Halloween, Soup, and an East Coast visitor!

Hey ya'll!  I always seem to have a bunch of pictures to post on the blog.  Maybe I don't blog often enough?  I hate to leave some of them out of the blog, so here goes another random phone picture blog. Enjoy!

My school plans a "Favorite Book Character" Day each year on Halloween.  (some families don't celebrate Halloween and it's our way to still have a fun dress up day!)  Each team of teachers and paras dress alike, and we chose Wizard of Oz!  Other themes included "Pete the Cat Loves His School Shoes", "Crayons", and "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish"  Dr Seuss.  I think ours was the cutest!  The other teachers not pictured from our team were dressed as Dorothy's dog, Toto, and the farmer from the beginning of the story.  Oh, and I MADE MY SKIRT!  Gathers and all!  I did have to Skype my mom once for directions, but overall I did a pretty good job!

Can you guess how many kids are under the parachute?   (17!!)  And they did this without any teacher under there helping them!  They all have to sit on the edge and close all the openings!  So cute!  This is our P.E. area with the cute doors in the background.

Casey is the cutest dog ever!  He was playing outside with a stick and rolled over on his back!  He has such a strong personality!  Love him :)

Fall leaves!

We were sad to see the Royals lose the World Series :( but very happy that Aaron could go to game 6 and 7.

And last but not least, our East Coast visitor was my mom!!!!!

I picked mom up from the airport on Friday Nov 7 and Aaron had supper ready for us when we got home!  He made Roasted Butternut Squash soup!  I am a lucky girl to have such an amazing cook in the house!  So yummy!

Oh and he made FRENCH ONION SOUP!!!!  SOOO DELICIOUS!  I can't say enough good things about Aaron!  He has so many talents.  Also, more details coming soon about his schooling beginning in January!!!  

Over the weekend with my mom we took her to Hobby Lobby to do some shopping.  The store is comparable to Michael's but way cheaper and many more decorating and sewing supplies.  Overall, the most fun store EVER!  I wanted to do a craft project for the front door and this is how it ended up!  Blue and white for winter colors.

 Mom helped us prep our garden for winter, and so did Casey :)  We planted some pansies in pots for the front porch and pulled a bunch of plants in the back.

Casey loved mom!

Mom got to visit my school!  I just have to post all of these cute pictures with my kids!  She is the best and has such a way with children!  She started reading a book and everyone wanted to smash together to hear it! ha!

We made sensory bottles for the science center while she was here.  The kids have been loving playing with these during center time and looking through them out the window!  We filled them with treasures and definitely glued the lids on tight!

This was mom's spot for some of the weekend.  We had her sewing patches on jeans, halloween costumes, and fixing curtains!  

Aaron and I love you so much, Mom!  Thanks for flying by yourself and being so brave!  Also, thanks to my Dad for setting up this visit so that she could visit!  Wish you could have joined us!  Now you can say you flew all by yourself! :)  Oh, while at school, the teacher who teaches next door said we could be sisters.  My mom looks so young and is so thin!  I've gotta keep up with her!

It's so cold out here.  It's windy and cold and I hear it's supposed to snow this week.  

Oh my.

Love, Maria

October phone pics!

October has come, and is almost gone!!  Can you believe it!  Aaron and I got to rake leaves for the second time this Fall.  We have so many big, old trees in our yard (which we like) but it makes lots of leaves to rake!  At the beginning of October I went to a Barn Sale with my good friend Rachel, who also lives in Hesston.  We work at Cooper together.  We had a blast shopping, eating cinnamon rolls, and buying artsy sale pieces.  Kansas has so many craft sales in the Fall.  If you ever want to come visit us, come in the Fall so you can go to some with me!

Awhile back we were invited to the wedding celebration for my sister-in-law's sister.  Grace and Ben got married in Wichita, KS in Grace's home church and had the reception outside at a beautiful park by the river.  

We were so excited to see my brother and sister in law!  

He was my handsome date!  We got to dress in sweaters and tights, because it was fairly cool.  I love Fall weather!

 Okay, changing the subject.  HAVE YOU EVER MADE SHRIMP QUESADILLA'S???  You NEED to if you haven't!  We used the recipe off the Pioneer Woman's website.  DELICIOUS!  

Next up..Fall Break!  We made a quick trip to Garden City, KS to see the Billings family.  Danielle, Aaron's sister, had a birthday and we got to celebrate with her over the weekend!  

We also got to do a little child care while Danielle and Bryan had a night away together for Danielle's birthday.  The kids were so sweet and fun to play with!  Here is Jenna, Aaron's other sister, with Makenah and Logan.  As you can see here, Makenah loves to dress up in Princess dresses.

For some afternoon fun we got out bowls of water and made aluminum foil boats and washed coins!  This activity entertained the kids for well over 45 mins!

And....look at Logan wearing Uncle Bear's (Aaron's) shoes!  hehe

Here's another recipe we made together.  Apple pie!  Proud of us mom?? :)

Lastly, Aaron and I got to spend a Saturday (yesterday) in Manhattan, KS for a KSU football game!  I've never been, and it was so much fun!  We got up early and drove 2 hours and found a good parking spot near the stadium!  Below you can see the sunrise over all the cars and RV's.  This is only a small portion of the parking lot.

We met up with some friends who had a double decker bus outside of the stadium!  We had a great view from up on top!

Go Wildcats!  We had great seats, thanks to my man!

October has been especially busy, and I believe November will be about the same.  I will continue to update as much as possible!  In other fun news, my mom is coming to visit us on November 7th!  We are SO EXCITED!!!!  She will fly alone, so pray for her safety!  I'm sure I'll have plenty of pictures to share from that weekend!

Love, Maria  

Dr. Nate and the Chiefs!

Hi all!! 

It's October and it's finally feeling like fall out here!  Until now, school recess was still fairly warm!  So a couple weeks ago Aaron's sister's family came to visit!  I would do a blog about them visiting, however, Danielle did such a wonderful job documenting that I am going to take the liberty to post the link to her blog below.  I hope our VA family and friends enjoying seeing some Kansas State fair pictures!   You can see me featured in a pickle and Makenah eating her first cotton candy!  We love the Stucky family!  

http://the-stuckys.blogspot.com/2014/09/state-fair-and-hesston-weekend.html

In other exciting news, my brother and sister in law are in Kansas this week!!  My sister in law, Maggie, is from Wichita, KS and her sister is getting married this weekend (Oct. 4).  Nate and Maggie are in their first year of residency, and you can only imagine how far ahead they had to plan just to get a week off for travel and wedding dates!  Anyways, I think they were both thankful for a break finally and some time to be with Maggie's family, and see Aaron and I!!!  

So the best part about this week is that Dr. Nate was my class speaker!!  Coincidentally the theme for my preschool class this week was Community Helpers.  Nate agreed to bring his doctor coats and special tools to show my kids (on the airplane flight).  THEY LOVED HIM!!!  I'll post a few pictures below.  I will say that at least 100 pictures were taken, but I can't post very many good ones because of the kids being in the pics.  If you want to see some more you can email me and I'll send some your way.  

To go along with the community helper theme, my wonderful Para helped the kids make handprint cars!  They are adorable!  They chose from a police car, bus, or ambulance.  While Dr. Nate was in my room he wanted to do a craft too so he chose the ambulance!  How fitting!  I wish Maggie could have joined him in my class but she was summoned to the wedding duties as the Bride's sister and Matron of honor.

Close up!  Teachers get to do art projects too :)  I chose the police car on the bottom right.  Compare the kid hands to the adult hand size.  Ha!  

I would love to have the Billings and the Yoder family closer so that more of my family members could be guest speakers or volunteers!  Thank Dr. Nate for making our week so much more special!  

Last but not least, meet "Chief!"  Can you guess who named our new class fish?  Hint:  The fish is red and I live with a KC football die-hard!  And while I'm at it...GO CHIEFS & ROYALS!!

You guessed it...!!!

Aaron went with his friend Reed Hammond to the most recent Monday night Chiefs game!!  Front row on the visitor side.  Aaron made the TV during the national anthem!  Check out those headdresses!!  Happy weekend!

Love, Maria   

New Car, Wedding and....FOOTBALL

Hi you guys!!  It's been awhile since I've blogged.  We've been fairly busy so I have a lot to share in the next couple blog posts!  The most exciting news is that we bought a new car!!  On a Wednesday evening a couple weeks ago, Aaron took me to Don Don Hattan Hattan to test drive a 2011 Chevy Cruze and a Malibu.  (No, that is not a spelling mistake...that's the business name!)  We both knew that the Chevy Cruze was the car for us!  It's sporty, all black, has leather seats, a sun-roof, seat warmers, and has good trunk space.  It's a compact car, which we really like!  One of the main reasons for buying the car is so that when we drive East to VA we don't always have the take Big Red (the truck).  The Cruze will get about 38 MPG when we drive on the interstate, compared to around 20.  AWESOME!!  Okay, so then we said good-bye to the Taurus and drove off the lot with a new car!  So fun!  By the way...that Taurus took my brother Phil to the West Coast and back.  It's had a good, long journey.  We celebrated the new purchase with a yummy dinner date at Cracker Barrel.

 Hi Aaron! :)

In other news, we sang at another wedding recently!  Just to prove that Aaron wears a tie and cleans up good, here's a picture of us at the church before the wedding began.  Our friends, Scotty and Chelsea got married in Newton, KS on September 6, 2014.  The most fun part was that they asked us to sing a song for the wedding processional!  

"Forever and ever, amen" by Randy Travis

Chelsea looked beautiful!

Chelsea had beautiful sunflower decorations!

And sadly enough, this is the only picture I took at the reception.  

Blurry, but still sweet :)  

Did you know football season started??  In my household, Thursday night, Sunday (all-day), and Monday evenings are sacred.  No plans.  Just football.  GO CHEIFS!  Below is a picture of our good friend's "man cave".  Yes, that's a full size projector!  We go all out for our Chiefs!

We had two days of cool fall weather so far in September.  It was a tease.  Now it's back to 80 degree weather.  I am sure ready for fall to arrive!  Kansas summer's are HOT!

Love to all!

-Maria