Our Happy Halloween at Wolfe's Neck Farm

Carving "Jack"

New Spaces for Grace & Jack

Here is the side of Grace's room where her bed is located. Grace had one request for her new room -- that there be clouds on her ceiling! We arranged Grace's room to make sure her bed was directly next to a window because one of her favorite things is to look out her window first thing in the morning when she wakes up and it is the last thing she does before she goes to sleep. Grace also loves to read her books on her bed near her window.
Here is Jack's room. It was fun choosing his paint colors. This is something we were not able to do in our old home since we lived in a log cabin. We decided to do an accent wall of navy blue in Jack-a-roo's room. The only thing missing in this room are some airplane decals which we will put on Jack's ceiling above his crib.
One of Grace and Jack's favorite spaces in our home is their third floor playroom. Here is a small section of the room with some of Grace and Jack's favorite things -- musical instruments, play silks and all of Jack's cars and trucks. I love this playroom space. It is a room I have always dreamed of having for Grace, Jack and our new baby girl. More pictures of the playroom to come.
Here is Grace and Jack's very own bathroom. Green is one of my favorite colors and I thought it would be fun to paint their bathroom a bright green color. Once their bathroom was painted Bob called me in and said, "Look, it literally glows." I really like how bright and cheery it is! :) This is the project that has taken me the longest to organize in our new home so far....our books! I wanted to make sure that every room in our house had books in it. I also wanted to arrange the books in all of the rooms and on the shelves according to subject. This project was well worth the extra time. Here is part of our backyard. This was the scene this morning - a rafter of wild turkeys! They spent nearly two hours in our back and side yard today. I'll introduce you to our other animal friends (the cows) soon.

With a new home comes new traditions....a new one we decided to start is to make homemade pizza together every Saturday night!

Home Sweet Home (At Last!)

We moved into our new home on Monday. We have been busy the past few days emptying boxes, creating fresh new spaces, organizing, reorganizing and finding just the perfect spot for everything! Here is one new space of our home that I am extremely grateful to have. I call it the art room. It is a small room adjacent to our kitchen/living room space that we have dedicated to art, sensory and project activities for Grace and Jack. It is Grace and Jack's very own space where they can learn, imagine and create! I anticipate lots of time will be spent in this room.
I am so thankful that all of the windows in our new house are positioned low enough so that every room in our home is "a room with a view" for Grace and Jack. They both love to stand at the windows and take in the the animals and wildlife that surround us. In the picture above Grace is watching a rafter of wild turkeys in a field adjacent to our home. We have also been enjoying getting to know the nineteen cows and one calf that visit our home several times each day. There will be many more pictures to come but I am off now to unpack a few more boxes. There is still so much more to be done!!!

We are so thankful and extremely appreciative to have had Maddy and Poppy with us for the past several days. They were a tremendous help to all of us during our move. Maddy and Poppy worked so very hard to help us unpack and get settled into our new house. They were busy working every minute they were here with us. Maddy and Poppy left to go back to Vermont yesterday and I hope they get some much needed and well deserved rest! Thank you, Maddy and Poppy, for all that you did to help us with our move.

We'll Be Back Soon...

I'm sorry I wasn't able to post pictures this week -- we continued to be quite busy with our move! Here is a brief update: Uncle Steve & Auntie Allison will be joining us today to help. Maddy & Poppy are also coming today and will be staying with us for the week while Bob and I unpack and get our new home ready. We will be moving the last of our smaller things to our new house this weekend. We have movers coming on Monday to move our bigger/heavier furniture items. We will officially be living in our new home on Monday! I'm not sure when I'll be back on this blog but I'm hoping by the end of next week once things get settled a bit.

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend and week ahead.

I hope to be back on our blog soon with some pictures but until then you can go to Maddy's blog (click here) to see pictures of Grace & Jack taken last week at Higgins Beach during a beautiful visit from Maddy & Uncle Adam.

We are busier than ever here at the Leger home. We move to our new house exactly one week from today and we are frantically trying to pack up the last of our things. Thank you to Maddy & Uncle Adam for all of your help with our move during your visit.

Grace & Jack Perform at the Fryeburg Fair!!!

Grace and Jack performed at the Fryeburg Fair on Sunday!!! There was a stage set up at the fairgrounds that had a variety of acts perform throughout the day. In-between performances there music was playing on the loudspeakers so Grace and Jack decided to hit the stage and dance. They drew in quite the crowd and received lots of applause after their dynamic performance. Hip, hip hooray to Grace and Jack!

I hope everyone enjoyed their long weekend. We had a fun-filled (and a very busy) weekend. Thank you so much to Memere and Aunt Bernie for coming up on Saturday to help us with the last of the cleaning in our new house. Exactly two weeks from today we will be spending our first night in our new home. Oh my...so much to do with so little time left. We are all very excited for the BIG move! Grace and I spent some girl time together today at IKEA getting some things for our new house while Daddy and Jack spent "man time" together. I'll be back tomorrow with some pictures from our return trip to the Fryeburg Fair that we went to on Sunday. Happy Columbus Day!

Our Halloween Sensory Bin

We made a Halloween sensory bin today using dried black beans and orange lentils. We added a variety of cups, measuring spoons and containers into the bin so Grace and Jack could scoop, measure, pour and explore!

Grace and Jack loved their Halloween sensory bin. They both had so much fun with it and ended up playing with it for several hours today!

Jack has always loved to pour, especially with water, so he had such a great time pouring the beans and lentils from one container into another. He took his scooping, pouring and measuring very seriously and he really concentrated on such precise pouring!

Grace loved playing with the sensory bin too! She especially enjoyed the black beans. Grace pretended that the beans were magic beans that grew into a tall beanstalk. She reenacted Jack and the Beanstalk for me!

Grace and Jack both took turns sitting in the sensory bin...the perfect way to get the full sensory experience!

Rock 'n' roll

Jack has become quite the little musician. Jack sings all day long. He has recently started to makes up his own songs lyrics, which always keep us laughing! It is rare these days to find Jack without a guitar or ukulele in hand. His love of the guitar first started last Christmas when Maddy and Poppy gave him his very first one. We will never forget last Christmas in Vermont when Jack walked around EVERYWHERE with his guitar, refusing to let go of it. Since then, Jack's love of music has continued to grow and grow. The picture of Jack above was taken this week. I was in the middle of making dinner when Jack headed outside with a guitar in one hand and his ukulele in the other. He headed straight for the stone wall on the side of our house to sit and make music. Half way through making dinner I heard Jack yell, "Rock and roll!" as loud as he could followed by a big laugh. He kept doing this over and over again while strumming his little ukulele. Poppy taught Jack this expression last week during his visit (!!!!) and it has quickly become one of Jack's favorite sayings. I definitely think we have a future singer/songwriter/guitar player on our hands. Rock & roll, Jack.

Site Words

Here are some pictures of Grace this week reading her site words. I am typically not a big proponent of flash card style learning but Grace really loves having her site words organized neatly on a ring. Grace has full access to her ring of site words and I find her reading them on her own several times each day. Grace is truly a gifted reader. She learned to read at a very early age so I thought it would be important for her to also learn site words after learning to read phonetically. Grace amazes me each day with her love of learning and her ability to learn so very quickly. Grace can see a site word just one time and remember it and recall it in books....our Amazing Grace!

Mosaic Pumpkins

Last week after Grace's play performance we celebrated her big day by going out to lunch with Maddy & Poppy. The restaurant we went to had mosaics on the floor and all along the walls. Grace was very intrigued with this style of art. Today Grace and Jack made their very own mosaics. Grace first cut out lots of tiny pieces of orange construction paper. Grace and Jack glued the orange paper pieces onto a paper plate to create a mosaic pumpkin. They later added a jack-o'-lantern face.

Grace worked very hard on her mosaic pumpkin so that all of the white was covered with orange paper pieces.

Here is Grace's finished mosaic pumpkin. She named her pumpkin "Jack!"

Here is Jack's finished mosaic pumpkin. Jack thought it was very funny that Grace and I kept calling the pumpkins Jack!

This was a great art lesson for Grace and Jack. They both learned about mosaics while making a fun Halloween craft. Furthermore, all the art and learning materials in our home are slowly dwindling!! Nearly all of our materials have been packed away since we will be moving to our new home in just over two weeks (October 24 is our official move in date). The only materials we have left are paper, markers, paint and glue so this was the perfect project for us today. I'll have to get creative with our projects over the next few weeks due to our limited materials. :)

Jack loved his mosaic pumpkin so much that he carried it around with him just about all day! He couldn't wait to show it to Daddy when he got home from work.