Happy Fall-Time!

Fall + Leaves + Jonas = Pure Joy.

Friday Nite, Foiled

Friday night's plan:

Get Lucy down early

Babysitter come at 7pm

Ben and I got out on our semi-annual date - which included playing tennis, getting a small bite to eat, and star-gazing

What happened instead:

4:00 - Called the babysitter and rescheduled to next Friday, since Emmy had been sick all day and was then running a temp of 102.7

5ish hour - started getting dinner ready, home picked up, etc.

6:06 - Emmy barfs all over herself. . . and me.

6:08 - Clothes stripped off. Emmy in the tub. Then Emmy to bed.

6:25 - Eat dinner with the rest of the family.

6:40 - Get Lucy down to bed.

7 - Help Miles make this craft (I had already worked on one with Jonas earlier in the day.)

Get boys to bed.

Plan 2-weeks of dinner with Ben.

Watch 2 episodes of Dick Van Dyke with Ben.

Read a tiny bit.

Go to bed.

Life happens.

Rain, by Miles

Rain is here splat splat

Rain is here splat splat

So many drops splat splat

Rain will go and come again splat splat

Drying up, drying up, the sun is out

The rain is gone

Curlers. . .

Yes, I put them in Lucy. Yes, I'm crazy. No, I didn't make her sleep in them. In fact, I took them out pretty soon after I put them in because she didn't like me blow-drying her hair and she was ready for bedtime. Yes I did put one on top on Sunday morning - per her father's request. No, I didn't get a picture. Next time.

'Tis the Season. . .

to post pictures of our Annual Trip to the Pumpkin Patch:

Tee-hee.

Jumping off the haystack is always an adventure. This picture is just too great.

Li'l Beauty.

Wheeeee!

So doesn't have much fear.

Here we are on the hayride.

And here they are.

Lucy was so excited to have found a furry little friend there!

Super sweet.

Man this picture would have been perfect if it would have focused on the handsome boy as opposed to the hay behind said boy. (Yes, I'm beginning to realize that perhaps the first camera we bought wasn't the problem - but the picture-takers behind the lens are. . .)

Oop, must be time to head home. This little one was hungry!

Our Toddling Toddler

Bragging Rights

If you don't like posts where it's all about how good and wonderful their children are, then you should read elsewhere today. Because it's my blog and I'll brag if I want to (sing to the tune of "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to. . .").

Truthfully, I'm just so proud of my boys. They make parent-teacher conferences delightful. I met with Jonas' teacher yesterday and Miles' teacher this evening. And I came out of both meetings with a happy heart. :)

So Miles. Ben and I have always known he's smart. His critical and deep thinking skills are extremely impressive. Really. He's also excelling in the more formal academic areas - like math and reading, and creative writing. His teacher said he's doing excellent in math and is in the top group. He is above grade-level in his reading. His reading has taken off leaps and bounds in just this past year alone. He amazes me with his knowledge of words. As he has become more adept at reading, his mumbling has greatly diminished. In fact he talked to Jonas' teacher about having him come in and read to Jonas' class. The 2 teachers (his and Jonas') coordinated with each other and Miles went in last week and read Jonas' class a story. How great is that? His creativity has surpassed mine. And his actual penmanship has improved greatly as well. Still has plenty of room for improvement, though. . . Spelling. Well that's an area that needs more work on as well. He follows instructions, does what he's asked - now why can't he do that at home!?

Now Jonas. Sweet Jonas. So Jonas' smarts were often overshadowed by Miles. Miles was just easy for us to see how smart he was - via his questions. Jonas isn't quite the critical thinker that Miles is. But Jonas reads far better than Miles did at his age. Jonas is a good little reader. He has been for a while - and now he is picking up a lot of the sight words and so reading is becoming more and more fluid for him. I think he'll be a great reader, too. He's an excellent writer - for a kindergartner. He writes sentences - as opposed to a word here or there as is more expected at this time in his schooling. In fact his teacher said she had to turn in a "best" written exercise and she chose Jonas'. :) And I really should give credit where credit is due. So credit goes to Miles. They write notes, stories, etc. during the day and at bedtime and Miles even told me he showed Jonas how to space his words, make sentences, etc. Gotta love it! Jonas is such a sweet, good boy. He told me today how Victoria asked him if he had a crush on anyone. He told her no. Then he asked his best buddy Jake what a "crush" was. He was informed it was when you love someone else. So I asked him if he had a crush on anyone - yep, Bella and Victoria. :)

I love my smarty boys! And if I were a 2nd grader or a Kindergartner, I'd definitely have crushes on Miles and Jonas.

Leaf-It to Miles

Of course this is Miles' handiwork. 3/4 of the kids loved it. . .

A Boys Camp-Out

So Jonas kept asking me and Ben when he could go camping again. I told him, "Oh probably when summer comes again." However, since it has been so warm (low 70s), Ben thought why not now? So he took the 2 very-thrilled boys camping on Friday nite. Here are the pics (sort of out of order):

Some much-needed comic relief. By the time it got dark, these boys were scared. Scared might be an understatement. Freaked, perhaps? Per Ben's report they were just worried about every little noise, convinced a bear was going to eat them up, exclaimed "We're never going camping again!" and "We're only camping in the backyard!". When they went to the car to get their PJs on, they started being silly - it probably felt so good to them to laugh.

How cool are these fire-sticks?! The boys love playing with fire. And since there were no little girls around, they got free-reign to play and be fire-lovin' boys!

Eating some tasty bread at camp.

Such a cute picture, albeit a little fuzzy. They slept in our little tent and really enjoyed that! It's been years since we've used that one.

Ohhhh. Ahhhh.

Haha, here is Jonas doing the "booty-dance." Suh-weet.

Oh I love this picture! So Miles figured out that when you place brown pine-needles on the fire - KABOOM it explodes the flames a couple feet higher! So cool. We're guessing it's b/c the pine-needles are super dry or something. Oh he loved that activity!

Two cool campin' boys. And one cool campin' dad taking the picture.

Sigh. He's so handsome.

Cute Jay on the way back home - glad to have survived the nite. :)

Their morning chore: pack up their camp-chairs. Too cute.

They had a blast, really. They told me all about the pine-needles and how they saw the Big Dipper, etc., etc. And when I quizzed them about never going camping again, they were all "No! We want to go again!"

And I'm sure they will. . . but not until next summer (and this time I mean it :).

FHE

Last week we took advantage of the warm fall day and headed out to a bike path a little ways from here. It was a lovely ride. We saw a rabbit (or Jonas did), deer prancing along, and even a snake slithering right at our toes. So cool.

My friend let us borrow her bike trailer and so that was super fun. Emmy loved it. Lucy loved it and sometimes didn't love it.

Not bad for scenery, eh?

Boys lovin' it. Though there were some complaints when the hills got steep (well, only on the up-side, of course :).

Oh yeah, gotta love throwing some rocks.

Everybody getting in to it (yes, even Lucy enjoyed tossing the rocks behind her head). Ben showed off some mad skip-rock skills, too. Amazing.