Their personalities shine through

We painted pumpkins today. The girls had a great time, and I enjoyed watching their personalities come out in their painting styles.

The first shots are Gracie's pumpkins & her paint plate. Notice that all the colors are mixed together and it turns out to be all one color. She likes to dip her paintbrush in every color, every time she gets more paint.

Now, for Exhibit B. Here are Chloe's pumpkins, paint plates, & paintbrushes (notice the plural on all of that). She likes to have her paint colors all separate, with separate paint brushes for each color. (Which is why we need 2 different paint sources. She definitely can't share paint with Gracie. They each have their own watercolors too, since Gracie's all end up being grayish black by the time she's done painting one picture...)

Izzy came through while we were doing post-painting hand-washing and walked over the table to smell everything. She stepped in paint with 2 different paws and ran around the kitchen before I caught her (thankfully I noticed and put up the gate so she didn't get onto the carpet). So, I had extra paws to wash, plus a few paint spots on the floor. Note to self, don't leave paint out on the table if the dog is around...

Pictures of the girls

I've been meaning to put these pictures up for a few weeks now, but have never remembered to. We had pictures taken for Julia's 1st birthday, and had pictures taken of all 3 girls at the same time. Here are the ones we got (& LOVE). We had to go 2 different times to get the pictures taken...the first day, Gracie got really freaked out, wouldn't smile, and started crying when we kept telling her to smile. So, we left, and came back the next day to try again. We were glad we did, because we ended up getting great pictures!!

A trip to New York City

We went into "The City" for a day trip on Saturday. We had a great time and saw some parts of Manhattan that we hadn't ventured to before. We'd been to Central Park several times, but we've only ever managed to make it to the far southern end of the park before (it's WAY bigger than I ever thought it was before actually going there...) So, this time, we parked by the northwestern edge of the park, and wandered through the "North Woods" section of the park some. There are parts of the park that are very busy (lots of bikers, joggers, & people out walking their dogs), but there were also parts of it that were windy dirt trails. It was fun to get to see this part of the Park. Here are the girls attempting to catch falling leaves, and us by a waterfall (waterfalls in Central Park?? Who knew...)

Here's Ben & the girls by one of the many bridges in Central Park. The girls were amazed by the size of this bridge and enjoyed yelling and hearing their echoes.

One of our goals in going this trip was to do a little bit of letterboxing. This is a new hobby that we've found. It's basically like a scavenger hunt...you find clues online and it directs you to a letterbox. In the letterbox are a rubber stamp and a log. After stamping both logbooks (theirs & ours), you re-hide the box in the same place you found it for someone else to find. We've done this a couple times on hiking trails near us, but had found clues for a few in NYC that we thought it would be fun to find.

This letterbox is called Goliath and it was in Central Park. This was a hard one for us to find...we were directed to a certain section of the Park (near the "Loch") and from there we were supposed to find (in this order...) a rustic bridge, then a huge fallen log, a shelf of rocks, and then the tallest oak tree near said rocks. Well, as I mentioned above, there are MANY bridges in Central Park, so we found one, followed the path past a huge log, and found a tree near some rocks, but NO BOX. So, we kept walking and found a new bridge, log, rocks, & tree, and TA-DA, there was the box! We had almost given up, so we were all so excited to have found Goliath! (All except for Julia...she didn't have a care in the world beyond the crackers on the stroller tray...)

Our next purpose in going into the City was to take a boat ride past the waterfalls (these were man-made waterfalls put up as a public art exhibit over this summer). We had gotten tickets for this boat ride when Martin & Shelly were in town in July (we couldn't get on the boat then, so we got these tickets for now). We thought we'd left Central Park in plenty of time to get to the boat, but, between needing to switch subway trains to get there, a last minute bathroom stop, and having to walk about 15 minutes to get to the Pier (at a 3-year old's pace), we ended up being late... by about one minute. We saw them pulling up the gangplank and everything. We tried to buy tickets for a later boat ride, but since this was the last weekend for the exhibit, they were all sold out. We were all very disappointed...especially to have been quite so close. My niece Emma told us "If you had just not eaten breakfast, or eaten breakfast at a restaurant, then you would have made it onto the boat" Helpful advice...

The girls were fairly sad...until we promised them we'd find ice cream after lunch... So, instead of seeing the waterfalls from the boat, we saw them from the pier and then went and ate at a seafood restaurant at the South Street Seaport. Then we walked down to Battery Park (which overlooks the Statue of Liberty). There, we found ice cream and another letterbox. This one was called "I love New York" and was in Battery Park in the roots of a tree that looks like a "devil's pitchfork". This tree fit the bill perfectly.

We went looking for another letterbox, but this one didn't have as clear of a starting place, and we couldn't ever find it.

Then, we ate dinner at the foot of this famous building at Madison Square Park, and Chloe took over camera duties while the rest of us finished our dinners. Here are some of her child's eye views of the city...


And one last picture before we headed back to the subway and back to our car.

Overall, we had a fun time wandering the city. The girls did really well (and we had a lot less whining than we've sometimes had during our treks).

Chloe Reading

Chloe has several different things she has to do every week for school. She has a story out of her reading book, and then has to learn spelling and vocabulary going along with that book. Now, they've also added a reading challenge where they get a little (4-6 page) book to read. If they can read it, then they get to take it back and get another book to bring home. They get stickers and prizes along their way to 30 books. Here's the first one...

Julia sliding

Julia loves to slide at the park (and she's really pretty good at it). Here's a movie of her and Gracie...

Our pumpkin girl

We went and got pumpkins this weekend, so the girls wanted to make Chloe's pick into a princess. Isn't she cute!!

Sampling of Chloe's School Work

Chloe is in first grade this year. Here she is with Mrs. Cerimele, her teacher. I thought I'd put up some of her school work, so you can get an idea of some of what she's doing in school. Every week, she has to read a story, and then she has spelling words (about 10) and vocabulary words (3 or 4) that she needs to learn that are from that story. She's done really well so far this year...she's picking up her new words fairly easily, and is much improved in her behavior over last year... she's gotten smiley stamps EVERY DAY so far (compared to last year where she didn't at least once a week)

So, here's some of her work...

In language, here's a vocabulary test, and they're learning about sentence parts and how they fit into a sentence.

Here are a couple of her spelling tests...

And a couple math tests. These are addition (they've worked on +0, +1, & +2, and then have started on subtraction as well)

She also comes home with pictures that she's drawn fairly regularly. They're all based on princesses in one way or another.

Every month, they can do an extra credit project. The first is her September project (write a sentence and draw a picture about something you did this summer). The second is her October project (make a fire safety poster)

Then, here are some of the fall activity pages and pictures they've made the past couple of weeks...