4 Miles

SO, Tonight we were driving home from the Fall Festival at church (pictures of that and our pumpkin carving will be put up tomorrow. I know you're waiting with baited breath.)

James started telling the boys Knock-Knock jokes. There was much laughter over the interrupting cow. Then he told the banana, banana, "orange you glad I didn't say banana?" joke. Will thought that was so funny he had to try it himself. Only the punch line ended up being "Apple you glad I didn't say orange?"

On Monday Alex had a fever, but once he got some medication he was running around like normal. By evening he seemed find. So we kept our plans for Tuesday (that you can see/read about below). It was apparent by the end of the day he was pretty tired and we may have overdone it a bit. (And then I left for my MOPS meeting and left James to deal with him.)  Wednesday morning, after he had several teary melt downs, I thought it'd be for the best to skip my bible study. (I think it this is the longest I've gone into the semester before having to miss a meeting since he's been born!) Will still went to preschool, but it was rather nice to go home and relax that morning. Alex seemed to enjoy a quite morning of play and took a long nap that afternoon so he went to AWANA with Will and I Wednesday night. (And James got to relax–his payback for the night before.) It was a rather crazy night there for me, we had several leaders out.

Thursday is always a recovery day from the busy Wednesday. Thursday night James goes to work with the youth group. This Thursday I babysat our friend's boys for a Date Night for them. We've started swapping sitting so we can get some date nights without paying for sitters. The boys were SO excited they were coming over. They all played nicely outside until it got too dark to see (which was too early in my book! What are we going to do after DST ends!)  By 7:30 Alex was having a melt down. I asked him if he wanted to go to bed and was surprised to hear him say "Yes". And so he did–and he fell asleep even with the boys here!

Friday we finally had the rainy day I'd been expecting the day before. We've been blessed with a warm, beautiful fall but really need the rain. Even though it was a cold rain, I did need to run a few errands, so we went out in it to get some crafting supplies for an all day scrap booking event I was going to on Saturday. Friday afternoon we took James to the church and he left with the Youth Group to go to Chicago for the weekend. We then went up to Grandpa & Grandma's house. The boys were VERY excited and as soon as we got on the freeway Alex asked "Where's Grandma's house?" We had a nice evening there. It was nice to get up Saturday morning and only drive about 15 minutes to the crop. I had a great time working on Alex's first year book (I got September-November done…I'm almost done!) and the boys had fun playing with Grandma, making play dough, and putting their hand prints in the new section of sidewalk Grandpa made. While they had fun, when I got there Alex picked up some toys and told me he was ready to go. Will was sad because he couldn't play another game of Monopoly Jr. with Grandma. The drive home seemed quick as we listend to The Magic Treehouse, and because Alex wasn't asking "Where's Grandma's house?" every 5-10 minutes. And now they're in bed and I finally have time to get this updated. 

I'm a bit embarrassed I'm still working writing about Tuesday. Yes, it's Saturday. We had a rather busy week. I've not been home most evenings–when I usually work on blog posts. But I'll catch you up on that in a bit.

So, Tuesday afternoon we worked on planting some bulbs my dad gave us.  I counted and we had over 100 daffodil bulbs to plant. I read you're supposed to plant them between September and October (and sooner rather then later) but I was waiting for a chance to buy oyster shells to sprinkle over them to keep the cute chipmunks that live in our yard away from digging them up. (Though my dad told me last night they tend to eat tulip and crocus blubs more then daffodils. Which would explain why we have fewer tulips each year.)  The nearest feed store that I know if is right by the pumpkin patch, so after we went there, we stopped in and I got bag. The weather reports were making it look like it'd be raining Thursday and Friday so we got the blubs planted Tuesday. (Wednesdays are too busy.) Sorry for the long, rambley paragraph there. Now on to the pictures that most of you really care about.

Alex was my big helper in dumping the oyster shells into the holes. He didn't quite understand "just a little bit". And you can see he got a bit dusty.

Will was a HUGE help. He did a great job putting the bulbs in, right side up as well as the shells and 
covering the blubs. 
 

The holes were a bit hard for him to dig because it's SO dry right now. So I did most of the digging. And we put many of the bulbs in the new flower bed because it has so much new soil/mulch in it, it was really easy to dig in. I'm typing that so I'll remember it and remind myself in the spring when I'm thinking "Why didn't we put more over there?"  Because the ground was too rocky and hard!

Alex also took care of any worms we found. After he held them for awhile he'd take them to another part of the yard.
 

I also realized I hadn't taken a picture of my pumkins on the front porch. I LOVE them. I got them very cheaply at a farm up by Mom & Dad's house. (Just in case you think I'm out spending all kinds of money buying fancy pumpkins or something!)

Once we were done with the work, it was time to rake up leaves and jump in the piles! Will's wanted to do this for awhile, but it's been too warm. (I refuse to rake leaves in a T-shirt…it just seems wrong, plus they get too pokey.)  (And yes I changed the boys shirts because they were dirty from the oyster shells.)

By that time, Alex was a bit over tired and started crying over silly things.

Will loved running into the pile, throwing the leaves around…

…and jumping into the pile. He wasn't happy when we had to go in.

Tuesday morning we took a visit to the pumpkin patch.

They picked out a great pumpkin,

Pet the animals,

Pretended to drive a tractor,

and had fun jumping in the hay bale pile.

Alex looked up the other night and said "The moon sees me!"

* * *

Will's preschool is talking about Fire safety this week.  James and I were asking him what you do if you hear the smoke detector go off, if your door feels warm, etc.  Then Tina said "What do you do if you see a fire in the house?" and Will said "If I see a PIRATE in the house?!?"  That led to another whole discussion about Pirate Safety and lots of laughs. 

I realized after that last post, I left out some important details. You read it and it sounds like a happy, perfect fall afternoon. We did have a few bumps in the road that made it not so much. For starters, during the nature hike, Alex needed to use the bathroom. My attempts to have him go by a tree failed as he got himself, his underware and his pants all wet. Did I have a change of clothes? Nope. He got to play around in wet underware the rest of the afternoon.

At the end of the party all the kids were playing on the playground. Will told me he thought the baby of a friend of ours had a dirty diaper, because he could smell him. I looked at the "mud" on Will's pants and realized he'd fallen in dog poop someone hadn't cleaned up. And with that, it was time to go home.  And now you know the rest of the story.

Today we went to MY kind of party! It was outside, it was family friendly, and it was friends we knew from church so the kids had fun AND we got to have fun! Some friends of ours had a nature themed party for their daughter. It was a beautiful fall day–cool but sunny. They started out the party with a Nature Scavenger Hunt so we got to go on a hike on some cool trails.

Here are James and Alex listening to the directions.

The birthday girl leading a round of applause for the games and for her birthday. 

And then we were hunting for our types of leaves and different leaf colors (as well as the river, a bug, a bird and a trail head sign). We were to only bring the leaves back.

I was sad I didn't get more pictures of the hike, but after this I ended up needing to help Alex. The trails go right up to the White River and it was beautiful. We're going to have to go there again to just hike around.

After the hike the kids made leaf rubbings of the leaves they got.

Then it was time for cake!

And then all the kids played on the playground while the grownups talked.

Will wanted to make a river for his trains to go over. So we used paper that went under the bridges. He was then drawing a boat or two on the river.

Today Will got to go to a birthday party for one of his preschool friends. He was SO excited. He told me in the car "Mommy, Birthday parties are my favorite things!"  His friend had told his class Wednesday his birthday was Thursday, so on Thursday Will was worried we were missing his party. So today was the big day, our first Chuckie Cheese party. I'm a little proud that we've only been there once–and it was when Will was 2 so he didn't remember it. He was quite excited, but then really had no idea what to expect. I tried to describe it a bit, but then let him get the full experience. He was given tokens to use for the games and had a great time playing all kinds of different ones. I was glad I was there to give him a hand. His favorite game was one where he could be racecar driver and drive on different tracks. He got to pick what driver he wanted to be and got to be Jimmy Johnson! But, he wasn't tall enough to reach the gas, so I sat in the seat and worked the gas pedal and then he sat in front of me and drove. The one problem–the game made me car sick! We ended up leaving around 4, when the tokens had run out. By that time I was DONE. My head was hurting from the noise, my throat was hurting from yelling over the loud music and my stomach was queasy from the silly car games (he'd spent his last few tokens on them). Add to the traffic I faced coming home from the mall area and I was a bit grouchy. But Will had fun, and it was fun to be able to play with him. 

Alex and James got to have fun playing outside. James also "winterized" the yard, getting all the patio furniture, grill and toys into the shed. Tomorrow we get to go to another party–but this one is outside at the park and we're all going. I'm looking forward to it MUCH more then the last one!

Last night James had praise team practice so we stayed late after AWANA while they finished up. The boys really enjoy listening to the team practice. They were sitting on the front row, pretending to play drums as the team was practicing.

Coming home we asked the boys what musical instrument they'd like to play when they get bigger. Will said he wanted to play the saxophone. We got into a discussion of where he’d seen that. (He remembered a man playing one on a street corner when we went to a baseball game during the summer.) Then Alex said “When I get super big, I want to play the drums!”

It was time for our annual visit to the Apple Orchard. This was year #3 for us and I must admit I wasn't quite as excited to go–but we had a fun day.

Here the kids were being taught how the flower turns into an apple, getting bigger and bigger. Alex sat with the class and acted just like one of the "big kids"–I was proud at how well he behaved and for the most part, paid attention.  

Then we went on the tractor ride to go to the pumpkin patch to pick out the class pumpkin.

After that we went to the building where they make apple cider and learned how they made that. Then we learned about bees and then we saw the "Gourd Lady" who showed the kids fun things you can do with gourds.  Then we had free time to take pictures:

We went in a corn maze.

And of course, we had to have an apple for a snack! (I have to add these are the first apples I've bought this fall. We have been SO blessed with people giving us apples, it's been wonderful!)

Then we played on the wooden play structures of a ship and Monster truck.

Then it was time to go home for lunch. The boys spent the afternoon outside as well as we work on enjoying every last bit of this warm, beautiful fall.  Oh, we did get some of the Apple Cider made at the farm–it tastes so much better then what we get in the stores! James said it reminded him of being a kid, they used to make it out of their fallen apples. I'm wishing I'd bought some more. The good news the farm isn't THAT far away (about 15 minutes) so we might go back and get some more.