Heather’s TK class had a special evening program where they sang songs telling the story of the gingerbread man. Then at the end they had a bonus dance number.
The dance video (or download using this link: IMGP7445s):
Heather loves The Magic School Bus and had been asking to be Ms. Frizzle for Halloween for months. Luckily Grandma was willing to take a crack at making her a costume. And it came out amazing! Thanks, Mom!
Heather wanted to look like Ms. Frizzle in her favorite episode, the haunted house episode about sound. Here is the source material:
And here’s the result:
Corinne got to make her Halloween-costume debut in the blanket costume Jess made when Heather was smaller. I like this pictures because Corinne is so excited she’s vibrating (since she’s blurry, but Heather’s not).
Heather was a little hesitant about it at first, but she loved it. And her new “Liz” is one of her core-group stuffed animals now. Liz is always next to her in bed and is always taken out to the family room every morning.
The above pictures were taken a couple of days before Halloween. Here’s a day-of picture. Heather’s face paint was from the Halloween party they had at school.
I got my ghosties up again and bought some batteries to light them up properly with LEDs. Still needs some work, but they’re getting better:
This was Corinne’s first experience trick-or-treating. She caught on pretty quickly. As soon as a door would open she would try to climb inside and reach for any candy she could see. We did 5 or 6 houses with her and then dropped her off back at home while Heather and I did some more.
We got most of the street trick-or-treated before it started sprinkling. This caused most people to head inside, even though it stopped before we made it back home. But we were a bit soggy and Heather was worn out so we called it a night.
This was Heather’s first year celebrating a birthday around a school schedule. So when I got home from work we opened presents.
(We finally got around to using the cookie cutters to make Christmas sugar cookies.)
The USB microscope camera is a hit. Fabrics are pretty interesting to look at. I found some kind of animal bone in the parking lot at work that we still need to look at which should be interesting.
I put together another treasure hunt this year (Heather was very vocal about hoping there would be one). It wasn’t up to the same level of quality as last year’s, however, due to the lack of time between returning from our trip and her Birthday. I’ll have to try to make up for it next year.
The treasure hunt led her to the garage where she found a shiny blue bike! (After months of lamenting that she didn’t have a pedal bike. And she’s outgrown her balance bike.)
We did presents first so she would have some time to ride her new bike before it got dark (and apparently this is the only picture we have of her on the bike that day….).
Having been gone for a month she was quite out of practice balancing. We still need to find some time to get outside so she can practice, but it’s actually been cold (by Livermore standards, highs in the 50s) and/or raining quite a bit lately.
After riding around for a bit, we went to dinner and then came home for cake.
Today was Heather’s first day of public school: Transitional Kindergarten. TK was created when they moved the enrollment cutoff from Dec 31 to Sep 1. It’s billed as helping the kids prepare, but it’s only for the kids born during Sep-Dec. Which makes no sense since those kids will now be the oldest in their classes. The only logical explanation I can come up with is that it only exists to appease the families that weren’t planning on paying for another year of daycare. Which, to me, means it should have only existed for a couple of years while the school system transitioned. But it’s here to stay even though it makes no sense.
Anyway, Heather falls in that range so she’s enrolled. 5 hours every day.
She had a blast. So hopefully that continues.
In the morning, ready to walk to school:
I held my off-camera flash arms-length to my left which filled in nicely I think.
Coming out when school was over:
And Corinne coped by perching herself on the window sill, with a frog (that’s the coffee table under her feet):
Heather’s been doing a “pre-soccer” class on Saturday mornings. I’ve tried a few times to get some pictures, but apparently I’m terrible at sports photography. These represent my third attempt and they’re still not particularly good, but they’ll have to do.
I don’t really have much more to say, so enjoy!
