I Scream, You Scream...

Doesn't everyone make ice cream on the first really chilly day of the season? Okay, maybe ice cream doesn't just scream winter, but Gene and the boys made waffles the other morning, and to get to our waffle iron, you have to pull out the ice cream maker. So with the ice cream machine just sitting on the kitchen countertop, Gene decided that he and his boys would make special dessert!

First we had to brave the stores the day after Thanksgiving to get cream and half and half. Then the boys helped measure and pour,

and smelled the vanilla beans,

and observed Daddy scraping out the seeds,
and watched the mixture swirl round and round.

The hardest part was having to wait for it all to harden in the freezer. But in the end, it was so worth the wait.

It was especially yummy on top of some of Nana's homemade apple pie.

Mmmmm!

Our Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday! What's not to love? There's tons of delicious food, you get to spend the day with family, and no one has to worry about finding that perfect gift! It's the best day and even though we have our fair share of house stresses right now, being with family is the perfect cure!

Our feast! Henry loved the whipped cream on his pumpkin pie. And Will loved spending time with Pop.
We even made turkeys out of pinecones to celebrate the special bird!

Gobble, gobble!

The Letter F

For our letter F week, we focused on fish, fire, and feasts with family and friends. The boys stamped fish all over their capital F and turned their lowercase f into a fire.


Henry made a fingerprint fish and we visited the fish at the zoo's aquarium with some friends on Monday.


Our favorite fish books were Fish Eyes by Lois Ehlert, Hooray for Fish! by Lucy Cousins, and Bright Stanley by Matt Buckingham.


Will also made patterns with three different kinds of goldfish crackers.


And another day, he turned his pretzel snack into all the letters of the alphabet. Here he's showing off his F.


We read lots of Thanksgiving books this week. Our favorite two were Sometimes It's Turkey, Sometimes It's Feathers by Lorna Balian and Turkey Trouble by Wendi Silvano. On Tuesday, Will's class had its Thanksgiving feast.

Will was so excited that his daddy came to the feast!

I was there too!

Will and Chloe are the best of friends. They absolutely adore one another and are so cute together! Will really enjoyed sharing a feast with his school friends.

After school, the boys helped me make a sweet potato and pumpkin pie for our at-home feast. (More pictures from our family Thanksgiving feast to come!)

Yum!

And to end our F week, we visited the Houston Fire Museum on Saturday morning.

Unfortunately, half the museum was closed for painting and another large portion was occupied by a birthday party, so we didn't get to see or do much, but the boys did like sitting in the antique fire truck and pretending to slide down the pole.

We had a fantastic F week!

Thankful

On this Thanksgiving Eve, I am thankful for my wonderful family, both immediate and extended, near and far, young and old and yet unborn.

Most of all, I am thankful for these three guys who make every day special,

for my two little boys who adore one another and are the best of friends,

for my sweet husband,and for knowing that wherever we end up, we'll always be home because we're a family.

This Thanksgiving, while I am most thankful for those closest to me, Will is thankful for his friends and Henry is thankful for cheese! What are you thankful for?

Busy Busy Boys

My boys are always SO busy

riding,

cutting, painting, and climbing
like

monkeys

in a
tree!

The Letter E

We had another busy week full of house negotiations and lots of stress, but the boys and I did manage to fit in some E activities. We started off the week with a field trip down to the science museum. The boys always love the Energy Hall, so we spent lots and lots of time there. Will is fascinated by the section that describes how a refinery works.

On the way out, we found Earth on the planet pathway, which tied into our next craft project.
At home, we made an elephant E and an Earth e. Henry loved finger-painting his e to make it look like the Earth!

I think they're pretty cute!

We read several elephant books to go along with our elephant E. The boys' favorites were the Elmer books by David McKee, Bernard's Bath by Joan Goodman, and Today I Will Fly! by Mo Willems. If you haven't heard of Elmer, he is a multi-colored elephant, so we made our own Elmers by "painting" tissue paper onto a elephant.

The craft didn't exactly turn out like it was supposed to.

The water "paint" was supposed to soak the tissue paper enough so that when the tissue paper dried and fell off, you were left with a multicolored elephant. Our tissue paper didn't really bleed, but the boys sure had fun painting their elephants. For our cooking project this week, I had planned to make earth muffins (blueberry muffins with green food coloring) but we just ran out of time. We did have a couple of eggplants on hand from our CSA box that we needed to use up, so the boys helped me try out a new recipe that was basically a combination of eggplant Parmesan and baked ziti. Henry is such a good little helper! He sprinkled the eggplant with salt and later he even helped me bread the eggplant slices.So, despite another busy week, we still managed to have a lot of fun exploring the letter E!

Sneak Peak

We had our annual family pictures taken yesterday afternoon and our wonderful photographer already has a sneak peak up on her website. Head on over to http://www.mulberrydreams.com/ for a few of the shots!

Are You Ready for Christmas?

I am not ready yet! Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, and I don't even want to think about Christmas (except for present-shopping! I do that year-round) until after I've enjoyed a long Thanksgiving weekend with family. But, the rest of the world is already getting ready for Christmas. The boys' school had all their Christmas decor up today.

So even though I'm not ready for Christmas just yet, I couldn't resist getting a few shots of the boys. This candy house is the biggest hit with all the little kids! Can you imagine what would happen if it were real candy?

There's even a (fake) candy soldier!And of course the photo shoot ended with the boys tumbling to the ground!Only 6 more weeks til Christmas???