Mini vacation

Yay for mini vacations. We went on a big vacation in the spring, but another vacation was in order. We decided to go to Kansas City. We have wanted to go to the T-Rex cafe for awhile now and it did not disapoint. I probably could have posted twice as many pictures, but here are a few.

The girls had a blast and so did we. We loved the dinosaurs that moved although Lily really did have a hard time understanding that they weren't alive. :)

Then we went to our hotel and swam in the pool and just had fun as a family. My hubby picked a hotel right across the street from the Red Sox game that we were going to. That made it possible for us to just walk to the game.

The game went from 7:10-9:30. Since that is way past the girls bedtime, we were shocked that they were great for the whole game. I had been prepared to walk them back to the hotel, but they loved the game. Lily asked lots of questions during it and she loved walking around the place with me. I also packed lots of snacks...including cotton candy so we were all very happy!

In the morning, we headed to the zoo. This really was Valerie's second time, but the first time that she was really able to get into it and excited!

She wasn't so sure about feeding the goats at first, but then she loved it. I thought it was funny that she opened her own mouth to feed them. :)

She loved all of the animals and her big sister was trying to teach her all about them.

The zoo also had started decorating for Fall so that was fun. Lily loved the Charlie brown cut outs!

Mini vacations are so important. They just give you something to look forward to and just enough excitement to hold you until the next big vacation.

Fall pictures!

We always love going to Teresa at www.artfromtheheartphotography.com to get pictures done of the girls. This Fall we got some really pretty ones of the girls. They are modeling dresses from Jens Bowtique!

We also are getting ready to go on a little Kansas City trip. We are going to eat at the Dinosaur Cafe and go to a Red Sox game. Then we will be spending the night at a hotel and getting to swim in the indoor pool. We are very excited! So we got new Red Sox shirts and decided to have Teresa take some pics of us in that!

Jason and I hardly ever get pictures of just us together so we took the opportunity to take a few of us together. I love my hubby! This October we will have been together for 7 years!

Apple theme weeks!!!

To start kindergarten off in a fun way, we decided to do an apple theme. There were so many fun things to learn and do that we made it a two week project. We started off by going to the library and getting a bunch of books about apples and John Appleseed. Lily loved learning all sorts of apple facts and was fast to tell everyone what she was learning.

We had two fun cooking projects during our unit. One was to make homemade applesauce. We peeled and cut the apple and put it in the crockpot. Lily then added sugar and water and cinnamon. It was so yummy for Val and me, but Lily actually didn't like it.

We also made applesmiles with Lily's friend Boston. They used sliced apples and spread peanut butter on it and then used marshmallows as the teeth. It was fun to make and yummy to eat!

Somehow I messed up my pictures as I put them on here...not sure what I did. During math time, we had two fun projects. Lily first colored and cut out apples. Then we used them to count as we put them in the basket and we did some simple addition with the apples. Lily loved this so we did it several times.

We also did an apple graph. Lily asked several of her friends what their favorite type of apple is. The choices were golden delicious, granny smith, or red delicious. We colored in their choices and then looked at the results.

Golden delicious won!!! However, it was pretty close. Red delicious and granny smith tied. Valerie also got to the paper and tried to do a little coloring at the top.

During art time, we had a great time painting with apples. We cut them in half and used it to decorate the apple design.

We thought it was really neat that the seads of an apple form a star!

Lily also did some drawing on her chalk board. Here is a picture of a mommy cat with her kittens. :)

Lily also did some science time with her daddy. They went bug hunting and found a slug and some beetle. They then gave them food and water!

We did some great writing. Here Lily wrote a sentence about her favorite apple. It says, "I like yellow apples."

For writing and science, we talked about seasons and how it affects the apple tree. We painted Lily's arm four times to make different trees. Then she finger painted the leaves and apples on. She also used tissue paper for her spring tree to show the flowers. This was a really fun project.

I realized now that I left off taking a picture of Lily doing her apple poem. It was so much fun. Lily is a little sad that we are done with the apple unit so I may need to find a few more things to do with apples over the next few weeks.

Lily is also super excited about Fall! Can't wait to do some lesson plans on that!