Kiddo's story

"It was a bewtfl [beautiful] morning and duckling was swiming in the pond when frog apead [appeared]."

"Fish came out as well."

"Froger they played with themsevs! [They played Frogger with themselves!]"

(The purplish-pink thing up in the corner is the fish, saying, "Frog, where are you?")

Duckling says, "Hi, I win."  The little purple car says, "We hit a frog oh no!"

The End.

pumpkin patch

Saturday morning dawned bright and beautiful, so we decided to beat the crowds and head to the pumpkin patch.  We definitely beat the crowds - almost too well.  There weren't many people there, but on the other hand, the activities weren't fully staffed, so there were a few things that we would have liked to have done, but couldn't.  But we still managed to have a great time, and picked out some awesome pumpkins.

(corn stalk tunnel)

(straw bale maze)

(plenty to choose from!)

("that one, Daddy!")

We were going to work on our pumpkins today (Kiddo is painting, I am carving, and Hubby is still deciding), but Kiddo came down with a bug this morning and has been laying around all afternoon nursing a fever.  The pumpkins will wait until he is feeling more himself.

We did manage to work on these, though:

I cracked one open earlier this week, and the peanuts inside were FINE!  So we roasted them this afternoon.  20-25 minutes at 350 degrees.  Easy as that.

They look nasty on the outside due to the mold on the shells, but the nuts on the inside taste pretty good!  We didn't put any salt or seasoning on them, which is something I would do differently if we were doing it again.  We are so happy to report peanut success!  Woohoo!

field trip!

I am so blessed to be able to be active in my son's school.  I know a lot of moms who don't have that opportunity, and who long for it, and I am grateful for the flexibility I have to be there when I want to be (another thing to write down for our 30 Days of Gratitude project!).

This past week, Kiddo's class made a trip to the zoo to wrap up their unit on animal classifications.  And I got to go! 

Kiddo's favorite part of the zoo was the duck pond.  I'm sure you are all shocked and astounded by this news.

"space neded - days of fankfl"

I decided to drag my family in to the "30 Days of Gratitude" project.

Info about the project (and a kit with supplies and instructions) can be found here (the kit is on sale for $1 today!), but basically, every day in the month of November, you make a list of five things for which you are thankful and slip your list into the corresponding pocket. 

I am really looking forward to seeing what we can come up with together as a family.  Kiddo is excited, too.  The project is supposed to start on the first day of November, but he wanted to start last night - while I was still printing off the supplies and cutting out the templates.  So we will probably take advantage of his enthusiasm and go ahead and start tomorrow.

We decided to put our pockets in a long row over our chair rail in the dining room, so that we could see them daily, work on them at dinner time, and they would be accessible to Kiddo any time he wanted to pull a list out of one of the pockets.  This afternoon, the following sign appeared on our wall:

space neded - days of fankfl.

1-30 DAYS!

coming soon

A few hours later, I finished putting everything together, and the sign was replaced by this:

I love it!

I was a little worried that we would have trouble coming up with five new things each day, but as I was putting these together, I started thinking about the things that I appreciate and am grateful for.  And the thoughts kept coming and coming and coming.  There are so many!  I don't think we're going to have much trouble after all.  Isn't it funny how we can take so many things for granted, and it is really an act of will to sit down and remind ourselves to be thankful for the simple blessings of life - like perfect, sunny days in the pumpkin patch and goofy 6-year-old expressions.

Life is good.  I am blessed.  And I am thankful!

community fest weekend

This weekend was our church's 5K run and community fest.  The 5K was held on Saturday, and all proceeds went to support mission work in Haiti.

I love that a variety of age groups were represented - from fresh-faced junior high kids up to gray-haired folk.

Even the canine population was represented.

I am elated sorry to say that my job as "official" photographer prevented me from running.  Such a pity.

The community fest was held on Sunday after the morning service.  The youth group, inspired by a community church they worked with in Pittsburgh a while back, have worked hard to put together this afternoon of free fun and games for several years now.  Each year, it gets better and better. 

(quilt display - from vintage to new.  This is part of a quilt that one of the women at church made for her grandson, who was just adopted from Ethiopia)

(face painting)

(two-day-old calves to pet)

(the "potty toss")

("William Tell target practice")

(banana slingshot fail)

(corn maze)

When we were all done, Kiddo climbed in the car and said, "it was worth it to come back to church this afternoon!"  He had a great time.

And then, after dinner, he and I were sitting at the table and saw this outside - so we had to run out and see it up close. 

He's running around the neighborhood in his boxers again.  I don't want to know what the neighbors think.

nicole

We got hit by Tropical Storm Nicole last night.  She dumped over five inches of rain on our heads.  I hate to complain, because we really needed the rain. 

However, when we woke up this morning and went out into the kitchen, we found this:

Muddy little kitty paw prints all over the kitchen floor (this picture is photoshopped to hide all of the other dirt on the floor straight out of the camera).  When we see muddy kitty prints in the kitchen, our hearts sink with dread.  Why?  Because we know that when we go around the corner, we will look down the stairs and see this:

That bowl you see at the end of the hallway doesn't belong there.  It floated there through the doorway to the right, by the light switch.  The mud doesn't belong there, either.

Our 60-year-old house has floor drains in the basement that drain out to the ditch by the road.  Most of the time, this is not a problem.  But, when the ditch fills up to the top (like when a hurricane or tropical storm blows through), the water level in the ditch is higher than our basement, and the muddy water comes flowing back up the drains.  Yuck.  Fortunately, by the time we saw this, the water had receded and we were just left with the muck.  I spent the afternoon hosing it all back down the drains. It still smells pretty earthy down there, but at least we can go down to do a load of laundry without making footprints all over the house when we come back up.

It's our fault, really - we have plugs that we use for times like this - we just pop them into the drains and screw them down tight, and they keep a lot of the water outside where it belongs.  But we forgot to put them in yesterday.  Even when Hubby was smart enough to move the brand-new, expensive bag of prescription cat food up off the floor so that it wouldn't get wet.  And even when I got up at 2:00 in the morning to check on the basement because it was raining so hard outside (the basement was bone dry at the time).  I even thought to myself, "oh, I should put the plugs in just in case," but I really just wanted to go back to bed.  So I did.  Bad decision.

Fortunately, we have learned not to keep anything of importance on the floor down there, so there was no real harm done, and I was able to get rid of most of the muck.  Hopefully we've learned our lesson.

Oh.  Remember these?

I'm afraid they don't like having five inches of rain dumped on them.  They now look like this:

Soggy and covered in mold.  We are so, so sad.  And making a note to dry them INSIDE next time.