The Adventures of Bear Baby and Strawberry Girl

Co-op Preschool

I have been loving the experience of Charlotte's Co-op Preschool this year.  The kids attend once a week for a two hour class.  3 other moms from Church and myself rotate as the teachers, so we only have to teach once a month.  There are so many benefits:  I get to be involved personally in the teaching process, Charlotte gets to know her friends from Church better, and of course, we save lots of $$ :)

 I took full advantage of Mom being here for the Thanksgiving lesson:

Mom bought us this kids table and chairs several years ago, and I must say it is probably the most used piece of furniture in the house.  The girls sit and draw on it for literally hours every day, and for my preschool class, I simply pull it away from the table and it works absolutely perfectly!

 The kids painted water and clouds and then we made ships from their handprints.

Indian/Pilgrim hybrids of course!:

Halloween

As is typically the case when our family is actually busy doing something, I didn't get a ton of pictures of actual Halloween activities this year.  You will thus will be relieved to hear that our calendar this October included a full roster of spooktacular activities.

Arabelle's friend Aspen invited the whole family to a very cool Halloween party at her family farm which included pumpkin painting, a scavenger hunt, a haunted maze, and the ever-popular pinata.

We also went to the trunk or treat at the church which I was very relieved to see fell on the same night as the elementary school's halloween carnival.

Finally on Halloween we attended the Grimditch's fabulous annual party before trick or treating the neighborhood.  It was quite disappointing to see that the advent of day time trick or treating on Main Street appeared to have cut by half the number of night time trick or treaters in our neighborhood.

This is what happened after ONE night outside with the eerily tame squirrels in our neighborhood.  This was not a carved pumpkin:

 I got both the girls super cute Halloween outfits on my favorite discount website.  Charlotte refused to wear hers, but Arabelle got lots of compliments:

 I remember when Arabelle was this age,  the only Halloween costume she would wear was a Woody pajama shirt paired with a lacy black skirt.  This after I had bought her a very adorable and age/gender appropriate deluxe Minnie Mouse Costume.  Charlotte also refused to wear the Minnie Mouse costume.

Instead she opted to be Jake from Jake and the Neverland Pirates.

I know I'm her mother, but I must say, she's the cutest pirate on the Never Seas.

Rowan loves to chew on this Diego doll's feet:

Jeffrey was an Enderman from Minecraft.  While he was trick or treating the adults kept calling him a robot.

Arabelle and Emery:

Rowan had both a star and a pea pod costume.  Pictures coming soon when I find them.

8 Month Photo Shoot

He's been likened to a little old Chinese man and a young Tom Hanks.  Do you see it?

Spider Baby and Ghost Baby

Vintage outfit baby, complete with little white leather shoes with bells on them:

And looking like a Victorian baby ghost:

I didn't hold onto most of Jeffrey's baby clothes, but fortunately I kept these spider baby pajamas, which will never go out of style.

Monster Baby

As you can see here, Arabelle takes a particular interest in Rowan:

I have been wanting these monster bottom crochet baby pants for years, and knowing this was our last baby, I splurged and purchased them on Etsy:

The pants came with a hat:

I like Rowan's zany eyes in this one: