Fire & Police Station Tours

This morning our school went on a field trip to tour fire and police stations. First, our group went to the fire station. My friend's husband (their kids also belong to the same school) is a fireman, and he did our tour!

Here he is, showing the kids all of the protective gear that they wear.

He put on all of his gear so that the kids would know not to be afraid of a fireman if they were ever in a fire.

A engine got called out while we were there.

Even I learned a lot today! I never knew that THIS is a fire TRUCK, and the other one is a fire ENGINE. The trucks don't carry water, and have the ladder on top and their focus is on search and rescue. The engines carry water.

He showed us a lot of their equipment. He said that this fire truck costs a million dollars!

The jaws of life.

Here he is showing us how the fireman's schedule works and the maps of the city that are all over the station so that they always know where they are going.

He showed us his "bedroom", or dorm, where they sleep.

This is the kitchen area, and the kids asked the men a couple of questions. Leave it to my daughter to announce, "it smells like coffee in here!" haha. Yes, she knows that smell well! =)

Smoke detectors!

Emma was SO excited to try on the gear!

ALL SMILES!

Sitting in the engine.

Next, we headed next door to the police station.

She pointed out that the Visalia badge has Mickey Mouse on it! I never noticed that before!

The big round white thing is what they detonate bombs in.

Swat and CSI vehicles...

I felt bad for the tour guide in the briefing room, the little kids were less than enthused and most of them laid their heads down on the table! I guess this just wasn't as interesting as the fire station to them!

They took us in small groups into dispatch and we had to be totally silent.

We had a great morning, but by far our favorite tour was the fire station!

Zoo {Take 2}

Friends save the day! If you saw my earlier post, you know that my batteries died after only two quick pictures. Here are a few pictures off of my friend's camera!

I heard a parent telling their child to "wait a minute, let the class go ahead of you.." Haha! The more the merrier, right?

Zoo Day

Who the heck takes their kids 45 minutes away to the closest zoo, with a ton of their friends, and forgets to check their camera batteries?? ME, that's who! So, while myself and 3 girlfriends let our 12 kids explore the zoo for most of the day...I only have TWO pictures to show for it! This is the very first thing we saw, and the only two pictures I was able to take with my camera. Oh well, I guess I got a picture of Jacob Black in his element, right? ;)

My batteries are charging as I type this by the way....

Countdown to turkey

Last week our craft group made the countdown to Christmas blocks that I posted earlier today. I REALLY wanted to make a Thanksgiving version too! This afternoon I got my hubby to find a scrap 4 x4 post and cut me some blocks. It was scrap so even after sanding (by hand, I don't have a sander) they aren't super smooth like my Christmas ones. Oh well, I still love it! I already had everything I needed: fall paper, cricut vinyl, paint, mod podge, and even two different turkeys on cricut cartridges!

I don't know if you can see him under the ribbon, but the other turkey is on the side of the bottom block.

Christmas Countdown Blocks

I missed the craft group meeting on Friday, but picked up my supply kit from Trish, and made mine at home. Click here if you'd like to read the post with the craft group making these! Trish got all of our supplies prepped so the actual "making it" was pretty easy. There are more details about how she made the blocks on the link above.

I put them on the stand just to take the picture...now I've got to put them away until after Thanksgiving. I don't know why, but it is a pet peeve of mine to have Christmas stuff out while it is not even Thanksgiving yet. To each his own, maybe some people combine the holidays, as in, "during the holidays". For me, I just feel like Christmas is already SUCH a big deal, why is it necessary to skip the one time that was set aside to remember thankfulness. I kind of feel like materialism has crept in quite enough on the holidays, so by not decorating early, is one little way I can kind of stave off my children from the mindset of the "gimmies". For the entire month of November, we are filling out our daily cards on our thankful board. I am however, glad that it's all done and ready to be put out right after Thanksgiving! I like it so much that I think I am going to make a "countdown to turkey" set of blocks.

Acorn garland

I came across this blog post a few days ago, at A Beautiful Mess. It was a tutorial on making an acorn garland! I just took down my candy corn garland so this looked perfect! I went on the search for faux wood grain contact paper, but with no luck. I checked Wal-Mart but instead of checking Target as well, I went to Lowe's and did some aisle roaming till I found something that would work. As luck would have it, my materials ended up being super cheap! I believe contact paper would have been $3.99 for each roll, and I would need two rolls, in different shades. I ended up in the wood flooring section of Lowe's and found these strips off wood grain laminate for less than $2 each. I bought 4 strips and the total was less than $5. AND after making the project, I ended up only using one strip of each, so this could be made for about $2.50!

Print out the pdf acorn drawing by clicking on the tutorial link above. For some reason I couldn't get my printer to cooperate this morning so I drew one myself.

Here are the strips, they are thick, but can still be cut with scissors, and can be punched with a regular hole punch!

Cut out your bottom part of the acorn out of the lighter wood grain.
Then cut the top part out of the darker strip.

Originally, I just peeled a strip off of the back of the acorn top and thought it would be sticky enough to hold the acorn together...wrong! My husband said I made realistic acorns because the drop in the fall. SO... run a line of hot glue on the top of the arorn bottom piece, and push it onto the back of the acorn top piece. Otherwise, they are just too heavy to stick together.

Punch your holes and run your twine or ribbon through the holes. I wanted twine, but didn't have any. I settled for brown raffia ribbon that I had on hand.

I LOVE it!!!