Saturday, October 31, 2015

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!



HAPPY HALLOWEEN my people! I am so excited about today. I can't wait to take the kids trick or treating tonight. The only bummer I am feeling about today is that I am going to miss the Ghost Adventures Halloween special, but I will be catching up on it tomorrow, so it's gonna be all good, but won't have the same effect. But here is a video that I found back in 2013. It is so cool and awesome, that I had to share.

Be on the lookout for our Halloween 2015 post coming this week!

Bye guys and have a great and safe night. Love you all!

Pumpkin #1
The "Miley Cyrus" pumpkin.

Friday, October 30, 2015

School Week 11 Recap

It's Halloween week people. We are going to be doing soo much Halloween work and treats, it's going to be too much that you will be sick of Halloween for the year.

Monday: We started the morning with morning work and then started on a Halloween banner. It's the same type of banner that we made for Thanksgiving last year. It's available on education.com.
They then did quiet time and then we read the two Halloween books that we got from the library. After that, we did computer work. My kids love and hate computer work. Some days, they want to do it and then the next, it's like pulling teeth.

Ariana playing a counting game

Airy had to watch the sesame street videos on Halloween. I love Jack Black and she had to watch this.

Samantha working on her spelling words

Airy made her triangle fish.

Tuesday: The girls wanted to read, so we did that after morning work, and more quiet time. Samantha is starting to read words out loud during quiet time and spell. After that, we worked on my airhead craft kit that I got for a Smiley360 mission.

We made the rainbow bracelet. It was the easiest, so that was the first to be made. 

happy kids to be able to play with candy

Our second craft. we made carrots


The rainbow bracelet and stick carrots.


After we did the crafts, we went straight to computer work. Sammy and Airy asked right when we started school this morning could we have a movie day and I told them that we needed to finish today's work. So after computer work, we watched a double feature of the Addams Family.


We started school around 11 am and we finished the second movie at 5. It was definitely a good day even though the weather sucked and rained all day.

Wednesday: Today was another late start. Plus getting an email from the curriculum I am or was using for this year, saying that the founders can no longer continue handing out curriculum because of no support was very disheartening and worrisome. Now I have to completely go back to what I was using last year, and probably come up with something on my own. Anyways, the girls helped Cayce cook brunch this morning and while they were doing that, they were playing a Farmville matching game.

They took an eating break and then they did computer work. Sammy worked on reviewing spelling words and then had her quiz. She missed two words, but that was to be expected. While that was happening, Ariana was doing her computer work. Thankfully, she will be able to continue the year on the same curriculum.
She picked out all the features for the house.

After quiet time, I decided to let them play with some playdough. They made letters and animals. After that, we watched Corpse Bride to end the day. I have always loved this movie. I am a lover of all Tim Burton films, so it was a must for Halloween week.



Thursday: I thought today would be a good day. We started early, and then the whining started and just all out problematic tantrums. Not listening and refusing to do what I asked. They only thing they were excited to do was workbooks.


After workbooks, we did quiet time. I needed that hour all to myself and Sammy was reading sentences that I had read before. So she remembers some of the book I read. Then computer work. This is when the meltdown went into overdrive.

So after not paying attention to videos, I pushed forward and thankfully there were some coloring pages that were to be done.
While Airy was coloring this frog

Sammy was doing this and she was actually sounding out the letters to figure it out. My day started to get better with that.

The other thing that made my day was that Samantha had to do some Halloween math and she got her counting bears and flew through that page. I was happy. Ariana had to write her words in her blue book and she didn't have one single tantrum or problem.

To end Airy's day, she did some Halloween coloring pages and it ended the day on a good note.
I hope that tomorrow is better since we will be doing fun things. It's basically going to be fun day Friday.

Friday: Today was mostly a fun day. We started late again today. These late starts are getting frustrated but I know that they are like that because of sleep patterns and work schedules. Anyways, they started with morning work, and went straight to carving our second pumpkin. I wanted the mockingjay symbol, but the pumpkin was a little too small and ended up being crappy.
We had to sit them in front of the door to watch because it rained the day and night before and it was nasty outside.

watching daddy

trying to make the symbol on the pumpkin. #FAIL

#CRAPPumpkin

After the mess of the pumpkin carving, which made my day even crappier, we played a Halloween homemade board game. I don't remember what website I got it from, I think it was education.com, but not sure. It was fun.


Cayce colored all the pieces and board. I taped, glued and laminated all of it. I won first, then Airy won 2nd, Sammy won third and Cayce lost. The rest of the day was spent watching 2 movies. We watched Hotel Transylvania and The Nightmare Before Christmas. The end of Halloween week is over and all we have left is trick or treating tomorrow night. I am ready for October to be over. I am ready for Thanksgiving.

We are going to be doing candy science experiments and more fall studies next week. Then we are going to move slowly into the Thanksgiving study.

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Four

I finished Allegiant back on October 16th. My review will be posted in exactly one week on the 5th of November. I am ready to read this book, and be done with this series. I started reading this book the same day I finished Allegiant. I don't know why I started it the same day.... maybe it was to get over my disappointment, or to hurry and get through the series, and be done with it.



Wednesday, October 28, 2015

October 4th- 7th Flooding

Before I start in on the heavy details, I just want to share this image that was going around Facebook and that almost every one of my friends was sharing.
(Source: I don't remember the source, so if the creator sees this, contact me, so I can give you proper credit for a beautiful image that was truly hopeful during those awful days.)

The start of the month for us started off rainy. It rained and it was so depressing. The storm started to get worse and the warnings started coming in on Saturday afternoon. Cayce was at work and was planning on staying overnight near work because he had to go back in at 5am. He said that the weather was so bad that the wind was shaking the car and he decided to risk it and come home. He called me and stayed on the phone with me the entire time and closer to home, the roads were just so awful. He had to detour several times. My brothers road was completely washed out. He got into the yard and went to back up and started spinning out.

Sunday morning when we woke up, which was a couple hours after he got home, we became glued to our Facebook feed. There was so much devastation coming in. My brother warning us that one of the roads leading to our house was shut down. My mom texting me telling me the same thing. We spent the whole day just relaxing and watching our Facebook feed. Cayce went out to take pictures. I am not going to be posting all of them, but the ones where I can tell where or what it is.








On Monday, while I was doing school with the girls, trying to keep some normalcy for them, Cayce went into our yard and took some videos of our property line and it was flooding and going towards the road that was closed. On Tuesday, The sun was coming out every now and then and it was so refreshing. Cayce was out of work for 2 days and went back on Wednesday. Our road was still closed off and there were many back roads just washed away and gone. Before he left for work, he went down to what caused our road shut down. It's scary, but the sun shining that day was so welcome.




On Sunday, a couple that lives on the other side of this gaping hole took a video and it showed water rushing through. It was disturbing. 

This road just got fixed last week by the National Guard and other roads around us are just now being repaired.

The state of South Carolina has never had something this catastrophic on record since records started being kept in the 1920's. Our governor called it the thousand year storm.

I hope nothing like this ever happens again. Now we are seeing the same thing happen again in Mexico! Please pray for those people and keep them in your thoughts.

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Influenster Box Recipe: Chicken & Broccoli Alfredo

I made this recipe the week after I made the spaghetti and meatballs recipe. This was the girl's favorite. We usually eat pre-made chicken and broccoli alfredo, but we made it from scratch. Samantha loves the "scratch" version and wants it all the time now.

This was the best recipe out of the two that I received from my influenster comfort voxbox. I will be sharing my pictures first and then share the recipe.

I was having a hard time not eating the chicken...lol.

looks so yummy

The end result is so delicious. I will be making this more often and it is way healthier than the pre-made crap!


**recipe time
1 tbsp. I can't believe it's not butter
1 1/2 lbs. boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into strips
1 jar Ragu classic Alfredo sauce
1 pkg. frozen broccoli florets, thawed
1 pkg. Ragu Golden Veggie Fettuccine Pasta

1. Melt spread in large skillet over med. heat and cook chicken, stirring occasionally, until chicken is thoroughly cooked. Remove chicken and set aside.

2. Stir sauce and broccoli into same skillet. Bring to a boil over medium high heat. Reduce heat to low and simmer, covered, stirring occasionally, until broccoli is heated through, about 5 minutes. Stir in chicken and cook, stirring occasionally and heated about 2 minutes. Serve over hot fettuccine and sprinkle, if desired, with grated Parmesan cheese.

I cut the chicken into bite sized pieces and used just regular fettuccine pasta.

Review: Is This A Cry For Help by Emily Austin

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