Maggie's Preschool Halloween Party

Today was Maggie's special Halloween party day at preschool.  All the kids came dressed in their costumes and trick-or-treated around church.  Then each kid got to show off their costumes to their classmates, pick out pumpkins in the little school pumpkin patch and decorate pumpkin cookies.  

Today was Will's day off from work so he as very excited to join Maggie at school for this special day.

Maggie...our little bumble bee.

Meg and Zeke are our good friends from our neighborhood.  Meg (also "Margaret Grace") is in Maggie's class this year.

Trick-or-treating time!

 Class picture

Showing off her costume to her classmates...super cute!

Kate's Field Trip to the Pumpkin Patch

Kate's kindergarten class took their very first field trip today...yellow bus and all!  There trip took them to the pumpkin patch at Impossible Acres where they went on a tractor ride, went through hay bale mazes, petted baby animals and picked out pumpkins.

Here is Kate's class with her teachers Mrs. Chicoine and Mrs. Nicholson.  (Kate is bottom, middle, wearing her pumpkin shirt.)

Hay bale maze

Brushing the pony with her friend Mileh

  Petting a bunny

 Snuggling a kitten

Tractor ride!

Kate took her pumpkin picking very seriously.  She was the last one to find the perfect pumpkin.

Perfect pumpkin found (despite me asking her to stare in the sun for a picture).

Pink Spectaculars

Kate is wrapping up her soccer season with AYSO.  She played last year as a 4-year-old in their gymboree program (no games or jerseys, just practice and scrimmages).  This year has been a totally different experience with real games (though no score is kept), real jerseys and real practices.  Kate has loved her time on the team, the Pink Spectaculars.  She is amazing at running super fast down the field and keeping up with the ball.  She is aggressive, non-fearful and high-endurance. She tries her absolute hardest every game with true intensity and at times has scored some pretty awesome goals.  Though our hope for Kate is that she will become a swimmer/water polo player like us, we still love seeing her athleticism on the field and will encourage her to play soccer every autumn until she grows tired of it.

I love her intense game face!

Best friend, Nicholas is playing this year, which helped encourage Kate to sign up too (though they are on separate teams).

This Saturday is Kate's last game of the season.  I am actually sad to see it come to an end and have no more games to watch on Saturday mornings.  It has been so much fun watching the Pink Spectaculars play these past 2 months!

Pumpkin Patch Time!

On Friday we took the girls to our local pumpkin patch, Impossible Acres.  They are not necessarily known for having the best pumpkins but they have the cutest baby animals the kids can hold and pet.

We started our afternoon off looking for the biggest and best pumpkins yet!

 We found 4 huge pumpkins...perfect for carving!

After our pumpkin search we headed to the animal barn.

Kate and Maggie loved holding the baby chicks.  Maggie especially wanted me to let her pet the blonde ones. :-)

The little kittens were the girls favorite...so soft and cuddly.

The girls did a great job brushing Burrito the Donkey.

Baby goats.

Peter the cow was only 10 days old!  He was super skinny.

Little piglets

More kittens

Chasing chickens.  Kate was so proud of herself that she petted 10 chickens.  In Kauai she tried so hard to chase and pet chickens but they were too fast for her.  These chickens were plump and slow.

University Covenant Nursery School Rummage Sale

This week wraps up a very busy week for me.  This past Saturday was the preschool's annual rummage sale. This is a HUGE fundraiser for the school and being a board member means I help out with the whole event.  All week long, donations were dropped off at the church's multipurpose room. We sorted and priced every item that was donated. By the end of the week, the MPR was packed with so much stuff to sell. On Friday I spent over 6 hours getting all the items ready for Saturday morning. Saturday started at 6:00 am with taking all of the donated items from the MPR to the church parking lot. People were lining up outside to be the first to get all the good deals. We even scored some awesome items to take home too! The school far surpassed their fundraising goal! It was a very crazy but rewarding week!

One of my main jobs was to sort, organize and price the toys.  We had A LOT of toys!

The whole church parking lot was transformed into an enormous rummage sale!

Our biggest score from the sale was this awesome Power Wheels Jeep for $25! The girls were super excited!

Each girl got to pick out a $1 item of their own. Maggie chose a really cute wooden toy kitchen mixer. Kate picked out this Easy Bake Oven.  It actually works!  Gramma helped create some cake mixes for the girls and they have successfully baked!

Before the official sale started I purchased this Barbie RV for the girls too.

I also scored $2 tap shoes and Gymboree sandals for the girls, a princess toy cash register and a fun Noah's Ark decor piece.  I actually wasn't planning on buying anything but I couldn't resist the good deals and supporting the school!