Oak Tree in an Acorn: Falling Leaves and Spooky Things!

Monday, November 3, 2008

Falling Leaves and Spooky Things!

What a fun fall season this has been so far! Here are some photos of the girls enjoying cooking, crafting, and being spooky in October.

Eve is laying down on her belly to get a close-up look at her drawing of a spider web.

The girls made spider snacks one day. I was surprised at how well Eve did poking the chocolate chip eyes in and not eating a single one. Olivia loved calculating the number of chocolate chip eyes and pretzel legs she would need for 3 spider snacks.

The week before Halloween, we went to the YMCA pumpkin patch to buy our pumpkins, and although there weren't many to choose from, the girls had fun playing around the pumpkins and props.

This year, we decided the girls should paint their pumpkins while we carve a "family pumpkin". The girls enjoyed participating in the painting and no one complained of slimy pumpkin fingers! Olivia chose glow-in-the-dark paint, and they looked great under the blacklights Brian installed on the porch.

The girls also made old-fashioned paper mache' pumpkins. Olivia blew her balloon so big that she decided it looked more like a skeleton's head than a pumpkin, so she painted it likewise.

Genevieve loves stickers, so even though she didn't care for the paper mache paste on her fingers, she kept asking for more "stickers" (newspaper strips) to put on her balloon.

In case you might want to try this sometime, we used these directions for making a Bumpkin Pumpkin.

Finally, we made glow-in-the-dark T-shirts for the girls to wear the night before Halloween. Olivia wanted a skeleton body, and we decided Eve would look cute in a Blinky ghost (Pac Man) shirt. Here are our girls in their spooky shirts!

Happy Fall, Y'all!

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Why the title, "Oak Tree in an Acorn"?

Well, really it's all about perspective when raising the girls. It helps me to think about the grand scheme of parenting and remember that what we do now affects how our little acorns will grow. Like an oak tree, we want them to be strong in their words and deeds, be able to withstand life's storms, set and reach their goals, and be people that others can lean on and trust.

We have an oak tree planted in our yard that came from an acorn my dad planted in a pot. This acorn came from a huge oak tree that was planted in the backyard of my dad's childhood home. My dad's father also planted this tree from an acorn he found on his hunting lease in the early 1960's. Our tree is thus a family heirloom, a "family tree".

It was the year of Olivia's birth when we planted our little sapling. It looked so very sad that winter with no leaves; it was, basically, like a stick rooted in the ground. Five years later, though, it stands 9 feet tall, and we continue to nurture it and watch it grow. We hope one year it will produce acorns of its own, and we can continue to pass on this family heirloom. We hope to remember it's example of how each acorn has the potential to be an oak tree, and how our acorns, Olivia and Genevieve, will one day, with help from God, become mighty oak trees themselves.