Activities

Matthew and Anna have been doing a few activities at the YMCA.  Anna is trying out gymnastics and Matthew is doing Karate.  They are also both taking swimming lessons.  They are very enthusiastic about their activities.  Here is Anna practicing some somersaults.

 And in her new leotard

 Getting ready to start her class

 Walking on the balance beam

On the bars.  Anna has been nervous about going all the way around on the bar.  She finally did it but then told me she doesn't want to do gymnastics anymore because she is nervous about the bar.  I told her it was ok to be nervous but that she could stop doing gymnastics if she wanted.  So I don't know if she'll continue after this round of classes is done.  She has told me she might like to try Karate instead.  We'll see.

 Anna and Matthew are both wild about their goggles for swimming

They like the ones that cover your nose too

 And here is Matthew at Karate

They do a lot of running to start out

 When someone acts out in class they all have to do push ups

Even with all the push ups, Matthew stayed focused and earned his very first stripe in Karate this past week.

After School Activities

Having my two older kids go to school full day this year introduces a new dynamic into our family days. Grant almost didn't know what to do with himself the first few weeks.  I think he is a bit lonely for his playmates.  The house is awfully quiet during those school hours.  When the school kids get home however, they are tired, hungry and immediately start to tell me how "bored" they are.  If I have a snack and an activity ready things seem to go much better.  We don't always need the activities, if we get sidetracked with other activities or have lots of homework that day, but its good to have on hand.  Here are a few of our after school activities

Here is Anna painting a giant school bus.  I drew the bus outline and she painted it and added foam letters.

 Matthew's giant bus

 Twinkie school buses

My kids had never heard of a twinkie before, not that we are perfectly healthy eaters or anything. We're more of rice krispy treat people.  :) Guess twinkies aren't as popular as they used to be.

 Anna's three buses: giant bus, twinkie bus, small shape bus

I cut out the buses and some different shapes to be glued on however.

 Anna loves drawing...she drew a unicorn for me

People made out of sticks and pipe cleaner.  This was just a free play activity - I just gave them the pipe cleaners, popsicle sticks, tape and some other things and let them make whatever they want.  Anna had the idea to make people.  Love it!

 On a super hot day we did indoor sidewalk chalk on a big piece of roll out butcher paper

 DIY puppets (blank puppets courtesy of Grandma Keeler)
You can buy blank puppets at Oriental Trading

We make pizzas sometimes on Friday and the pizza dough has no raw eggs!  So I gave some extra to the kids to play with.  They loved it!  I think I'll make some sometime just for playing with and then maybe we can bake our crazy shapes into crazy bread sticks.

Dough is so fun

There's been plenty of cookie baking too

These ones were called play-doh lollipop cookies

You make the dough, divide and food color the dough different colors, then combine little bits and make snakes and then lollipop shapes...then add a stick.  I thought they were fun.  It wasn't as big a hit as I was hoping though.  The kids thought they needed some big sugar crystals on top.

Making foamy robots.  We got sparkly foam (Walmart or Michaels) and some googly eyes.  The kids cut out shapes and made robots.

 Matthew's robot.  Matthew said he was a farmer robot

 Anna's robot...she said it was me.  :)

 Using old scrapbook supplies (the letter stickers) to write notes

Anna found it easier to just write her letters.  We also do plenty of bike riding and, back when it was warmer, swimming and playing in the sprinklers.  Grant participates in these crafts but they are much more free form.  And John likes to be near everyone while he has his snacks.  He'll be able to participate soon enough.

Reasons Unknown

I wasn't sure if I wanted to post about this or not, but I decided to say something, as this blog is a record of our lives and this was a big event in our lives.  I didn't want to pretend it didn't happen.  This past week we found out I had had a miscarriage.  I was 17 weeks pregnant.

I spent 9 unpleasant hours in the hospital last week just to be told we had lost the baby.  John came with us and it was nice to have someone to snuggle while it all went down.  We're very sad, of course, but Scott and I both feel like this happened for a reason...reasons unknown or little understood maybe...but still. 

Til the Wheels Fall Off

Matthew rode his bike without training wheels for the first time today.  He had the training wheels off a little last year and we practiced a little with them off, but I had to hold the bike up while he rode.  After that Matthew decided he wanted to have them back on for a while.  I have some guilt that I haven't worked with him more 'cause I've either been pregnant and exhausted or had lots of little people to watch and Scott has been gone a lot.  So I haven't practiced with him as much as I would like.  Since we've been here we've been able to go on lots of walks where Matthew could ride his bike.  So he was ready to take the training wheels off and go off on his own.

 

He did really good without the training wheels.  Hooray!!

 He didn't have any crashes today either, so that was nice

And there he is riding off into the sunset...with Anna trailing him.  He was very proud of himself and already giving Anna advice on how to go without training wheels.  Good job Matthew!!

Crawling for Real

Today John started crawling for real - just a few days after I wrote the last post about almost crawling.  We were very excited to have him start crawling since he is behind on several of his motor skills.  He turns 13 months tomorrow and just started crawling, but we are so happy that he finally got to this new milestone.  We had to lure him with exciting items to get pictures of his crawling.  Chapstick?  Not that exciting.

 Chapstick plus Wii Remote.  Better!

 He's still figuring out how to do it smoothly but he's definitely crawling!

Hooray!

 And he got there.  Turns out he just wanted to chapstick after all.

 Hooray Johnny!

Maybe he wished he'd gone for the remote now.

 We all clapped and cheered for him and he liked that.

Here he is joining in the clapping.  Good job, John!  You're a crawler now.  I think this means I have to pick up all those tiny Lego pieces Grant likes to throw around.

Almost There

Johnny is a little behind on some of his motor skills.  He's just over 12 months old but he doesn't crawl of pull up on things yet.  Our pediatrician has actually recommended that we get him tested to see if he qualifies for special assistance from the state because of his delays (physical therapy type assistance).  So someone is coming out to assess him in a few weeks.  In the mean time, he is progressing with his motor skills.  He can now wave and clap which he didn't do for a long time and he is very close to crawling.  He can move all over the house by rolling, scooting and swiveling around.  He also gets up into this crawling position and rocks and rocks like he's going to start crawling.  I'm hoping he does...and really, he could any day now, or it could still be a while.  John has to do things on his own timeline.  Here he is looking like a crawler.

 Go for it, Johnny!

 I cheer him on when he gets up into this position and now the kids have started doing it too.

"Go Johnny, go!"

 So close

Usually he ends up just plopping onto his stomach and then rolling onto his back, but I'm hopeful that he will take some first crawls here soon.

Apple Picking

We went apple picking this weekend.  When we picked peaches a few weeks ago, the farm workers there mentioned that the Honeycrisp apples would be ready to pick on Labor Day weekend, so we've been planning on going apple picking since then.  I usually think of apple picking on a crisp autumn day, but it was still blazing summer HOT.  We went at 8:30 in the morning and were sweating up a storm.  It got up to 100 degrees that day.  But we got some good apples anyway, and I trust the cool weather is on its way.  Here's Scott tasting an apple.  The farm workers encouraged us to eat as many as we wanted.  They need to move that fruit!

 

 Here are Scott and Matthew looking for a good place to pick

  We ended up with 4 bags full or semi-full

Grant found an apple and just started eating it.  He stopped to pick a few more, but spent most of his time eating.  They were good apples!

Scott and I had to get the high ones.  It was the first day of apple picking and 30 minutes after the picking started, so the trees were LOADED with apples ready to be picked.  It took us no time at all to fill up our bags.

 Johnny had a good time too, although I think he got hot there at the end

 Grant works on his second apple as we ride back to the parking lot

 Here's our view from the tractor on our ride back

 Some of our bags once we got home.  We ate a few.

And here we are in apple canning mode.  We made applesauce and apple butter.  And it was so much easier thanks to our new apple peeler/corer (from my Grandpa - thanks mom and Grandpa).  It peels, cores and slices apples in one motion.  We all had a lot of fun using it too.  It is pretty much the greatest thing ever.

And our canning yield for the day.

Five jars of applesauce and six jars of apple butter.

The house smelled so good!

And we still have two bags of apples left.

Methinks an apple crisp is in our future.