Camp Catch-up

Lagging behind again, I'm afraid. Here's the recap for the last day of our Fall Camp:

We read a short book titled, "The Halloween Play". It was a great easy read that allowed all the kid's to participate! I am quite impressed with how well the kids did all week with listening to the stories. There were the occasional picture hogs who wanted to stand right in front of the page to see the photos and block the book from the others in the audience, but they were so darned cute and interested we couldn't get mad.

I decided in lieu of a craft we would have a coloring page that I assembled prior to the afternoon camp. I had photos of the kids throughout the week and I simply printed out a blank scarecrow page, cut out the face and placed the kid's photo behind the hole. Easy! Each kid got to color themselves as a scarecrow!

I also came up with a really cool rhyme in order that we may do a little skit. This took quite a bit of time to come up with and I was excited about sharing with the group. However, we had two moms sign up to attend the camp at the last minute and for only ONE DAY??? Because I didn't have their kids information to write in the skit, I decided to scrap the whole idea. Sad. :(

We let the kids run around outside in the awesome weather instead and we moms got a little break from the noise.

All in all, another GREAT camp experience!! I plan on hosting another one in February in our new house. (More on THAT later, so stay tuned!!)

Fall Camp: Days 2-4

I had great intentions of getting Day 2 up in a timely manner and then I remembered that I had BUNCO with the church mom's group!

Then we had a rough day yesterday and Dominic ended up napping through camp so we missed yesterdays activities. So this post will have days 2-4.

Day 2:
We read "Fall Mixed Up" and "Five Little Pumpkins". For our craft we painted pumpkins using the kid's fists and thumbs. So cute! We rotated the papers around the table so that each child has all the pumpkins on it! One of the kid's didn't want to get messy (say WHAT??) so there were only 4 little pumpkins on our paper.

Day 3:
Read "Thanksgiving Cats" and "The Great Turkey Race". Cute book!! In lieu of a craft the kids were to participate in our own relay race and contest.

Day 4 (today):
We read "The Night Before Thanksgiving" and "Green Soup". The first book was really cute!! For our craft we traced the kid's hands and foot to make a turkey placemat. I LOVE this!! We added googly eyes to the turkey and if I say so, it just made the turkey's look all the more adorable.

Tomorrow we will have the last day of camp. Bittersweet, as usual. We will take an official group camp photo to take home. We have two stories picked out to read and the craft is still up in the air, although it was originally supposed to be a scarecrow, which we may still do.

As usual, camp has been a lot of fun. The kids did really well with storytime and crafts. I think 2.5-3 years is the PERFECT age for our camp. We're really trying to help them learn to listen and sit attentively.

I'm already thinking about the next camp session to take place possibly in January. Themes are plentiful, but will most likely be international, sports or transportation. Which do you prefer???

Fall Camp: Day One

I was approached by my meetup playgroup about helping to put together a camp session for them. I met with AM and she and I came up with a week that would work for us both and went from there. We had our first day this afternoon and it was a lot of fun!
The theme is FALL.

First, we read "Leaf Man" by Lois Ehlert and then we made our own leaf man, complete with google eyes. Each day we'll make an animal out of them and hide them somewhere in the house.

Next, we read "Hallo-weiner". It's such a cute story. For our second craft we made a leaf sun catcher out of clear contact paper and tissue paper.

Dominic fell asleep as soon as we got home. Only the second time that he's fallen asleep spontaneously while watching TV. Silly boy...

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

Showing off our racecar pumpkin. Isn't it cool all lit up???

Happy Halloween from our owl and ghost!!!

So, the Longhorns really mussed it up big time for the OU game. Yuk! We are rebounding from the game and hubby has pretty much written them off for the next two seasons.

I've had a bit of time to reflect on our activities from last month up to now and it's more than I had thought it was. We've been so sick for so long that it really didn't seem like we'd done much of anything. So, in this post I'll post one photo from each playdate we've had recently. Here we go...

Our back to school neighborhood playdate. I made these stickers and put them on mini M&M packs.

The arboretum has their huge pumpkin patch open. We had a picnic.

My attempt at getting 2 kids in 1 photo.

Getting friendly at a hot air balloon festival.

We went to the international airport to an outdoors plaza to watch the incoming planes. VERY cool!

A make your own ice cream playdate. Yes, another one!

We were invited to a local high school football game. Dominic loved the noise and we stayed for the halftime show.

We checked out the zoo.

Did the Oktoberfest thing...

Visited the state fair.

And started soccer lessons!!!

All of these activities was with friends and/or playgroups. Pretty busy despite pneumonia, huh??

Hook Em' Horns!!!

Today is the big Red River rivalry and we are all sporting our burnt orange while Dad is at the game. Let's hope the horns win, otherwise it's going to be a long night. Dad tends to let the outcome of the game determine his mood.

We've been dealing with some illness this month, hence the long absence from posting. I've been trying to get over pneumonia, then hubby got it and then I got sick again! Now Dominic has a stuffy nose and I'm praying it's just a cold and not anything worse. We can't handle much more!

Needless to say, we haven't been out much due to our lock-down.

Halloween is just a few weeks away and we've got Jillian's owl costume ready to go. I found it at a consignment sale for $10!! Score!
Dominic wants to be a spooky ghost. I'm racking my brain trying to figure out how to make a costume without having to have a sheet draped over his head. Most of the ghost costumes for kids are rather girly in nature.

This is undoubtedly the most boring post I've EVER posted. I apologize. My brain is not quite all the way awake and I just wanted to post while I had Jillian napping.

My little scallywag is THREE!

I have had a three year old living in my house for 8 days now. Dominic had a Labor Day birthday this year and we had two parties for the lucky little guy.

His friend party was a pirate themed fiesta and he chose the guests: all the camp kids. Two of them couldn't make it so we only had 4 kids + Dominic made 5. A perfectly small group of kids. He wanted to invite his newest friend, M, but we had just invited them to J's baptism and didn't want to overload them with our family. Though he really did miss her!

We had a blast! Dominic dressed up to greet his guests and they all had their own pirate hat, eyepatch, sash and tattoo waiting for them to put on before joining the party.
Next we had lunch. PB&J or tortilla rolls for the littles and ham,cheese and pineapple sammy's for the adults. Caprese skewers, fruit and cheese tray. Plenty of beer, water and juice to go around.
We had two games to play. Walk the plank, cannonball toss and the treasure hunt! Everyone LOVED the treasure hunt!! The plank was a fun game, too. It seemed like only Dominic liked the cannonball toss. Oh well...
After the games it was time for cake and then opening presents!

The next morning I asked Dominic what he dreamed about and he replied, "Mine pirate party!!" I'd say he enjoyed himself!

As for Jillian, we've had to readjust her meds again. The doctor wanted us to begin weaning her down to once a day dosage and after 2 weeks I can't take it anymore. She is crying more often than not and it's really making me sad. I decided to go back to twice a day dosage for now. We can try weaning again in another month or so.

Dominic had his 3 year check-up yesterday. He's grown 2 inches and 3.5 pounds since last November. Still a little fry, but growing on his own curve so no need to worry. I just don't make big people. ;)