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.

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!!