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Trick-or-treating in the residence halls at CMU

Aren’t they sweet?

And here’s a picture of the sisters before class.

For school Wednesday afternoon, the activity was pumpkin carving.  The subjects?  Science (we were dealing with a pumpkin after all; there has to be some science to that), art (we were expressing our creativity), math (we counted the seeds by fives and tens), and home economics (we roasted the seeds).  Did I miss anything?

Our babysitter, Kim, didn’t have school that day and was able to join us.

Based on a book we read about pumpkins, we guessed that Miss Kim’s pumpkin had more seeds.  (It was darker and had more lines, therefore we suspected it had spent more time on the vine.)  The result?

Our pumpkin:  578 seeds

Miss Kim’s pumpkin:  398 seeds

I guess we were wrong.  That was certainly a lot of practice counting!

I’d like to introduce a guest blogger today.  Her name is Kayla Kerr, and she is five-years-old.  She wants to tell you a story:

Mommy bought some caramel apples.  I was eating one of them, and I lost my tooth!  We looked for it, but we didn’t find it.  We think I swallowed it.

Here’s a picture before Kayla lost her tooth.  I had no idea she was going to lose it; I just took a picture because the girls had never had caramel apples before.

However, a few bites into the apple, I said, “Kayla, you might lose your tooth eating that!”  She said, “no,” but then I looked and saw the tooth was already missing.  We searched the caramel coating but found only peanuts.

I spent a bit of time working on these photos tonight, so I’ll just have to let the captions tell the story.  Maybe I will write more soon, but for now, enjoy!

Album on Facebook

Quote from Kayla:  ”This is the Upper Peninsula, and this is the Downer Peninsula.”  Don’t you love the logic of a five-year-old?

Aaron loves walking to work and stopping by the University Cup for a good cup of coffee.  And lately he has been picking up something else—white chocolate raspberry scones.  I have yet to try one from the UCup, but I decided to make my own (for Aaron, of course).  The plan was for Kayla and Madeline to help me make the scones during “cooking class,” but they were playing together so nicely that I let them continue with their imaginative game.  I had a little time to myself in the kitchen, which I enjoyed, and here was the end result:

I have to admit, they were quite tasty!  And not dry like traditional scones.  They actually reminded me more of a danish.  I found the recipe here.

http://www.pickycook.com/breakfastandbrunch/raspberrywhitechocolatescones.aspx

Thursday was Kayla and Madeline’s first ballet class!  And guess who their teacher is?

I started teaching dance when I was a freshman in high school and continued until I graduated.  I taught a little bit in college and also during my pregnancy with Madeline.  I took a break from dance during my pregnancy with Savannah and also last year due to a hip injury.  But this year I’m back, taking Grade V Cecchetti ballet (again) and teaching a class of four and five-year-olds.  (Madeline, 3, gets special privileges due to being the teacher’s daughter.)

Here are some pictures from Thursday.

Tuesday was Kayla’s first official day of Kindergarten!  I try to make the first day of school really fun for the girls.  Here’s a picture of Kayla with our agenda for the day.

This year the first thing on our list was walking downtown to Stan’s for breakfast.  Here are my three, amazingly bright, little students.

And based on requests from previous years, here is a picture of me, the teacher (taken by Kayla).

For our Spanish lesson, we practiced the colors by making a paper chain.  This was also good practice for patterns.

And as is customary for our first day of school, I brought out the stacking cubes so the girls could practice numbers, colors, shapes and animals.

We had a great first day and a great first week.  Tomorrow the fun continues!

Last September we spontaneously took the girls to the Dow Gardens on a gorgeous night and ended up catching some great photos.  Last Sunday, the day before Labor Day, we took the camera and went for a reprise.  This time we took Aaron’s mom along and introduced her to the amazing, beautiful gardens.  And once again, we had a little taste of Eden—of what life was meant to be like before the fall.  If you’ve never been there before, it’s worth a trip to Midland, Michigan!  I can almost guarantee you’ll experience God and His creation in a stunning, unforgettable way.