Pumpkin Carving

We carved pumpkins last night.  It was so nice having Scott here to help since he's been gone the last two Halloweens.  Scott opened and gutted all the pumpkins and the two older kids used the safety carving tools to carve their own faces, with only a little help.  Scott carved one and I carved one...and Grant put stickers on his.  It was an amazingly pleasant pumpkin carving experience (thanks Scott, you make everything better).

 Scott doing all the dirty work.  Good man!

 Matthew, who doesn't really love being gooey and dirty,
getting some of the pumpkin guts out

 Grant bedazzles his pumpkin with Halloween stickers
When he found the skull and crossbones sticker he got excited and shouted "PIRATES!"

 Anna came up with her own design and carved it (mostly) on her own.  Great job Anna!

 My starry pumpkin

 Matthew with his pumpkin that he carved on his own

Anna wanted to sticker hers up a bit too!

Scott's pumpkin, Matthew's and mine

Things are crazy busy these days with Scott working long hours, kid homework and extracurricular activities.  So finding a time to carve pumpkins altogether actually took some planning.  But we made it happen...and it was fun.  Now on to Halloween!

Baby Physical Therapy

I've mentioned before that John (just shy of 15 months old) has some gross motor delays and he's been evaluated and approved to receive physical therapy services.  He started his physical therapy last week and today we went in for his second visit.  Part of his therapy is walking on a little treadmill while he's in a little harness, taking part of his body weight off of him.  John doesn't walk yet, and he doesn't yet pull up all the way to standing.  He can pull up part way and he's trying, but the therapy does seem to be helping him move forward a little faster.  Here he is walking on the treadmill.  I had to take some pictures for Scott because he thought it sounded so funny.  A little baby treadmill.

 

The first week John just kind of hung there in the harness, but by the end of his first session he was starting to support his own weight and move his feet a little bit.  The second session he walked pretty well, but then he started to get angry.  Here are a few more pictures.

 Holding the bars for support

Starting to get fussy    For anyone who has ever had to do physical therapy and really didn't want to, John feels your pain.

The physical therapist helps him move his feet along and keep his feet straight and in the right position.  He was getting pretty mad, so they took him away from the treadmill, but still in the harness.

 Here he is off the treadmill but still in the harness...and still ticked off

He kept kicking the ball angrily so that ended our PT session a little early, but still I think some good progress was made and we'll be back for more next week.

Church Halloween Party

We went to our church Halloween party this weekend.  It was at a park and, lucky for us, the weather wasn't too cold.  Maybe in the low 60s, high 50s.  There were no costumes and no trunk or treat, but there were some different activities and dinner.  Here Matthew practices on the skiis.

 Grant plays one of the games.

Anna on the skiis.  We did a ski race later with four people on each set of skiis.  I was on a team with Matthew and two other kids.  We didn't do very well, but it was fun.

There was also a cake walk.  The cake walk caused some consternation.  They let each winner take a dozen cupcakes, but there were only about 12 dozen cupcakes, so some kids had a dozen and others got nothing.  One family ended up with three dozen cupcakes while others got nothing.  They could have left a dozen or two cupcakes for the non-winners to each grab one...I thought that would have been a good solution.  So our kids didn't win and were very sad that they didn't get any of the cupcakes.  

Further consternation - at one point I thought the person running the cake walk had said they were done, so I told Anna she could go get a cupcake (there were still some left at that point).  The person running the cake walk seemed really annoyed with me and I felt embarrassed when I realized they weren't really done.  But not to worry, we didn't end up with any cupcakes.

So I don't know, but I feel like I should never complain about how church activities are run after having run many pack meetings and hearing only complaints from people about how it could have been done better.  So I'll stop complaining now.

Matthew did win this dangling donut game and got another donut out of it.  So he was happy.

These were the cupcakes we made.  Some have M&Ms on top and inside and the others are plain with LOTS of sprinkles, courtesy of the kids.  Our cupcakes were the first ones to go during the infamous cake walk, so we have that at least.  And we had a few leftovers at home.  This Halloween party was much smaller in scale than our last ward...our Colorado ward was kind of huge with lots of children.  This one is smaller.   But we still had a good time.

Cooking Class

 Matthew and Anna took a Halloween cooking class at Eckert's (a local pick-your-own farm).  They learned a few different recipes and had a great time.  Here is Anna with her jack-o-lantern quesadilla.

 Here is Matthew in the class acting like a monster or something

 They made witches finger cookies

They were like shortbread cookies

 Anna's cookies

They made some kind of cream cheese spread that they put blue food coloring on for a cracker spread.  They called is monster mash.  I was a little afraid of trying the monster mash.  They also made some apple dip with cream cheese and caramel and had some delicious apple cider to go along with the treats they made.  It was fun.

While the kids cooked we walked around at Eckert's.  Here is the winter lettuce growing hydroponically.  I had to take a picture for my mom.

I perused the cookbooks while we were waiting and as soon as I put one down Grant would pick one up and peruse.  He's learning by example.

Eight Years

 Happy 8th Anniversary to Scott!

We celebrated our anniversary in low key style today.  Scott took the day off work, which felt like a wonderful vacation for me.  We went to lunch while the big kids were at school and searched for Sees chocolates at the mall (unsuccessfully, but still).  Scott made me his famous homemade cheesecake and I'm making spicy steak for dinner.  Last year Scott was deployed on our anniversary, so this year just having him home is great.

Anna got up before me this morning (at 6:30) to make a special breakfast for Scott and I for our anniversary.  She got bowls and poured us out our cereals of choice and even poured milk on it herself with only a little spill.  Great job Anna!  And such a sweet present.

 Scott working on his cheesecake work of art.  It takes a lot of work - a delicious labor of love.

Anna drew this at school for Scott and I.  She told us very seriously that we would have to share it and that it was not a card or a picture, it was a present.  I think its a great present (not picture) and an amazing likeness.

This was the inside of the present.  It was a great anniversary!

Read the recap of our first seven years of marriage HERE...and here's what's happened since:

 

Scott got home from his deployment to Afghanistan last February

In June/July we moved from high, dry and mountainous Colorado to low, humid, hot and flat Illinois.  And   we've been having a lovely time, for the most part.  Now you are all caught up again.

John's First Haircut

We gave John his very first haircut this weekend.  Grant needed a haircut badly and we thought we would go ahead and cut John's hair too while we were at it. I would have let John's hair go a little longer, but Scott thought it was time.  Here is John before his haircut.  Look at that cute hair!  It looks like a light brown with a tiny bit of red.

 Here's a picture of the back of the hair before.  Sorry, it's blurry.

We were both surprised how relaxed John was about the whole haircut.  We buzzed his entire head and he just let us do it.  It reminded me of his first bath in which he cried for a minute or so and then just endured it.  His personality, I guess.  He looks almost dazed here.

 What is happening to my head?

 We took off a lot of hair.

John did get a bit fussy at the end when we buzzed the little hairs by his neck.
At the end we all thought he looked a lot more like Grant.

His hair looked a lot more blond under there.

 And he looked a little more grown up

When John saw himself in the mirror after his haircut he smiled, pointed and jabbered at himself.  I think he liked his new cut.

Looking good, John!

The Pumpkin Patch

This weekend we went to the pumpkin patch.  It's the same company (Eckert's) we went to for picking peaches and apples, but a different farm, farther west, almost to the big river (Mississippi).  In fact, you can see the arch from there.  They had a bunch of fun kid things to do there, along with the pumpkin patch and we spent the afternoon there having fun.  Here are some of our adventures. 

You can see pictures of the kids riding on some of the rides.  Right in the center is the pumpkin cannon (I think it was called the Jack-o-lobber).  It was air powered and it really threw those pumpkins far.  They said half a mile, which doesn't sound that impressive, but it was.  You can also see Matthew jumping on the "jumping pillow" which was lots of fun.

On the top right is Anna leading me through the corn maze.  There are so many corn fields around here turning one into a corn maze seemed like a no-brainer.  The kids liked looking at the corn up close after seeing so much of it from farther away.  Top center is Grant riding on the John Deere express (the term "express" is used loosely here).  And you can see Anna jumping on the jumping pillow while Grant slides down it.  They finally let me go hold Grant's hands while he jumped and then he had a lot more fun.  On the bottom right are Grant, Anna, Matthew and I about to go on the Spinning Apple ride (think Disneyland Teacups).  I don't like those kind of rides, but the kids needed an accompanying adult.  Luckily the ride was not too long.  Any longer and we might have had a problem.  And the middle right is us watching some pig races.  That was a first for me.  We got to practice saying "Sooo Weeeeee" to help those piggies along.

And at the actual pumpkin patch.   This was a real, legitimate pumpkin patch.  Often the pumpkin patches we go to are just pumpkins places in a field.  But this one was real.  Matthew found out real pumpkins are muddy and their stems are poky.  He had trouble deciding on the perfect pumpkin.  We also wanted him to stay with one he could carry.  He finally found a suitable one.  Grant loved running through the pumpkin patch but had trouble finding just the right pumpkin.  There were plenty of nice looking pumpkins out there.  We ended up with five good ones which we could barely carry.  In the end we found a wagon we could use to carry them to the car.  We also learned on this trip that Illinois grows more pumpkins than any other state in the US.  So good for you, Illinois.

And here we are posing by the big pumpkins before we leave.  Also you can see Matthew helping Dad take our pumpkins to the car.  And me doing an impression of John being uncomfortable in the hay.  Didn't realize Scott took a picture of that.  ;) We had a full fun day at the pumpkin patch and it was the first real day in a while that I was able to go out and about without being completely worn out at the end of it.  So hooray for that and hooray for fall!

Home Depot Workshop

I've been wanting to take the kids to the free kids workshops at Lowe's or Home Depot but just haven't gotten around to it.  Maybe we've always had too much going on Saturday mornings.  We don't have as much now, so I finally signed up for one.  The kids really enjoyed it.  Here's Johnny pointing.  He's only recently learned to point.

 The project this week was making a wooden fire plane.

The kids liked hammering in the nails.  Here's Anna painting her plane.

 The kids got aprons.  Grant and John didn't always want to wear their aprons.

 Matthew got to meet Homer the Home Depot guy.  I didn't even know there was a Home Depot guy.

 And to go along with the fire plane the kids got to see a real fire truck that came to the parking lot.

We had a lot of fun.