Waylon's Drawings and Toni Update

Oh tonight is one of those rare nights were I have so many things sitting around waiting for me to finish and this is all I wanted to do and all I can think about.  So here I blog instead of all my grading, laundry and cleaning tonight.

I am so excited to share another one of Waylon's amazing drawings. Now, don't get to excited these first two he just colored and worked on tracing the words but he is doing so well and still LOVES to color everyday.

I got this from the same blog I have been following for quite some time now. http://heidisongs.blogspot.com/2010/11/turkey-talk-2-week-13.html Waylon did a firetruck guided drawing from this blog and did wonderful as well. These were three objects a pilgrim boy and girl and then a turkey. The way she writes these lessons are just wonderful and connect so well for Waylon. He has done these twice and the progress from his first try to his second is absolutely amazing! I think anyway :-)!

 

OK some details I do need to point out, not only to others but so when I go back and read this 20 years from now I remember too. The pilgrim girl I sat with him and worked with him on sounding out the words and matching the color with the words. It looks really nice~Then when it came time to do the boy he told me to go away and that he just wanted to color him and not worry about the words. I do find it interesting and a bit amazing that he noticed the word red and still did it in red, but the jacket is supposed to be black but he outlined part of the word in red and did the jacket in the same color.  I am also noticing his name on both of these. Weird that the one he did with ME is wrong and the one he did alone is CORRECT! He has all the letters there just forgot the "o" and then threw it in I guess.

OK here is the guided drawing lesson for pilgrim boy and girl.  He did so great on the boy other than the arms~not sure what kind of arms he was doing on him but they sure are cute. The girl, he again did not want me to read the directions. He wanted to look at the picture and do it on his own. I love how he made her basket the center point of the picture and gave he all different colored eggs because I guess there are only Easter type eggs right?

Now his turkey, he did awesome on this and made it really colorful. He has drawn several of these since and they all pretty much look the same. I did show him how to draw the old school turkey with your hand, but he was not impressed he prefers this one.

This is his LIST for Santa this year. He wrote and drew out what he wanted for Santa and this has been sitting by my purse waiting to go to Santa. Thankfully, we SHOULD be going tomorrow. He spotted a huge Ford F150 (only $329!) in a catalog a few weeks ago from all the toy books that came in the paper. He fell in LOVE and this is all he has talked about. He has told me that he wants it to have flames on the side though and if that is all Santa brings he promises he will share it with Toni. Well, I told him good luck a lot of kids ask for these every year and Santa only has a few of them and that is pretty huge request.

Anyway, the rest of the picture needs some explanation as well~The man in the corner is who else but SANTA himself. Waylon drew him in the huge green chair he is always sitting in when we go to visit him and also included all the presents that sit around the chair. Then probably my favorite part is Santa himself. He drew his belly full of a plate of cookies because of all the cookies he eats on Christmas Eve. I guess Santa also has a red beard too. 

Now here is Waylon's second attempt at the guided drawings that he did today! All I can say is amazing job! So much nicer with all the straight lines and he followed the directions for most of it this time. Mommy is so proud of you Waylon! I love all of your amazing drawings and the stories that go along with each and every one of them.

 Oh now for my Toni girl. Trying to get what this girl is up to and currently doing is a changing event daily. This video is such a small glimpse of what I was trying to get her doing but it still shows how stinking cute she is. About 2 weeks ago Toni finally understood the meaning of "YES" When she would want something her whole body would move to tell you YES. Then about a week later she figured out that you are only supposed to move your head up and down for the answer of YES. So with all her concentration she would nod yes to us.   Now she nods and says Ya! for her yes.
   She is also doing a lot of "talking" OK babbling but it is own language and I understand it. She loves to look and point at books just like when she is read to. She points to pictures, words, or letters. This video shows a small glimpse of that as well. She is also able to follow simple directions which is so nice. She can go and get or find her bear before bed time. She knows where her shoes go and many other things to.
  My favorite right now is her love of song/music. With the holidays around the corner we are already singing Christmas songs and she is picking them up fast. She has learned the most important part of "Jingle Bells" and that is HAY! She is so proud of herself for that too. I am working on catching that on video soon. She also is very well aware of how the ABC's go!  She sings them everyday and her face just lights up when you start to sing it with her. It is almost as if she is saying "hey, you know that song too?"
   I love my kids more than anything and to be able to see all these things they can now do or are learning just makes my day complete. As always I do miss them so much every day that I am at work. If I could only put that into words I would but I can't it is an emptiness that has no words just a feeling for me.  Trying to do my best to hang on for a few more weeks and then I will have 2 FULL WEEKS with my kids!!!! That is something to be thankful for.. UP next Thanksgiving what are you thankful for this year?

Annual Schnepf's Farm and Happy Halloween!

Trevor and I took the kids to Schnepf's Farm for year #3 this year.  We had Courtney, Jon and Connor come along too, as this was a family event.  Kylie and Waylon started of holding hands as they discussed where we were all going to go first.

Well we walked to a dog show first and watched some pretty amazing dog tricks and then were off to fun and rides. Kylie wanted to do a rollercoaster and Waylon decided against it.  So he and I went across the way to these airplane rides which he remembered from last year. It was kind of bitter sweet he was the only kid on these planes and LOVED it and rode it twice. He won't be able to ride it again next year as he will be to big for the ride. :-(

    Then this was another thing the kids loved but is so much work for the adults.  Luckily, Trevor had help this year and Jon went with him. Don't they look like the happy couple out there :-) Court and I got a kick of watching them with the kids out there while we stayed with the two little ones.

While we were waiting Toni and Connor decided they too wanted to hold hands like the big kids. Okay, Connor was the one who wanted to hold hands, Toni is still not so sure of this Holding Hands "thing" especially with the boys.

What a difference a year makes. Everyone had someone to hang out with and we all had so much fun. I thought we would be there for a couple of hours and we were there for more than half of the day and then ventured off too lunch afterwards. 

This was the best of the pictures I got of the kids minus Toni. She was having a melt down at this point. Considering how hot and late it was, I don't blame her.

So she sat on the sidelines and watched us TRY to take pictures of everyone.

Then on our way out we did face painting this year! Waylon wanted a witch and this is what she turned out to look like.  Sadly she was gone by the time we made it home because he fell asleep and she disappeared quickly.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Well Halloween has come and gone around here and I will say having kids it is one of my favorite holidays now.  Seems as soon as the month of October gets here we need to do HALLOWEEN things.  So as you can see from the last blog we had many pictures and crafts throughout the month to do. Not to mention all fun Brandy did with them too.  Everyday was something exciting in the month of October this year.  We went shopping today and already have some fun things to do NEXT October that I bought for 80% off. ( I am really wanting to go and get more~)

Waylon was a pirate this year. He really wanted to be "Jake" from the Disney show Jake and the Neverland Pirates. However, they did not make a costume for that and most likely I would not have bought it due to how much I can only imagine it would have cost. We found this costume early in the year and he was satisfied so here was his $10 costume with his $1 sword (which was and still is the best part) The sword was not given to him until Halloween because I did not want it to break and amazingly here we are in November and it still works! Best $1 I spent on the costume.

Then there was Toni and Connor.  These two actually dressed up this year and rode around in the wagon as we took Waylon trick or treating and did great.  Toni was a cat although with her orange socks many thought she was a penguin.  Connor was Yoda, which has been one of Courtney's dreams for a LONG time. He was definitely the perfect size and the cutest he could have been in this costume.

Waylon did great Trick or Treating this year. He even went up to several houses that were pretty creepy but he really liked checking them out and seeing what they had to give to him.

There was a pretty big crowd in front of our house watching the trick or treaters as it is also a birthday celebration for Jake and Courtney. We did have a lot of family over. My Grandpa was even there and he did really well, and I hope he enjoyed coming over and watching all the fun the kids had on Halloween.

To another year to two of my favorite people.

Happy Birthday you two and Happy Halloween everyone!

Hold on here come the HOLIDAYS~