Wordless Wednesday

All Saint's Day....etc...etc...etc...

Nathan has been working on a "Saint" project for the last several weeks.  Included in the grade for this project was completing (and wearing) a costume representing that particular saint for the All Saint's Day Parade that is the tradition at Assumption Catholic School!  The 5th graders got to pick their saint out of a hat.  Please meet.....drum roll please.....St. Lawrence O'Toole!

I can take NO credit for this um...um...."saintliness"!  Nathan and Dan did the whole thing!  Apparently, Dan was looking at a particular picture that he was trying to recreate.  Keep in mind, I think my husband is color blind...he doesn't think so.  Here's the photo of the look he was trying to capture:

See the orange and red yellow and orange miter?  See the flowery patterned cope?  See the pale green vestments?  Well, anyway, you get the picture.  By the way, I'm quite sure St. Lawrence O'Toole wore shoes

The girls, on the other hand were easier.  However,  did drive all over Jacksonville looking for plain black material.  Apparently, so close to Halloween....there wasn't any left.  So, I was left with dark blue habits for my two saintly nuns.  May I introduce you to St. Rita and St. Mary Soledad.....

Can you tell from this picture which one was St. Rita?  I'll give you a hint, she got to wear a teeny, tiny bit of make up this morning...and she was thrilled!  St. Rita, of course, is the Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes.

Here is St. Mary Soledad (who took care of the sick and infirmed....hence the first aid kit because I couldn't come up with anything better) and her second grade teacher, Mrs. Bradley!

Here are a few more pictures from things I've never gotten around to blogging about we've done during the month of October!

Birthday gifts from Aunt Kathy!!  Thank You...we love you!!!

Soccer Sisters!

Olivia and her coach!

Happy 6th Birthday, Olivia!!

Sometimes, when you get scared at night, sisters are the best medicine!

Mom making candy corn treats for Olivia's classroom!

They were a lot harder to make than I first thought!

I finished...all 18 of them (5 cookies in each bag!)

Looking forward to a wonderful November!

Happy Birthday to my baby!

Happy 6th Birthday to my little Olivia!  I love you, my big girl!!

You have GOT to see this!

About an hour after I put the girls to bed, I went in to check on them.  I do this because...well, they've been known to NOT stay in bed!  Sometimes I find them wandering around their room in various stages of play.  Tonight when I checked, they were both sound asleep!  However, THIS is how I found Olivia......




Somehow, she got herself wedged in the laundry basket and fell asleep!



I was curious to see if she was really asleep or if she was just faking it!

Nope...she's really sleeping!

With her hands over her chest!

Out of the mouths of babes!

The kids and I were sitting in our living room the other night, admiring the Christmas tree.  I was (once again) verbalizing how much easier an artificial tree is compared to a fresh one.  Everyone agreed that this was the right thing to do this year!  Olivia delivered the best line of the night......

"Mom, a fake tree is good 'cause then we don't have to worry about it burning our house down because it is fire retarded"!

Catching Up

Life has been very busy in our household lately!  I've hardly had time for the computer at all!  I logged on last night for a few minutes and noticed that my Google Reader has over 300 unread blog posts!  YIKES!  I might have to do a quick "mark all as read" and move on!

Here's what has been going on in our neck of the woods:

My sweet Olivia turned 5!!  Can you believe it?  It seems like only yesterday that she made her first appearance in this world!

We had a small party on Sunday with some of her best friends and our family!  She enjoyed herself immensely!  Her favorite part of the party was opening presents (of course) and she LOVED, LOVED, LOVED the dress up clothes!  Here she is in her best princess garb:

I guess we don't need to wonder what she wants to be for Halloween!

Our parish also enjoyed the annual Oktoberfest!  The kids had tons of fun!  They each got a new shirt to wear for the festivities!  Originally, I wanted all three of them to have the skeleton shirt as this goes along with our recent science studies.  However, I couldn't find it in Nathan or Olivia's sizes, so I ended up with two other ones that I thought were cute!

Olivia loves to wear hair bands, so she was extra proud of her new outfit.

Speaking of skeletons, we've been doing tons of fun activities for our science lessons!  One thing (of many) that I really love about Catholic Heritage Curricula is that the lessons coincide with one another.  The first grade (Amelia) and the fourth grade (Nathan) science lessons are both working on the human body at the same time.  As a homeschooling novice, this really makes things easier for me, and more fun for them.

This week, we focused on the 5 senses.  A great resource that I found is called The Body Book!
I can't tell you how much fun this activity was!  Even Olivia and I made one.  Take a look....

Through the magic of paper, crayons, scissors and tape....we can see how all 5 senses work by using flaps!  We saw the inside of the eyelids, the ears, the mouth, the nose and what our skin looks like!  And of course, none of our sense would work without the brain!

By the end of this school year, we will have the entire body put together!  Next week is "The Tongue"!  I highly recommend this book if you happen to be working on the human body or the 5 senses!

We've also been working on our pumpkin decorating craft.  It seems that every year we carve the pumpkins too darn early and they start rotting because of the very warm Florida weather.  So, this time, I decided we would just decorate our pumpkins instead of carving them.  This idea came from Family Fun Magazine.  The are called Decoupage Pumpkins.  Although I don't have a photo of the finished product yet (they are still drying), here are some pictures of us making a huge mess!

Here's what the finished products are supposed to look like.  I don't think ours will look like this, but we sure had fun making the mess!

Good to Know!!

Olivia came inside yesterday afternoon COMPLETELY covered in mud and leaves.  There was no way to get her cleaned off without a bath.  As I was washing her hair, she looked at me and said, "Mom, do you know what it means when you are outside playing and you get really dirty?  It means that you're having the most fun ever!"  This was really good to know because I can be a little "uptight" about things like that.  It seems that no amount of Oxyclean or Spray-n-Wash can get the stains out of their clothes and their feet are always dirty.  However, Olivia reminded me of what is truly important.  They are KIDS!  It's SUMMER!  They need to be able to play and dig and be creative and GET DIRTY!  I need to lighten up!

We are currently in the throes of packing for our vacation!  We leave on Tuesday for Tennessee!  This will be the first time all 5 of us will be in the same car for 11 HOURS!  We've managed to get a weeks worth of clothes for all of us in only 2 suitcases!  Thankfully, there is a washer and dryer in our cabin.  Get ready for for lots of pictures when we return!

By the way, I want to thank all of you for your words of wisdom and encouragement with the whole "diet coke" thing!  I made it almost 48 hours without ANY!  Today I've had mostly water and right now I'm drinking Crystal Lite's Pink Lemonade!

Oh, and one more thing, I'm working on a complete blog make over!  Hopefully it will be completed sometime next month.  Thanks for your patience.

ENJOY your LABOR DAY!

Good Question, Olivia!

Driving home from Grandma's.....

Olivia: "Mom, where do the people from China dig to?"

Mom: "Georgia"

Well, what would you say?

The story of Noah's Ark......

as retold by a 4 year old....

"He build a boat. Because there was gonna be a flood. Animals were on it. And Noah. Forty days it rained. They see ground. Blue sky with a rainbow."

--Olivia Widener, Age 4

Well, I think that about sums it up, don't you? I love these narration exercises...especially with these little ones. I'm always amazed at how their minds work and it's fun to see what they remember about the story. If you could see the picture she drew, you'd see a HUGE purple rainbow...and Noah.

As an adult, I would have probably drawn a picture of the rain...the flood and destruction....cause isn't that what we adults do? We focus on the negative, on our struggles and on those times that we feel God has abandoned us. Not so with children.....at least mine. They always focus on the good, the best outcome, how they hope it to be. I think I can take a few lessons from my kids!

****P.S....I saw my doctor today. She's ordered an MRI of the Lumbar Spine for this Friday. Until then, I have muscle relaxers and anti-inflammatorys to keep me company****

Olivia's Day in Pictures!

We started our day in front of Wolfson Children's Hospital here in Jacksonville! She really was in a good mood. I tried to prepare her (as much as you can prepare a 4 year old) for what was going to happen. I didn't really want her to have any surprises.

She insisted on wearing her pink hair band! And of course we had Baby with us!

Just like most medical procedures...there was a lot of w.a.i.t.i.n.g. going on! We had to be there at 9:00am for an 11:00am surgery that didn't actually happen until about 11:30am. In the mean time....she played.......

and played.................

and played some more. In the surgical waiting area, she played Wii bowling with a little boy that was there to have his ear tubes replaced (for the 5th time!).

Finally, she was pre medicated. In all seriousness...I think they should give the pre-medication to the parents instead of the kids. She was very calm...even before the silly juice. Mom was the one that was about to crawl out of my skin! If I didn't know better, I'd say she looked drunk!

By this time, she was very intrigued with the butterflies on the ceiling.

She really wasn't interested in sitting still. She moved from chair to chair while I bit off every nail that wasn't covered!

This is her hospital transportation....it's a wagonboat! Each kid had their own! I had to kiss her goodbye in this...then they wheeled my baby away!

Tonsils......GONE!!

My sweet baby girl.

Her first post op popsicle..........

.....of which she promptly threw up about 5 minutes later!

This is post op day one and she still hasn't had any pain! For this...I am so thankful!