No School Schedule

A couple years ago we were doing respite foster care for three children for two weeks.  We woke up one morning to find that they had called a snow day and all of a sudden I was stuck in the house with five (this was pre-Laila) children.  I started to panic wondering how I was going to keep everyone, especially me, sane for the day and then I came up with a schedule of fun event for us to keep busy all day long.  This is something that Emma & Jackson have carried on and always want to do when we have a free day.  Today happen to be one of those fun days :)

I decided today would be a Halloween theme because I had found these super fun brownie haunted house kits at Aldi yesterday.

These are pictures of the scary Lego house that the kids built.  They don’t look as scary to look at them but they each had a story about trap doors and secret sling shots that made these house pretty scary!  I love their imaginations!

Jackson’s house

Emma’s house

  We have a huge stock of dress up clothes in this house so we decided to do a fashion show in honor of dressing up for Halloween.  Again, they came up with some very creative outfits while I was DJ and announcer on iTunes using Laila’s Hannah Montana microphone!

Cowboy Jackson

Flying TinkerBell Emma

Barbie Diva Laila

 

Jackson’s Haunted Brownie House

Having fun decorating together

Emma’s Brownie House

 

We packed up and ran a few errands and then met Jack for lunch.  Both kids had excellent report cards and their teachers had amazing things to say about the character, kindness and knowledge at our parent teacher conference this week, so we decided to take their book-it certificates for a little family lunch.  After lunch we stopped by the library for a few Halloween books and Charlie Brown’s Great Pumpkin DVD and then we headed back home.  While Laila napped, Jackson & Emma watched “The Good Witch” on Netflix and I baked cookies for our evening adventures.

Soon it was time to make our witches stew.  First we browned the cow’s brain (stew meat), then we added the mushed bug guts (homemade veggie soup stock), we added a little ground eyeballs (garlic salt) and finally toward the end maggots (rice).  We let that simmer for a few hours while we waited for our Peterson friends to come over so their mommy & daddy could have a date night.  We joked that since there are six of their children they were all we needed to turn an ordinary night into a fun Halloween party!

My little witches :)

Our yummy stew! (even a pot of gluten free for a few of our special Peterson friends!)

Table of craft supplies just begging to be used :)

Our cute little monsters.  Got this idea off a link on my friend Dawn’s blog.  Thanks Dawn!

After the craft we all had dinner.  Some of the kids really believed me that there was cow brains in the stew and it was funny to see the little pieces of meat leftover in their bowls!  Ha!  I also made green Koolaid and added a ton of Laila’s gel thickener to it to make it look like slime.  I told them there were ground up worms in it.  So funny!

Next we were on to cookie decorating.  I told Chanda I’m not sure it was a good idea to let them go crazy with all that sugar before I took them home to put them to bed but everyone did fine and had fun.  Noley & Ahna were especially happy that I made them “their kind” of cookies :)

 

This big kid had so much fun he even made his own icing colors to be unique!

 

He shared the blue with Laila and she was proud to show her blue tongue!

We finished the night off by eating our cookies and watching Charlie Brown.

I’m so thankful for these days that are set aside and we make sure we have some fun at not a lot of expense.  Days of laundry, cleaning, school, doctors appointments, and just plain LIFE can really just fly by and I wonder when was the last time we did something really fun.  I also of course love that my kids thrive on structure and NO I was not in the military!  But I’ve gotta tell ya when I hear them say at the end of the day “can we do that again tomorrow??  PLEASE!” it makes me feel like today we did something right and you never know if today is going to be all we’ve got.