Fore!!

Gage had the opportunity to play on a beginners golf league this fall at PGA Education Center. It was a great program and he looked forward to every "PGA Day". Monday was the last day for this season, so rather than stay at the driving range/practice area, the coaches had them play six holes on a short course at a golf course nearby. All the kids did great! Gage's team (all age 5!) ended up 2 over par (not bad!). Afterward, they had a pizza party and got their trophies for participating. He told me to make sure he is signed up for spring, in the meantime, it looks like we may have a new family sport :-)

Happy Halloween!

If I am remembering correctly, I think Halloween was a one-day holiday when I was a kid. Not so these days. We tried to limit the activities to the week of, but it seems like the "trick-or-treating" activities started around Columbus Day. Gage chose to be Darth Vader this year (no surprise!!) except for at the library storytime he decided to wear his Indian costume. So when the librarian asked all of the kids to tell her what their Halloween costumes were, he insisted that he was Darth Vader! Poor lady either thinks he has a great imagination or his parents won't buy him a costume! Gage and his friend Olivia also went to a program at OxBow EcoCenter, where they learned about "Creepy-Crawlies" and made puppets and sang and danced to songs about bugs.

Last but not least, We won tickets to a Halloween Party at Heathcote Botanical Garden. Which I was very happy about, because there isn't any trick or treating going on in our neighborhood! We had a great time, one of the local high school drama clubs sponsored it and ran the games for the kids. They also turned the old pioneer house at the garden into a haunted house complete with zombies. Much too scary for Gage (and me) so we stayed out of that area. They did a terrific job of it though!

Monster School!!!

I wrote this post wayyyy back in August and was going to add in pics before I posted. So, anyway...better late than never!! Today was the first day of monster school :-). In case you are wondering if Gage is going to school to learn how to be a monster, or is already a monster and that is where monsters go to school...ummm, well....I'm not sure which or both or neither! He just insists that that is the name of his school. And, since he is 5 and this makes sense to him, we'll just go with it :-) 

Anyway, we had a great first day of school, minus the guy sitting near us at our lunch date that the cops came and took out in handcuffs! 

We are doing the Five in a row curriculum again this year for the bulk of our day and having a great time. Our book this week is The Bee Tree  by Patricia Polacco. 

Gage also made a "self-portrait" and included many things he loves <3

Gageisms

As we were driving home this afternoon I was thinking aloud deciding if I wanted to stop at the store just to get croutons or make some when we got home. Gage pipes up "Mom, you should just make them...you don't REALLY want to waste your dollars on croutons do you?!?"  Smart boy...cuz now I'll obviously have money for Legos when he needs it!

The rest of October...

The last month has been a whirlwind of play dates, school, Halloween and a stomach flu thrown in there too. 

Gage hosted a play date and he and his friends painted salt dough, rocks and themselves...

...a little dress up fun with Baxter...ok, we had fun even if he didn't!...

...Here comes Indiana Jones! This is where the stomach flu came in, he got sick the weekend before Halloween and we missed most of the activities but we made sure he trick or treated at both Grandmas houses! (Hey, we know where to go to get the best goodies!!!)

At school last week we read "Night of the Moonjellies" (love that story,btw) and for our activity we talked about the lunar phases. What better way to demonstrate than with Oreos, right?!?

...and that concludes October! 

Miscellaneous

I typically try to blog on Tuesday morning while Gage is in class, however, he has been battling allergies the last few weeks so he wanted me to stay in class with him. So anyway, here is a recap of the last couple weeks...

Since his class read the book Madeline a few weeks ago, we decided to try a little French cuisine. And since I'm not a French chef even when we have a functioning kitchen, we headed to the farmers market that just happens to have a crepe stand. There were more combinations than I could have imagined, but Gage decided he would stick with the basics...Nutella and powdered sugar! Yum!!

Although it has been 95* here most days, the calendar says it is fall!! My fav time of the year! We made salt dough harvest veggies, so easy and fun, Gage loved painting them and "harvesting" his little garden...

We have been trying to fit in as many beach days as we can before it gets too cool (that would be anything less than 80 degrees) and while we were there last some guys fishing left the bait fish they had collected laying on the beach. The kids decided they needed to "rescue" the fish- at first they wanted to bring them all home!- so we quickly put them in our buckets and put them in the water. A little hesitant to touch the squirming fish at first, but then it was a race to see how many they could pick up.

Here is Gage at the library with his favorite librarian "Miss Sally", seems like wherever he goes he is surrounded by girls! Lol, thank goodness for all these boy cousins he has to give him the rough nod tumble time he loves!

And finally the days Daddy has been looking forward to for 4 (well 5 really I guess!) he has a golfing buddy! Gage joined "the guys" over 4th of July on the golf course and LOVED it, has been asking to go nearly every weekend, so he and Daddy and Mr. Jesus spent a beautiful day last Saturday chasing that itty bitty ball around. I don't get it. But at least they have fun! So much fun that he fell asleep in Daddy's arms that evening ;-

Week 2

Wow, this week went by fast! We had another great day at co-op on Tuesday, Gage's class read the story of "Lentil" by Robert McCloskey about a boy who can't sing or whistle but discovers he can make beautiful music with a harmonica. We discovered neither one of us can whistle either but God gives everybody different gifts. In the book, the town is eagerly waiting the arrival of the town "hero", Colonel Carter back home from war. We talked about how Daddy and Papa were both in the Navy. Since we have a Navy museum right here in our town I wanted to take an afternoon with Daddy to explore it, but we have been soooo busy we couldn't fit it in this week.

In Art class, Gage's teacher brought pastels and the kids made some beautiful art pieces. Here is Gage's:

He did the big shapes and his teacher came around the classroom and outlined their shapes. The kids were so excited to see the apple and pear come to life in their pictures!

Wednesday we visited with sweet friends that were in town from Alaska. Our boys are just a few weeks apart in age and played with one another from the time they were just sitting up until Zac moved 2 years ago.  We also got to meet Zac's baby brother, Jonas :-) The boys played so well, you would never know it had been so long since they had seen one another!

After a quiet day at home on Thursday waiting for dryer repair guy- never thought I would be so happy to do laundry again!- we went to open gym at gymnastics. It has been 95* with 100% humidity all week so we were VERY happy to be able to run around in air conditioning!

Saturday Gage started back at karate, he was a little hesitant when we got there but didn't take Sensei  Gator long to get him back into it! Daddy had errands to run all day Saturday, please pray for Grandpa Erhardt, he has had a rough few weeks. So on Sunday we packed up and headed to our favourite beach, I didn't get any pictures but here are some from the next day when we went with friends.

We have another busy week ahead, Grandma and Grandpa Haller are moving down!!!