Happy days

We started putting up some of our Christmas decorations. See the stockings on Lucas? :) He is too funny!!
The bliss of a quiet house... I think I might love our new portable DVD player. (Black Friday sales are awesome!!)
The alternate uses of a magna doodle..
Catherine adores Tim! It's the sweetest thing to see her sleeping on him :)

Lucas-isms

Today we fed Lucas his favorite soup for lunch. Because he asked for soup. He refused to eat it, naturally.
About an hour later he asked for a snack and when we reminded him he didn't eat his lunch he said 'I'm slowly starving.'
Huh.....

Tim packed a whole bunch of stuff into the Expedition behind Lucas's seat. Lucas saw it when he got in, gave it a mean look and said 'I'm deeply offended.'

At least he has a good vocabulary...

A sleeping doll

Sweet kids

Tot School

Lucas is 38 months. Gwendolyn is 16 months.
We have had an exciting month around here with a new baby :) Lots and lots of time has been spent petting our new little Catherine on the head and loving her. We have done a little bit of Tot School, tho. Here's a little bit of what we have been up to since my last post.


We used these neat little plastic building pieces. Lucas really enjoyed building 'structures' (his new favorite word). Gwendolyn liked taking them apart.
We have done lots of coloring lately :)

As always, we enjoy our riding toys.

Lucas has been learning about harvest time (see his combine toy?).

We got a new, much smaller, water table. I brought it inside and filled it up with rice. The kids LOVE it!! Gwendolyn is learning an important lesson in self control while practicing NOT throwing rice all over the kitchen :)

Lucas has been coloring pages out of a John Deere coloring book. I have never been a big fan of coloring books. But it keepps him quiet and happy for about twenty minutes while I tend to the little girls. I now LOVE coloring books!!

There has been lots of lacing of lacing cards.

Both kids have been working on numbers and number puzzles. Lucas is starting to recognize some numbers and can now randomly count. I love hearing his random number sequences!

Head on over to 1+1+1=1 to see other Tot School posts :)

A few more pictures

My sweet baby

A few more pictures

My sweet baby

Catherine is the sweetest baby. She's always so happy and content. :)

She's here!

Catherine Belle Keast was born on November 11th at 9:15 a.m. She was 8 pounds 10 ounces and 21 inches. She's a healthy sweet little baby :) Lucas and Gwendolyn adore her. They can't spend enough time petting her soft little head.

Playful lounging

She plays.

They lounge.

Tot School

Lucas is 37 months. Gwendolyn is 15 months.

Work mat
I saw the idea for a work mat at Tired, Need Sleep and loved it! We went out and got a fall themed place mat (that Lucas picked out) to use as our work mat. I'm hoping it will help with getting one activity out at a time and keeping each activity contained in one area, rather than wandering all over the house. Lucas has really been enjoying it. Tho not using it quite how I had envisioned :)
We did play Dominoes on it. And Lucas pulled up a truck and trailer to load with Dominoes.

And we tried out some new finger paint that is only supposed to show up on the special paper that it comes with. Lucas was SO not into it. The colors were really dull and took kind of a long time to show up.Games
We got a Go Fish game. Lucas has loved it!! It's great practice with color matching and numbers. Gwendolyn mostly chews on the fishing pole. She does practice colors, too.
Beads
The kids tried putting Perler beads onto the little pokey boards. It lasted all of about 30 seconds before they were both bored.

Learning through play
Lucas made a fence with the tops of lamp shades. I love hearing the stories he tells with his pretend play :)

Both kids loved putting credit cards into wallets.
And for a unique sensory experience, we played with squishy rubbery balls. Writing practice


Music time
The kids love singing The Farmer In The Dell with our stacking cards :)

Art time
We have been doing some fall themed art. And some gluing. And some stickers.

Life school
We spent a day out on the farm driving big machines around and chasing pigs :)

Recess
This has really become a favorite part of our day!