A little field trip... 10/31/14 Apple Day

This was our first group field trip, "UMS-style." Leah's school is a university model school, which is a hybrid of traditional classroom and homeschool. The parents and classroom teachers are considered co-teachers together. And this field trip was planned and executed by the co-teachers. That's mostly us moms (and a few brave dads.) Apple day was, as one might expect, all about apples.

We read stories about apples, did science experiments with apples, had some apple-themed crafts and made caramel apples for snack!

And then played like crazy at the park.

A little science...



A little competition...



A little Arabian??? Yes, there she is...My child is the Arabian apple carrier....



The story is one of a struggle over clothing. Right now Leah is sensitive to what she perceives as restrictive clothing... Closed toes shoes, sleeves, pants that touch her legs anywhere, waistbands... The struggle usually only lasts a few minutes after I force her to wear something she doesn't want to wear, then she gets used to it and forgets to freak out or complain. Some days I don't feel like struggling or listening to complaining and this morning was one of those... "Fine! You don't have to wear pants or tights and you can wear your sandals and no jacket and you will be VERY VERY COLD!" (Said a mother with a secret plan to pack her daughters jacket and leggings in the car for the moment when she came crawling back for more layers.... Of course her mother forgot... So she wore my sweater like a burka most of the day while I froze.)



I brought a bag of small apples for some of the festivities. I gave one to Ava to hold... And I looked down a few minutes later and she had eaten the whole thing! Seeds, core and all! I call her baby shark because of all those teeth (and all the biting) but I think she might also be related to the horse!









In her hand is what remains of the second apple of the morning.






When they were handing out inhibitions, Leah took hers and some of Ava's too, I believe. She is so cautious about new things. She has climbed a thousand play structures... but not this one... So she was nervous. I talked her through it.






Proud of herself... And then she climbed it 739 more times.



Little sister's turn...



She's a good-time-baby!



Whoops!!!! That could have been bad....



She recovered nicely... Don't worry Pops, I didn't let her go much further.



Yahoooooo!



Snack time! (And a major headband malfunction!)



I have had a lifetime love affair with chocolate... So to me it almost feels like cheating to say that caramel apples might be my favorite treat ever... But... they just might be. I'm a purest though. No sprinkles, no nuts... Just a crock pot full of melted caramel and a spoon... I mean an apple.

We loved apple day! And we love kindergarten!

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A little bob...

I forgot to post about this hilarious story. When the summer began Leah told me she "NEVER EVER" wanted to cut her hair again and she wanted to grow it out like repunzal.... Fine with me. Sometime after school started, things changed. She has always admired my moms haircut, commenting that she loves the way Bibby's hair "hugs her head." That is an actual quote. Hahaha.

Here's a pic of my mom's lovely head-hugging-hair-do... And my gorgeous sister as well. :) Nice hair, bib!



So Leah came home from school one day and said "I want to get my hair cut like Bibby's." 😌

I was like... "Who has ever wanted to get their haircut like their grandma??"

I guess if you have a cool grandma... So she begged every day for a couple of weeks. We talked about how she wouldn't be able to do a pony tail and how she would have to have her hair brushed and dried with a hair drier or it would look wacked out. She agreed to the terms and so we went to see an old friend for haircuts.



She cut about 8 inches off!!!


Leah was over the moon!!! She would barely move her head all night. She kept asking, "does it still look like Bibby's?"



The next morning I had to round brush it with a hair dryer to style it smooth again... She didn't complain one bit, she just kept checking to see if it was still looking like Bibby's.


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A little field trip... October 2014 Perot Museum

We had a no-school/no assigned homework day back in October. So while Ava had some grandma time, Leah and her teacher (me!!) went on a field trip to the science museum. It was a blustery day...


But nice and cozy inside the kids museum where Leah climbed all over the Dallas skyline and then worked on an art project.



We had story time under the stars in the museum's portable planetarium, and then saw a 3D movie about pandas.



Leah thought her daddy would like to see this display that was on the way to the bathroom. Fossilized poop!



Forgot my flash in a few of these...



Flyin like an eagle.... This girl is more than a little obsessed with eagles.






Making her own bird...



She named her bird "majestic chick."



The sparkly rocks she loves so much.... Me too!



She closed this giant amethyst quartz.... so she could show me how it opens.









Physics...






Another fabulously fun homeschool day.

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A little Ava Oakley...

This post is just a little ode to Ava. My mom reminds me that she will wonder why there was sooooo much written and pictured from Leah's life and not from hers... And though it's way more than 50% because of her that I am too busy to blog, I'm trying to do just a little bit better....

Little Ava Oakley is a natural with a firearm! She just goes up to the hunting game at Rudy's BBQ and grabs the gun... And it's heavy!









She's a girl with many diverse interests...

Like aviation....



And construction... (And fashion, as you can see)



She's the goofball champion, which is a tough competition in our house...






The girl has many faces... As you can see. The next two pics are the faces we see most often.... They are quite different ends of the emotional spectrum.






Bucket seats...


She would rather sit in a non-seat than in an actual seat any day of the week. She's definitely an outside-of-the-box-and-inside-the-bucket kind of girl.



This baby is OBSESSED with babies! She loves every baby we see and is (surprisingly) very gentle, even with real live babies. She's a good little mommy.



Ava loves dirt!!! I mean really loves it. She digs in it and plays with it... She even knows what it tastes like. 😉



She is definitely full of smiles much of the time.



She's a pretty cool chick who loves her daddy and loves to ride in his big truck. Leah was having some grandma time so we took Ava on a special trip all by herself... To the local dump.



Even though there have been many smiling pictures taken of Ava in a bathtub, she really doesn't dig baths the way her big sister does. Leah would still stay in the bathtub all day if I let her. She loved it from day 1 and to this day she begs for more time when I say let the water out. Ava needed to be convinced it was fun, and after a few minutes of fun, she is "all done" and climbing out of the tub. Here she is washing our muddy rocks from the backyard.






Little Ava Oakley has made our lives much, MUCH more exciting. And we love her like crazy!

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