Well here is the last of the November stuff...really, I promise this time!  LOL

When we got back from Uncle Mike's Thanskgiving weekend we worked hard to finish up our school for the year.  Daddy took some vacation time in December and we wanted to have some of the same vacation time!  

Red working on some reading stuff!

Bug working on language arts...the Learning Language Arts Through Literature is working out really well, it's simple and easy to follow and we are enjoying it!

Bug made a 100 on his science quiz - You go Buggy!

For his spelling words Bug decided (on his own) to write his spelling words 10 times each - on a napkin no less...whatever makes it happen though, right?

I attended a math workshop recently and one of the ideas I came out with is to make beads of 10 to show the days of school and help kids put together that whole "tens" thing.  So we started one with Red.

Red working on his Explode the Code book...man oh man is he doing good.

Bug working on spelling.

And Bug working on reading...he's almost finished book 2 - yeah!

Here goes the make your own candy cane kit - off to the cousins!

At the end of November my Girls In Action group began making ornaments as part of our Lottie Moon Christmas offering project.  The girls worked so hard making various ornaments to raise money for the offering.  It was a great experience!

Here they were working on stick Christmas trees.

Decorating the trees was fun and entertaining! 

The girls were so serious about their decorations.

What a group of hard workers!

These trees were spectacular!

Our first Christmas card of the season!  One of my GA girls - Brooke - gave me the first card of the season - what a sweetie!

When Daddy decorated the outside of the house, he decided that the Pups needed something to look at, so Santa and his tree went in the back yard!

Sadie got into the decorating!  ;)

And Scamper decided to help out a bit.  

The tree decorating was a fun night...lots of lights and a gazillion or so ornaments!

Mommy digging out more ornaments.   

Daddy helped put on some ornaments too! 

We decided we needed pizza for the ornament decorating night - Football Pizza!  Woo-Hoo!

Bug was very excited to find his girl and boy dinos!

So while decorating trees the boys decided that they needed one in their room as well.

The Bubba Tree!

The Bubba Tree all lit up with the lights out!

And the school room tree...cuz every school room needs a tree, right?  ;)

Okay so that's all for November 2011...December will be posted soon, hopefully!  LOL  Until then, love your family and kiss your special one Happy New Year!

So when I began looking through the pictures, ummm...I forgot part of November...lol!

So my goal was to have all of 2011 blogged before the new year...ummm, it's 11:18pm on Dec. 31st, I don't think I am gonna make it...but you'll forgive me right?  LOL

Perhaps I should change it to all of November blogged before the new year.  

I guess I better get going or I won't make that one either!  LOL

So here is Red scrubba dubbin' the door!  LOL - for just about ever now we've had muddy handprints on the back door.  I actually loved seeing their little hands every time I opened the back door.  But we figured since we were having company up for Thanksgiving we had better do a little cleaning!  So Red worked hard and made the door shine - great job babe!

As we were planning out the Thanksgiving menu, we figured out there were a lot of "traditional" desserts that Red couldn't have.  So I let him pick any dessert he wanted and Mommy would figure it out - well he chose lemon bars!  Yum!

Since Christmas is getting close I decided to put together a "Make your own candy cane" kit to send to the cousins.  I used a spice bottle and added pipe cleaners, name tags, beads, ribbon and an instruction card.   

Daddy got the turkey ready for the oven...He did a dry rub of season salt, and injected it with Stubb's Texas butter marinade.  It's ready for the oven!

Here is Bug's choice of desert.  He saw this cute Turkey (mini) pumpkin pie on pinterest.  So we figured we would try one of our own...only bigger!  LOL  Super cute huh?

Memaw and Daddy are getting the turkey ready for the beautiful platter!!!

Check out this beautiful bird!!!

Oh My -We had dessert coming out our ears!  LOL

It was time to dig in and after the prayer, Papa didn't waste any time!

 

So what did you do on Thanksgiving night?  We headed to Wal-Mart for some black friday shopping!  LOL Even though it was actually Thursday - Red asked what "Black Thursday" was and Bug told him "Black Thursday is when you go shopping on Thursday and it's really black outside".  LOL - love those boys!

  

Making memories with the family...Friday after Thanksgiving we drove to Blanco to visit with Uncle Pickle.  Memaw and Papa came over as well and we met up in Johnson City to watch the lighting of the city.  It was really cool to see it all light up.  We picked up some pecans on the courthouse lawn and cracked them while we waited.  They were very yummy!!!

Here's a view of the "square"...they had it all lit up.

And the courthouse - awesome!

On the way home from Blanco we decided to come up through meridian and WOW - there is an exotic farm with all kinds of Moose, Big Horn Sheep, Deer, Buffalo, Zebra - it was cool!  The big elk by the telephone pole looked at me when I took his picture.  I think he was a little upset with the "paparazzi".  LOL  He looked like he might charge me so I made my way back to the car rather quick like!  :)

Okay so I am little closer to getting November all up...whew...Big Smiles until next time...we-

 So I am still working on November here...


That first cold spell came in and boy oh boy was it a doozy!  LOL  We went from extreme heat to "Oh my goodness it's cold out here"!  LOL  So what better than a bowl of chili and of course some home made heart shaped biscuits, right?  Yum!

 The boys and I worked more on our nature books.  We added the leaves that we found on our nature hike at the park.  We found names of them in a really cool tree book we got at the library.  

 In school Bug's been working with a lot of story maps.  He read this book Dino-Hockey then filled out the story map with words and pictures.

 This sweet orange kitty came to visit our house a few different times.  What a precious boy he was.  We gave him milk and hot dogs - you know standard kitty fare and all.  LOL - he seemed to enjoy it!  He reminded me so much of my Big Orange!  I miss you Big Orange Kitty!

 One afternoon I decided to make a cherry pie, well since I didn't have any crusts in the freezer, I figured, how hard can it be, right?  Ha!  Not as easy as I dreamed, but it was not too hard.  I got it done anyway, although it looked really weird.

I couldn't figure out how to weave the strips.  So I did my best!  :)

So I forgot the foil around the edges thing - pooh!  But I do have to say that the pie itself was yummy - even the homemade crust!

Red had the first piece!

I am so proud of my Red - he's doing so well with his reading.  Although he will still say "I can't read!!!".  LOL - he's in that denial stage - scared to death that he's going to fail - but really doing so very well!

Bug is still working on his typing program.  He's getting really good at it!  I am so proud of him!  

So being November and all we have to fit some turkey's in there right?  We made cards for the family using various turkey making ideas.  We did hand print turkey's first.  The boys got a kick out of painting their hands.

Hand Turkey Magic!

While we were in the middle of turkey making we heard the dogs going nuts in the back yard.  We thought perhaps Lady and Sadie were having a barking contest again!  But when we ventured to the back yard, we saw the cause of all that commotion!  Horses! 

And here is the finished turkey's - Bug's is on the left and Red's on the right.

Well being November - its time to vote right?  So we headed to the polls to vote on amendments and have a quick lesson in responsibilities and using your voice for good in the community.

Check out all these beautiful ornaments that the GA's made!  We began working on a project to raise money for the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering.  The girls are making ornaments and collecting donations to send to the offering.  These were the first ornaments we made.

On another trip to Blanco County to visit Uncle Mike we stopped off in the tiny almost ghost town of Cypress Mills, Texas.  It's quite funny because at one time this was the largest and most thriving town in Blanco County!  Now the entire town consists of a church and this little building that poses as a "store".  Oh and the town kitty - love him!

Here is the very very friendly town kitty!

And the beautiful church!

They have a really cool path that you can follow and there is signs and crosses to read as you walk - it's really cool.

The cornerstone - gotta waymark this!

The church itself is made of rocks and stones and we found this very cool fossil in the front side of the church.  It's looks like some sort of egg or something, right?

The sweet little church.

Bug and I walked the path and on our way back we found this really cool marker - is it a benchmark?

It looks like a benchmark, right?

On the way out of Cypress Mills, we passed over a small bridge that crosses a beautiful creek.  Check out this view!















The view from the other side of the creek.





















When we go to Blanco, we stopped at the EMS station to say Hi, to Uncle Mike.  Well it just so happens that the bakery across the street is home to a geocache.  So of course we had to head over to hunt it down!

More Redhead school work - making the letter F with bingo markers!

So on pinterest we found this idea for making microwave popcorn using popping corn and brown paper bags.  So of course we had to try that out, right?>  LOL

Bug helped measure the corn.

And put it all in the bag!  Just a plain old brown paper bag.

Daddy added a pat of butter and folded the top down two times. 

After about 2 and a half minutes in the microwave - wah lah!  A nice bowl of yummy scrummy popcorn!

Here it is!

While in Blanco, we went to story time at the library to listen to Thanksgiving stories!

We also worked some puzzles and looked at lots of books!

And put together the train!

We also did a puzzle of some gray kitties!  It was a hard one, but we finally got it together!

While roaming around the town square we found a gigantic oak tree in the city park.  

We found out it's actually a little famous.  The second largest Oak tree in the county.  It was a camp ground for families way back when - there used to be a natural spring right behind the tree the families used for water.

geocache!  We also took the new bird book we bought at the library book sale for $.25 and identified birds we saw!

While out exploring we went down to check out a river bed that we saw under a bridge. It was awesome to see up close the way the water has eroded the rock over the years.  It was a great discussion starter!

We were very amazed to see all the little trees that were growing right up through the riverbed.  What a amazing testimony for that tiny seed!

We also found some really cool shells!

The boys had a great time wandering down the riverbed picking up rocks!

Check out this cool little tree that was growing on the side of this large rock.  Notice the twist in the stem at the bottom?  

You can imagine this was the favorite spot!  They boys played a king of the mountain sort of game (without the pushing).  

They found a large piece of concrete that was round (like it had been poured into bucket) and liked rolling it down the cliff to see if they could break it.

And there it goes!

We attended a BBQ benefit and live auction for the local fire dept while we were in town.  This sweet miniature horse was part of the auction items.  

Mr. Iz came to visit while we were down and made his famous cream corn - boy was it yummy!

Since it was Veterens Day weekend they were having a parade in town - Uncle Mike took the boys to ride in the new ambulance!

All loaded up and ready to roll!

Hubby and I went down to the square to watch the parade and we walked around the courthouse while we were waiting.  We found this while exploring - a horse shoe that the tree had grown around almost completely.  Can you imagine how old this shoe must be?  It was quite a large tree.

Ready for the parade!

Here comes the parade!

Check out this cool vehicle!

And here comes Uncle Mike and his "team"!

Another cool car in the parade!

Check out the wagon and horses!

He's one of those mini Clydesdale!

Here they come again!

That same weekend Uncle Pickle was moving to a new house in town - so we figured we'd help out!  It only took a couple of loads and we had it all moved! Woo-Hoo!

This is a funny - Uncle Mike has this gorgeous carpet in one of the rooms.  It's the good stuff - the wool shag kind!  LOL  He even has a carpet pick - called the perky picker!  LOL  We named this the hamburger helper room! LOL

Getting it all in the house!

Still getting it in the house!

And still....

The boys decided to make a fort with the mattresses!

Introducing the perky picker!  LOL  I can't help it, I have to tease Pickle about this!

So after a long weekend of moving and packing and unpacking and setting up - Bug and Uncle Iz settled at the table for an epic game of battleship!

Uncle Iz is working on his strategy!

Then it was on to a game of war!

After all the moving was done we had to go back for Uncle Mike's for his Kayak!

Here's some more November memories!  We made birthday cards for some of our Homeschool Swapping Adventures Friends.

Here's the finished cards!

Oh and more turkeys!  LOL - here's some of the finished turkey cards we made for all the family!

A combo of markers and bingo markers.

Bug's did his with markers and bingo markers too - we used the draw write now curriculum to make the drawing of the turkey first.

Here's some more GA's stuff - making more ornaments for our Lottie Moon Christmas offering project!

We worked on beaded ornaments too!

And beaded Christmas trees!

Health class for Red - continuing our unit on fire safety!

Oh my goodness I have a lot of books!  Ha, this isn't even half of them really - I decided I needed to overhaul the school shelf, so I pulled the books off the shelf that I needed to plan with and piled them on the table.

Then I started working on putting them back on the shelf neatly.  Can you see my very creative shelf holder-upper?  LOL

Have you ever heard me say that my puppies love puppy treats?  WEll they do!  LOL - I made 4 batches of peanut butter puppy treats for the pups!  They were very happy let me tell you!  


Although we found out later that Ladybug is allergic to peanut butter so I had to cut her off the treats.  We are currently treating her with pieces of hot dog.  I need to get a peanut free recipe for Ms. Lady!

Hubby went to the bread store in Dallas to get bread to donate to the church holiday helper baskets.  The sweet ladies at the shop gave him 40 bags of rolls to go with the 40 loaves of bread.  What a sweet gesture!

A trunk load of bread!

More ornament making.  The GA's painted the sticks and I glued them together.  Then each girl was able to decorate the "tree" with various objects and baubles.










Have you ever played clue junior?  It's a great game - we love love love it!


Well, I think that may be all of November finally - lol - perhaps, I will have to go through my pictures again and see.


Until then...love one another...we-