Paint and Literacy Night

Tonight was Paint and Literacy Night at Emmie and Ellie's school. They started this last year and it is probably my favorite school event!
They have pizza for dinner and then read a book and then paint a picture that goes along with the book.

This year the book was The Magical Garden of Claude Monet and we painted a Monet inspired painting! We learned a lot about Impressionism and the techniques Monet used when painting.

At the end of the night each family received a copy of the book!

Ruthie's First Soccer Game & Gamecock Football

Today Ruthie had her first soccer game. She's playing indoor soccer at the Y and it's a really great setup. First of all it's INDOORS and secondly they practice 20 minutes before their game so no having to go during the week for practice. They have no goalie with the object being for the kids to practice their footwork. Ruthie has been SO excited about her game and she was also excited that one of her friends from preschool, Mary, was on her team! She scored the first goal of the game so she was thrilled about that. The kids were super cute and she had a great time!

prayer before the game

Roo getting ready to kick

stretching after halftime

When you watch the videos Ruthie is the one in the green shirt with the hot pink socks. :)





After the game Ruthie and I headed to meet up with the rest of our crew. Paul had taken the other kids to tailgate and Ruthie and I made it just in time to go to the game. This was JP's first USC game and he had a great time! The kids lasted until the beginning of the 4th quarter which I thought was pretty impressive.

Adventures with JP

It's been a big change just having one child on Tuesdays and Thursdays this year! Ruthie goes to preschool those days so JP is an only child for 3 hours. Many days we run around trying to get things done but I've been trying to work in some fun days where JP gets ALL my attention.

When the weather first started cooling off, before it got cold, we made a trip to the zoo. We had a really great time checking out the exhibits that JP wanted to see!

Waiting for the train.

Train rides are so fun!

Crocodile

The gorillas were right up at the window and kept rolling around. JP thought it was so funny!

He didn't want to feed the giraffes but he enjoyed watching me feed them.

He loves the carousel!

He spent a lot of time watching the seals and sea lion. 

The sea lion/seal show is one of our favorite things at the zoo! I got some of it on video this time since it wasn't crowded.



We also spent a morning at the library. JP picked out a book and insisted on carrying it through the library, checking it out himself, and carrying it out to the car. So cute! I think he's going to be a book lover like his sisters.


Sometimes we go on "JP speed" walks with Franklin. JP LOVES to hold Franklin's leash.


Sometimes we cook. He loves his little bowl of noodles.


Sometimes we sit around and admire his tummy lol!


Sometimes we just lay around and read books. Generally these books invovlve something that goes (construction equipment, trains, boats, etc) or Clifford.


Sometimes he swipes my laptop from under my nose and has a grand ol' time!

I will say, no matter how much fun we have he's always ready to go pick up his Roo! 

Fall Festival

The first graders at our school have a Fall Festival every year during their unit on goods and services. In the weeks leading up to the festival they earn money. They are also in charge of a station and they make a sign and pick a price for their item. During the festival they rotate between being sellers and being buyers. When they are sellers they also have to practice their math while they make change for their customers. It is so much fun and I'm so glad I got to go help out!
Ellie was in charge of the pickle station. They were charging $3 for pickles!! (Apparently they were the best pickles ever!) She had a great time being a seller!

Dr. Hill, our principal, came by to buy some lunch. She had to sit down and find out why these pickles were worth $3! (Apparently they are "fresh" pickles...as in fresh out of the jar..ha!)

Being a buyer is fun too! The festival was during lunch time so the kids enjoyed getting to have pickles, nachos, corndogs and trail mix for their lunch!

Halloween Fun

So we went trick or treating on Halloween and did Boo at the Zoo but we also did some other fun Halloween things!
One day after school we headed to a nearby church and visited their pumpkin patch. We always get our pumpkins from them and the kids look forward to going every year!

Ellie's pumpkin

I had to veto the pumpkin that was as big as JP!

The kids all picked out a pumpkin...Emmie and Ellie picked normal size pumpkins and Ruthie and JP wanted little ones. Then when we checked out the guy said the kids could each pick one more pumpkin to take with them out of a pile of little ones! So we loaded up on pumpkins!

 

The week before Halloween we went to Trick or Treat with the Greeks at the Greek Village at USC. The sororities and fraternities set up booths outside the houses and you trick or treat. The kids loaded up on candy and most houses had a fun activity. They had face painting, corn hole, a dunk tank, and pie in the face, among other activities. I have a friend who has taken her kids every year and I always seemed to hear about it after the fact. I got the info ahead of time this year and thought I might take the kids if it worked out. Well Ruthie heard me talking about it to someone and as soon as the big girls got in the car that day she told them we were going trick or treating at USC! That girl knows how to work the system! The kids had a blast and I loved getting to show them where I lived in college.




On Halloween Ruthie had a party at preschool (and JP got to tag along!). The kids dressed up in their costumes, trick or treated around the preschool and church, did some crafts, and had a yummy snack! JP and Ruthie both had a great time!

Disney Day 7 - Epcot

We spent our final day at Disney at Epcot. My parents left that morning so we were on our own with 4 kiddos! We survived but it was really nice to have had help the other days!
We started our morning waiting 30 minutes for the bus to arrive so we got to Epcot right at our breakfast reservation time and had to rush to the restaurant.

We had reservations before the park opened at Akershus which is a princess character meal. I was really excited because this is the only character meal where you can meet Belle and she's my favorite!








Akershus is in Norway so when we left breakfast we headed straight for the meet and greet with Elsa and Anna and only had to wait about 5 minutes.

They were beyond excited to meet Elsa and Anna!

Anna even managed to get a smile and a kiss from JP.

When we left breakfast the line for the Frozen Ever After ride was soooo long (it went down the sidewalk past the Norway area). I was really glad we had fastpasses for later in the day!
Our fast passes for the day were for Frozen Ever After (our Tier 1 fast pass), Turtle Talk with Crush and Journey into Imagination with Figment.
After Elsa and Anna we headed back to the front to ride Soarin'. Ruthie and JP were too little so we did rider swap and then they went to a different attraction with Paul. After they didn't so much enjoy the Avatar ride I had to talk Emmie and Ellie into going on Soarin' but I told them Gran rode it twice so they decided maybe it would be ok! The girls LOVED the ride! They couldn't wait to ride it again with Paul later in the day!
We had so much fun on the Frozen Ever After ride. It was great!

The décor was amazing! My pictures didn't even come close to doing it justice.

Check out JP's eyes! I cracked up when I noticed!

When we got out of Frozen it was around lunchtime so we decided to walk around the World Showcase and eat our way around the world! We had tons of snack credits left over to use and it was food and wine festival! The downside was World Showcase was PACKED and it was pretty hot. We did eat some good food though!

We had to explain the whole concept of a phone booth to them in England.

They loved watching the ducks.

By the time we got back to the front we were so hot and worn out. We found a shady spot and got drinks and found a stand selling fruit and cheese...the perfect snack to give us all a little oomph!
We did Journey into Imagination with Figment and then when Paul and the big girls did Soarin' I took the little kids and did The Seas with Nemo. They loved it! Especially JP! We went back to the same building to do Turtle Talk with Crush and the whole time he was begging to do The Seas again! When we got out of Turtle Talk there was almost NO line for The Seas (as compared to the 30 minute wait we'd had earlier!) so we went over and rode it again. JP was a happy camper!

Poor JP fell asleep sitting straight up during Living with the Land.

When we got done with all our rides it was starting to rain a little bit and the sky looked pretty stormy so we headed to wait in an inside line to meet Joy and Sadness. We waited what felt like FOREVER in a line that barely moved. It was a bit ridiculous. BUT it was raining outside so we were glad to be somewhere dry! Joy and Sadness definitely had the best autographs of our trip!








When we done with meeting Joy and Sadness the rain was gone and the temperature had dropped a lot. IT was quite lovely out! We had dinner reservations at Tutto Italia and on our way we stopped to meet Mulan.

The inside of the pavilion in China...gorgeous!

Our dinner at Tutto Italia was excellent! We were also able to get in a little early which was nice because we were all tired from a hot day with heavy crowds!



After dinner we headed back to our hotel to pack to head home the next morning and get a good nights sleep! The next morning we got up, ate breakfast, used up the rest of our snack credits and we headed home. After a rough start (where we had to pull over because Ellie felt car sick) we made good time. The kids were troopers and the only stop we made on the way home was for lunch at Chick-fil-A!