch them in our nature journals.

Wilson Banner Ranch :: October 21, 2017

We met some friends from Kamiah at a pumpkin patch in Clarkston.  The kids picked out a pumpkin.  It felt like a fall day with misty rain and that crisp, chill in the air.  We also took advantage of some shopping in Lewiston while we were in the area.

Side note: every time we go to Lewiston, Jeralyn wears her pink cowgirl hat.  Ha!

And then we carved pumpkins a few days later.  And that is Joshua's normal face these days. Kidding, not kidding.

Paper product fixations :: October, 2017

We call him "Joel the busy mole" for a reason...

Arts & Crafts :: October, 2017

These are photos from different times in October of when we did arts and crafts for school or just for fun (which is fun even when it is school).

Both kids really enjoy it.

I've been getting a monthly subscription for KidLitArt and this month's was called The Bad Seed (which I didn't really care for) and this was one of the crafts that came in the box.

For school, we have been doing nature studies.  I ask the kids what they want to learn about in nature and then we read about it and then sketch/paint/color in our art journals.  This particular week we learned about giraffes. I have to say this is a very relaxing time together and I really enjoy it.  I want to learn more about water color painting and drawing.

Jeralyn loves creating, so I've been looking for different ways to do just that.  This was our attempt at paper dolls.

And then we made fall trees with paints.