Fall Fun!

We're full on in the swing of things having to do with "Fall" around the Andersen house. Halloween costumes have been picked (that post will be tomorrow - hopefully), we're decorated for fall, eating fall foods that have to do with pumpkin or a crock pot :), and so with that we needed to carve and decorate pumpkins and make pumpkin cookies.

Emily and Mary came over to play and so we decided to make pumpkin cookies with them. The girls had so much fun decorating their cookies. It's funny how detailed they are these days!

Hard at work

Caleb did way more eating than decorating :)

Look at that - they even did their own icing!

Creed pretty much just ate candy!

Finished products

The next day we decided to carve and decorate pumpkins. We waited patiently (kind of) for Daddy to get home from work so we could get started on the pumpkin. Cadence couldn't remember cleaning out a pumpkin before so it was kind of new for everyone. It didn't bother Cadence and Creed too much.

Caleb was much less sure about it :)

Posing with and attacking Daddy with pumpkins. I look at this picture and can hear Caleb saying "cheese"

Cadence's pumpkin was a little bigger because she's bigger than the boys :)

Everyone hard at work!

After much coaxing, Caleb decided that the pumpkin brains weren't so bad after all!

Happy Fall!

Love, the Andersens!

Kids Worship Rehearsal

Here are links to the motions for the CCCM kids worship service.

Video 1

Video 2

Have Fun!

Other Stuff

Life lately has been a little busy. With Chris transitioning from his job at the school to the new job at the church, plus lessons - it's a little overwhelming. However, in between all the busyness there have been pockets of treasure that we have found and enjoyed with the kids.

Caleb learned to climb a ladder that is straight up. This is exciting to the PT because it uses different muscle groups that we have been specifically targeting and this means that they're getting stronger.

His fashion sense has lessened but that's OK because he's usually happiest in a spider man outfit with boots on :)

Sometimes Creed is just too tired to keep going so he sleeps like this :) Now that he's WALKING he needs a little more sleep than before. Here's a VIDEO of some of his early walking.

Caleb has been teaching Creed to love the drums as much as he does. And it's working! Between the 2 of them, there aren't many days that go by without someone getting some quality time in on the drums. And we're so grateful not only that the boys get along and play together but that it centers around music! There are also moments where they drum on each other's heads but we're choosing to not document that as much :)

Here is a VIDEO of some of the drum techniques that Chris has been working on with Caleb :)

Cadence lost a tooth! Seriously this is one of those milestones that we weren't quite prepared for, but it came and so we dealt with it as best we could. Kagan was pretty concerned about the entire situation :) but I (ashleigh) just pulled out the loose tooth and it was only after she saw that it was out that she cried! More for dramatic effect I'm pretty sure... The tooth fairy came and she got a gold dollar so she's hanging on to that until just the right thing comes along to spend it on.

Art projects have been getting done with Daddy on the weekend. This particular one introduced her to her address and phone number. And it was all done at Dunkin Donuts with Daddy.

Another "win" for the homeschooling adventure!

Hannah and Justin got married! It's been so cool to walk on the journey of their engagement and to watch them honor the Lord with their decisions. We're quite convinced that God has great plans for them and we're thrilled out of our minds to get to watch it play out. And they love our kids lots too - which is always a plus in our world!

Chris and I got to spend a couple of days together - with the worship team from church - at Catalyst in Atlanta! The speakers were great, the time together was unbelievable, the church planters shirts were hideous (that's the brown shirt guy) - sometimes you just shouldn't be that "relevant" ya know?, time with Annie was so fun, and dinner at the Melting Pot was way more yummy than anything we've had in a long time!

School Days, School Days

So another long, over-due post is finally making it up on the blog..... in case you didn't know, we're homeschooling!

After much prayer and conversation, Chris and I both felt like the best thing for Cadence, for this year, was to homeschool her. We don't know what we'll do in the future, we're honestly not even discussing it at this point in the game, but for this year, we believe that this is a good decision for all of us. And so far, it has proven true - for the most part :)

Knowing my lack of discipline coupled with the complete chaos that we live in, we decided to go with an all-in-one curriculum. We knew that we wanted it to have solid Biblical teaching as a big part of it, and for someone else to be the main teacher, so we went with the A Beka Academy. Basically what this is is a video (and a very dated one at that) of a teacher teaching a class of kindergarten children. Other than how out of date her hair and clothes are, we love it! The teaching is great, Mrs. Bere (the teacher) tells Cadence what to do in her books so that we can't argue about it - we just do what Mrs. Bere says. :) Cadence is convinced that i email Mrs. Bere every day to let her know how she is doing - and for now, we're not telling her differently...

The hardest part has been that all the writing thru A Beka is done in cursive and so Cadence has had to re-learn how to write her letters in cursive. So far we have done all the vowels lower case and the letter "t" After a couple of threats to break her hands (not my proudest mom moments) and lots of prayer from my small group and Ladies Bible Study, we're gaining victory and Cadence still has the use of both of her hands! Praise GOD!!

Here are a couple of pictures of our school set up. The desk is in our dining room so that I can be doing other stuff and still keep her on task. We use the big monitor, not the laptop, it just so happened that this day I couldn't make the regular DVD player work so we were improvising with the laptop.

Her books - they actually do still (for the most part) stay lined up on the shelf!

In case you're interested in what she's learned so far, here is a VIDEO we took tonight of some of the highlights of her school career thus far.....:)