Hallway challenge!

My school had a competition between grade levels to see who could come up with the best literacy idea to make the hallways better and brighter! My team was made up of first grade, fifth grade and title. We have quite a few Pinterest queens so of course ours was super cute! We copied and laminated tons of books to spell out the word read. Then we asked each staff member what their favorite children's book or chapter book was. We put the cover of their favorite book over their face so that kids can guess the reader!

Seven Months Old!

Ryan is 7 months old today! This was a very eventful month! It started out with our first fall retreat with Ryan at Camp Doniphan. Ryan was a champ, but was sick the whole time. Dan and I directed this year, so we had to stay, but he got conjunctivitis and his poor little eyes were so sad! But, after one dose of drops, he was perfect and happy again! He also started on rice cereal, carrots and peas! He LOVES his solids! I remember it taking Courtney many days of poking down rice cereal before she would open her mouth for it, but this little one opens his tiny bird mouth for every bite! He hasn't spit anything out so far! The most fun thing of all this month was seeing Ryan start to crawl! He has been getting up on all fours for a few weeks, but finally made some steps! We have had to quickly baby proof again now that he is everywhere! 

For some reason, 7 months seems very old! lt seems as if with all his growing and changing and new tricks lately that he is growing up too fast! I know he is still just a baby but that one year mark is coming up very fast (but don't worry, I've been planning and pinning things for his first birthday since before he was born). 

A pretty fun rainy day

On fall weekends I usually have an agenda of some pumpkin patch, trail, or outdoor place for us to go. I was bummed that today would be rainy, but it turned out just fine!

We started the day with a pumpkin pancake. Then, Courtney and I went to Brookside to the farmer's market and the Reading Reptile. It made me want to come home and paper mâché a ton of book characters for my classroom! Courtney loved it there. She loves the Strega Nona book series and we found several more to read that we've never seen before.

We came home and made a few fall crafts: bats and glitter pumpkins. I can't tell you how much I love she's a craft girl like me!

Also, the pictures are all out of order. I'm still getting used to the blogger app.

Courtney, hide your tiny princesses!!

Ryan is crawling! Two days ago he was still doing a lot of rocking on hands and knees. Then, yesterday he just took off! He does a combo of crawling and scootching to get what he wants. Most of the time it's something of Courtney's! Now, we need to baby proof!