Monday, October 24, 2011

Fun in the Fall

First of all - exciting news!  No, I'm not pregnant.  But you can now subscribe to this blog via email! Just enter your e-mail address in the box on the top right corner of the page and click the "Subscribe" button.  You will get an e-mail notification every time I write a new blog post.  Pretty cool.

Now, on to the day-to-day. 

Monday, October 3 - Today Joey made his first ever drawing of a stick person!  He's drawn lots of smiley faces before, but this is the first time he's ever had a body or arms.  He told me that he drew himself holding a fishing pole!  Today we also bought pumpkins to carve for Halloween.  We're waiting to carve them at a pumpkin carving party though.



Tuesday, October 4 - Went to a friend's house to play and also did a papier mache project.  Mary had her weekly homeschool art and gym class.  Today they did aboriginal art and played volleyball.

Wednesday, October 5 -  The weather was beautiful so we went to Cushing Park for a bit and then went grocery shopping.  Mary had a dentist appointment and got some cavities filled - she only has one more appointment to go and then she will be cavity-free!  Today she went back for the first time without me in the room.  She was nervous at first, but the dentist said she did great - she was even giggling while they were filling her cavities!




Thursday, October 6 - Mary and Joey played at grandma's house while Joe and I went to a doctor's appointment.  The weather was still gorgeous so we met our new neighbors at the park down the road to play outside for awhile.  After that, Mary and Lily and I went to a book fair/ice cream social at our neighbor's school.

Friday, October 7 -Another fabulous day.  I am so glad we have this warm spell before it gets cold for the winter.  It was so warm and nice that we decided to have one last day at the beach at Ottawa Lake.  Since Lily has finally hit the six month mark I decided to put some sunscreen on her for the first time.  There wasn't much shade anymore since most of the leaves were off the trees already.  She seemed to enjoy the sun.


Mary and Joey spent some time writing in the sand with sticks.  Joey drew lots of road tracks and letters.  Mary drew out the names of everyone in our family.




There were some things different about going to the beach in the fall.  Normally the kids find a handful of shells on the beach, but today there were TONS of shells.  Buckets of them.  So that was neat.  It was also different to see all of the fallen leaves on the beach.  And the water was much colder, so they didn't swim very much. 



We really enjoyed our last day at the beach for the year.  I hope summer comes back soon.


Saturday, October 8 - Lily and I woke up early and went to pick up Aunt Malorie at the airport in Milwaukee.  It was the first time Lily got to meet her aunt!  We drove up north to go to Mary, Joey, and Lily's cousin Autumn's first birthday party.  For dinner we all went to Frank's Pizza Palace - yum!


Lily can't have pizza yet, but she still had a good time.


Sunday, October 9 - We spent most of the day at grandma and grandpa's house visiting with Malorie.  We played games and played outside and tried our best to enjoy Malorie's short visit.  For dinner, we had a big party at Great Grandpa George and Great Grandma Diane's house.  It was fabulous!  So much delicious food!

Monday, October 10 -We went to visit Great Grandpa George and Great Grandma Diane.  We picked bags and bags of apples from their apple tree to take home.  Mary and Joey kept sampling them, just to make sure they were ALL good.  After the long drive home, I noticed that Lily's first tooth had come in!  It was one of the bottom middle teeth, on the right side of her mouth.  Hooray!



Tuesday, October 11 - Mary had her weekly home school art and gym class.  Today they did painting in the style of Matisse and played Dodge ball.  While Mary was in class, Joey and Lily and I explored the area around the building.  There is a nice playground, and a river walk along the Fox River.







On the way home from Mary's class we stopped to check out this waterfall.



After dinner the kids and I went to the park with Uncle Alan to collect a bunch of different autumn leaves.  Today Lily had her first food - sweet potato!  We all gathered around her high chair with the cameras and she thought it was hilarious.  She laughed the whole time!  She didn't really end up swallowing much, which is pretty normal, but she did enjoy putting it in her mouth and exploring food for the first time.




Wednesday, October 12 - Today we had a whole bunch of our homeschooling friends over to our house for an event I called "Leaves, Leaves, Leaves!"  We used the leaves we collected yesterday, along with leaves others brought, to do all kinds of leaf projects.  We made leaf rubbings with paper and crayons, leaf collages, leaf prints with paint, leaf hangings, and more!  The kids also went outside and played with the leaves in our yard, raking them up and jumping in them.  They used our mud pie kitchen stuff to make leaf stew and leaf pie and other fun things.  It was a very good time.

Leaf Rubbing/Collage by Joey

Painting by Mary

Leaf Rubbing by Mary

Collage by Joey


Thursday, October 13 - Lily's second tooth came in today!  It is in the bottom middle on the left side.  She is handling the whole teething thing rather well, I think.  Even though it was a little rainy, we went out and about today.  Mary had her hair cut for the very first time!  She had been talking about getting a hair cut for several weeks now, and when I learned of a free hair cut opportunity at Super Cuts she decided to go for it.  She planned out what she wanted ahead of time and told the stylist exactly how she wanted it cut.  I think it turned out pretty cute!  Afterward we met some friends at the zoo to see the three new baby lion cubs.  Very cool.

Before
During

After
In the afternoon I went over to my sister-in-law's house to drop off some baby clothes for my nephew.  While I was gone Mary and Joey made these with dad and Uncle Alan.



Friday, October 14 - Mary is loving her new haircut.  She keeps going to the bathroom and styling it in different ways and playing with her bangs and such.  Today she asked me to put into two ponytails.



Today Joey spent the day with Uncle Alan at home.  They played outside and went to the park and watched a movie and had ice cream with sprinkles and all sorts of fun stuff.  Mary and Lily and I met up with some friends at one of their houses to play for awhile.  In the afternoon we drove to West Bend for a History Fair put on by our home school group.  A history fair is kind of like a science fair, except all the projects and presentations are about history!  Mary decided to do a project on the history of fashion.  We checked out a bunch of books from the library on women's fashion throughout history and have been perusing them over the past couple of weeks.  Mary told me she wanted to make some paper dolls with different fashions, so I found a website where you could print a bunch of paper dolls dressed from different time periods.  She colored in some of her favorites and I cut them out for her and we arranged them on a bulletin board by time period.  At the history fair Mary showed everyone her doll's outfits and we talked a little bit about some of the things we learned, like how women used to wear frames under their hair to hold up high hair styles and frames under their dresses to poof them out.  Afterwards we got some food and played with friends at the McDonald's Playland in West Bend.  The restaurant has an outer space theme, which Mary thought was really cool.



Monday, October 17 - Mary had a dentist appointment today - they filled the last of her cavities.  Mary is so cooperative at the dentist's office and everyone is so happy to see her.  Today they told me they schedule her for only a half hour because they know she does such a great job.  They have special stickers that say "No cavities!" for when you have checkups with no cavities.  Since all of Mary's cavities are filled she got to have one of those stickers for the first time.  I was surprised when she came bouncing out to the waiting room covered in NINE stickers.  The dentist and assistant had decorated the whole front and back of her shirt with stickers.  Mary was so proud! 

Tuesday, October 18 - Mary's regular homeschool art and gym class.  Today they did art in the style of Picasso and in gym they played floor hockey.  I can't wait to see all of the artwork Mary is creating in this class - they save it all for an art gallery at the end of the semester.  After class Mary went to play at a friend's house and they ended up having a sleepover.

Wednesday, October 19 - Today we attended a new program at the Waukesha County Museum called the Discovery Club.  It is specially designed for children 3-5 years old.  This month's theme was science.  The kids listened to a story, talked about mixing colors to make new ones, and made colorful butterflies.  They used balloons to 'vacuum' up scraps of paper, which they thought was very cool.




They also went on a scavenger hunt throughout the museum and made slime.  It was pretty fun, and I think we'll be going back.


Thursday, October 20 - Today Lily tried her second food - cauliflower!  She still doesn't seem to be swallowing much of it, but I know it's only a matter of time before she's eating everything in sight. Here is a picture of Lily hanging out with dad before bed.



Friday, October 21 - Snapped this cute picture in the morning - my three smiling little ones.  I was taking pictures of Lily in her new headband and Mary and Joey insisted on climbing in the picture too!


Lily is seven months old!


We had some friends come over and play today that we haven't seen in awhile, so that was fun.  We also worked on our Halloween costumes for a Halloween Party tomorrow night - they are turning out pretty awesome!

Sunday, October 02, 2011

I Told You We Were Busy

Friday, September 23: We visited the Jelly Belly Warehouse in Pleasant Prairie with our home school group.  We got to ride the Jelly Belly Train through the warehouse and learn about how they make Jelly Belly jelly beans and other candies and such.  They also had a sample bar where you could sample all of the Jelly Belly flavors.  Joe and Joey tried sausage flavored jelly beans.  They even had crazy flavors, like pencil shavings, baby wipes, moldy cheese, rotten eggs, and I even tried a booger flavored one.  It was nasty.



I did like the new chocolate covered jelly beans, and the Gatorade energizing jelly beans were also pretty good.  Mary and Joey especially liked the giant candy corn - it was about three times the size of normal candy corn.  After we were done at the warehouse we went to a nearby park for a picnic lunch with our friends.  Joe left to go to Madison for the Badger football game on Saturday.  After dinner our neighbors came over to play.  All the kids wanted a snack so we made popcorn in our popcorn maker which looks like this.   The kids love watching the popcorn pop!

Saturday, September 24: Today was Museum Day so we visited the Waukesha County Museum for free!  They were having a "Feathered Festival," and there was a live bird show and lots of activities for kids.  We went with our neighbors and had lots of fun.  The kids made bird masks:


And they dissected owl pellets.  It was really cool.  They found all kinds of bones - Joey is holding a tiny bird skull in this picture.

Later at home Mary wanted to draw a bumblebee, so we looked up some pictures online and she found one to copy.  We also discovered the TV show Horseland on Netflix, and she started watching that.  Which led to several horse drawings.

Sunday, September 25: The kids spent a good chunk of time playing outside today, even though it's getting a bit chilly.  They also made a fabulous mess of the basement, covering the floor with art supplies while they made all kinds of projects and drawings and cards.  Before bed the kids and I made a loaf of cinnamon sugar quick bread together to have in the morning for breakfast - yum!

Monday, September 26: I went grocery shopping today with Lily.  Mary went to one of her friend's houses to play for most of the day.  Joey played at our friends the Gaspers today.  When I picked him up I said, "Joey, are you ready to go home?" He replied, "Yes, but THIS is my house.  I want to live here forever."  I guess that means he had a good time!

Tuesday, September 27: Today was Mary's second time at home school art and gym class through the Waukesha Park & Rec Department.  They read about Michelangelo, and then did some painting on the ceiling - the teacher taped paper on the underside of tables for the kids to paint on.  In gym they played flag football.  Mary is making new friends and really enjoying the class.  Later we visited our local library and checked out another big stack of items.  Mary checked out this large picture book of the human body.  She checks it out frequently, and especially loves the page about the digestive system.  On the way to the library, she was talking with a Texas accent, and I asked her why she was saying things that way.  "Hello, I'm wearing cowgirl boots!" she said.  We got out the paints at home and did some painting.  Joey got a new haircut before bed so he has a freshly buzzed look again.  He keeps saying, "My hair is so sharp!"

Wednesday, September 28: Today we went to Sussex Village Park for a Marshmallow Shootout with a group of home school friends.  One of the other families purchased all the supplies for everyone to build a marshmallow shooter out of PVC pipe.  You shoot the marshmallows by blowing into the end of the gun.  Joe and Alan came along and had a giant marshmallow war with all of the kids.  It was tons of fun.

Thursday, September 29: We went to visit Grandma Terri today.  We picked some grapes at Betty's house.  It has been raining a lot this week, and grandma's yard was full of mushrooms!



Mary and Joey also got to play with their cousins Henry and Abby at grandma's house for awhile, and Mary even got to sleep over at grandma's. 

Friday, September 30: Joe didn't have to work today, and since Mary was still at grandma's Joey got to have some special time with just dad.  They went to the park down the road together to play for a little while, and Joey also went along with dad to the bank and to Pick'N Save.  That evening we met up with Joe's parents and brother and sister and their families at the corn maze at Army Lake Camp in East Troy. It was lots of fun.  Here are Mary and Joey walking through the maze:

  
There was lots of things to do other than the corn maze too.  Like barrel rides:
 And bouncy houses:
 And face painting!
 And hay rides, and hot dogs, and bean bag toss, and prizes, and a bon fire, and more! Highly recommended!



Saturday, October 1: Today Joe went to Madison for the Badger game against Nebraska.  We just hung around the house all day.  Here is a picture of Lily hanging around.

Mary was helping me cook supper, and I mentioned that today was October 1st.  Her eyes lit up and she gasped.  "October 'last' is Halloween'!"  I guess she's already excited about that.

We also made a giant chocolate chip cookie.  It was super delicious.  Seriously.  Maybe the best cookie I've ever made.

Sunday, October 2: The weather was gorgeous today so we drove to Lapham Peak State Park and hiked around for a bit and climbed the tower.