It’s coming along… This is from before dinner. Alan is working on the electrical now. Moving the light from the far corner to a more central location and installing an outlet over by the door.
Another mudroom update
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Monthly Archives: September 2012
Happy Fall
I took the kids to the apple orchard today. I’m a sucker for apple picking. I just wish those bags didn’t fill up so fast! This place has apple, blueberries, raspberries, a corn maze, and today they had fresh donuts, cider, and hay rides! It was busy, yet somehow peaceful as well. We had a really nice time. I packed a picnic lunch and we hung out for over two hours.
Lunch by the river. It was a very sunny day!
That bagel is as big as his head! He only ate about half of it though.
After lunch we headed for the raspberry patch. Eve remembered from her field trip that the Kiwi Gold raspberries were very tasty and were a peachy color when ripe. She did a great job explaining things to Lex.
Eve pointing out hidden raspberries.
We were all surprised to see, and hear, horse drawn wagon rides. I didn’t know this farm offered such a service. We missed the ride up to the apple trees (it’s a short walk anyway!) but caught a ride back down.
Eve was counting her raspberries, in a random chaotic sort of way, and insisted on counting each berry in my hand before letting me put them in her container.
Both containers were full and those berries were all gone by afternoon snack!
Where’s Lex? He blends right in on a sunny day.
I had to tell him, many times, to pick the apples one at a time, not gather a huge armful that resulted in dropped apples everywhere. He has his father’s efficiency gene.
I tell ya, the pickin’ was good!! :)
And an Eve in an apple tree.
Apple trees make me smile.
A nice lady took a picture for me in the wagon heading back down the hill.
I caved and let them buy pumpkins. I’ll have to buy more for carving, I think, but I’m a sucker for fall activities and happy kids!
The rule, as always, was they had to be able to carry their own pumpkins. When we got back to the car Lex said, “Whew! I can walk pretty fast with eight pounds of pumpkin in my arms!”
Lastly we did the corn maze. This year’s “theme” is a mystery. Vincent Van Goat has lost his ear and as you progress through the corn maze you can read clues and try to solve the mystery. My two had no interest in reading clues and we just ran through it, quite literally!
“That way!” she yells.
Of the huge grocery bag full of apples we brought home today, four of them went into making apple brownies. They look and smell delicious. I’m going to taste one this evening, and if they are good we’ll be sending them to school as little treats for their classmates.
I just went looking for a blog post about last year’s trip through the corn maze (we got lost!) and found this one instead, from 2008! I had completely forgotten about that first trip through the corn maze. They are so little! I love my blog.
Our new pet
Alan found a woolly bear in the garage and the kids adopted it. They are excited for the crysalis stage, but it will be awhile. Did you know that woolly bears hibernate during the winter? It will hibernate and then wake in the spring, eat more, then begin transforming. The kids both have monarch caterpillars at school. Lex’s class got to watch the butterfly emerge and they set it free on Friday. They have one more cacoon, I think, and Eve’s class still has two caterpillars.
Mudroom update
I am taking the kids out for awhile and there is a chance… a chance… that the flooring may be down in the mudroom when we return. How exciting is that!?!
Around the house
Our mudroom will have a heated floor! How cool is that?! I think we’ll spend the winter in the mudroom. :)
Somebody loves her daddy!
Our little blue table met it’s untimely demise this afternoon. After surviving two generations and six years of a third it fell to a 65lb force atop it. Sigh. Eve proposed we just build a new one, paint it blue, and write “all the stuff on the bottom.” She insists it would be just the same. Somehow I doubt it.
Since the blue table is no more I decided to give our grown-up coffee table another shot. It takes up a lot of space in our narrow living room. We’ll see how long it lasts.
Pancakes, Pancakes!
Have you ever read the story Pancakes, Pancakes!, by Eric Carle? It’s one of our favorites in this house. I am forever grateful that we do not have to harvest our own wheat and grind our own flour in order to have pancakes. Jack is a very ambitious boy! Tonight we decided to make Jack’s pancakes for dinner. We talk about doing it when we read the story but this is the first time we’ve actually remembered at a meal time. Lex was thrilled and did much of the work himself. The recipe is as follows:
Put one cup of flour into a large bowl. Mix in one egg. Pour in one cup of milk and stir until smooth. Heat a pan over the fire (Lex conceded that our stovetop would suffice). Melt a pat of butter in the pan. Ladle a scoop of batter in and cook until golden. Flip. He said it would be ok if I used a spatula instead of flipping it into the air as Jack’s mother does. Serve with strawberry jam.
He was feeling brave and decided to put the batter on the pan.
Guess what’s baking at 425° in the oven?
Eve says I’ll have the big one, please!
Eve put apple butter on hers and rolled it up like a crepe. It was tasty.
Lex gives Jack’s Pancakes two thumbs up. I think they are just so-so. Pretty dense. Not very sweet.
Pie! Eve and I made apple pie this afternoon from the apples she picked at the orchard yesterday. Pancakes for dinner and pie for dessert! I’m the awesomest mom ever! :) (Really the pie was too hot for the kids to eat tonight. They will get some tomorrow.)
Lunch boxes
I’m going to take advantage of Alan being out in the garage late (our mudroom is really coming along!) to do one more blog post. One I’ve been thinking about for awhile but haven’t found the time to write. One about lunch boxes.
When Lex started kindergarten I sent him to school with a great bento box from Laptoplunches.com. Within a few short weeks I learned the lunch process and realized I needed to get him a carrier as well. Once we had the carrier, the lunch box, and the water bottle all was well. He brought it all to school. Brought it all home. Took the front, small container out for his snack each day and returned it to the case afterwards. I used to write little notes for him, or jokes. Sometimes I’d write “Today’s Menu” and list out what was in his lunch box. He loved it and I got several comments from teachers, staff, and other students about how fun it was. All was good.
I assumed things would be the same when Eve started school as well. I got them both new boxes and I got her a carrier. I packed up nice little lunches for them both.
First day of school lunches. Eve requested that I write her little notes like I often wrote for Lex.
I quickly discovered that she does not operate quite the same way he does. She takes whatever cup she wants for snack, which isn’t awful but isn’t ideal. She doesn’t put the containers back. The very first day she chewed on the water bottle top, causing it to leak all through her backpack and causing me to have to get her another bottle top! She has already left her cloth napkin at school twice. Her lunches come home looking like this.
There are pine needles in her lunch box! How does that even happen!?
It’s also difficult coming up with notes to write when she can’t really read much. I need to put more effort into that. I found some funny jokes that I put in their lunches sometimes. When I do, I read Eve’s to her in the morning. It’s not a cute surprise at lunch, but at least she knows what it says and she says she tells the joke to the other kids at her lunch table.
In her defense, she does seem to be trying. She seems to be making more of an effort to get all of the containers back into the lunch box and she says she is taking the snack container out for snack. She hasn’t chewed on her bottle again and we’ll keep working on the napkin thing.
It’s interesting having two kids. You think you have things figured out with the first and then, surprise, the second child is totally different! :) They keep you on your toes, that’s for sure!
Apple picking
One of the benefits of having no kids at home is I can volunteer to chaperone more often. Today I had the good fortune to go apple picking with Eve’s class. It’s actually the same place I went with her pre-k class last year. :)
This year a friend (another mother to one of Eve’s classmates) and I drove together and got to do some chatting and catching up with one another. It’s amazing how fast the days go by when everyone has kids and activities and whatnot. Not like the old playgroup days where naps were the only deciding factors. We met the class at the orchard and each parent was assigned a few kids to watch. Eve was THRILLED that she was assigned to me. :)
We followed the owner around, stopping to pick some raspberries, learn about the trees, see a fake apple that’s designed to attract bad bugs (Eve even remembered that from last year) and finally, finally, they got to pick some apples! They were very patient and very eager for that part.
The kids were allowed to sample a few golden raspberries. They were so delicious we had to pull the kids away. :)
Eve picking raspberries.
I got some good back-of-head shots today. :) It was a beautiful afternoon.
Each kid got a bag to fill. Eve filled hers with Honey Crisps, which are delicious! She wanted to make a pie this afternoon, but when the time came we ended up wrestling and playing with trains and just being silly for the afternoon. No baking happened. Oh well. Maybe tomorrow. Or maybe we’ll just eat the delicious apples!
Eye update
Just a quick update for my own purposes. We went to the eye doctor yesterday for Eve’s checkup. She is doing great! She has 20/20 with the glasses on. The doctor said her prescription changed a smidgen, but recommended we not bother getting new glasses until it changes more or until they break or something. Eve chews on the ear pieces sometimes, but otherwise she’s doing great with them and the glasses are holding up well. Lex came with us and had his first experience at the eye doctors. He didn’t get his eyes checked though. The doctor recommended he get them checked next year when I bring her back in. He was pretty interested in the equipment and I was tempted to ask if she could just do it right then, but I didn’t ask and I doubt he would have cooperated. Maybe next year. Maybe not. At least I know Eve is a rockstar at the eye doctor now! :)
Open house
The kids had open house at school last night. It was pouring rain outside and crowded inside, but we had fun. We started in Eve’s classroom where she showed me all the options for “choice time” and showed me the play kitchen. Lex plopped right down to read a few books. They both ended up playing with these shape pieces and I had to drag them away so we could get to Lex’s room before the end of the night.
In Lex’s room he showed me some projects his class is working on, including raising mealworms as part of the life-cycle unit. He has his own mealworm named Squirmy.
Lex’s hopes and dreams involve learning more about mealworms. He cracks me up! :)
On the way out we stopped at the school counselors table to make emotion faces. Lex actually chose to run around in the gym for awhile, but Eve wanted to make a face. She decided to make a sad face. They were supposed to leave them at school, but she asked if she could take hers home and of course the counselor said ok.
Do you know why he’s sad? (picture Eve with her authoritative way of saying things and her little head bop) Because he’s sick and because he has staples in his head! She cracks me up! :) Her counselors got a good laugh too.
Then we read a fun book in the art room and headed home after the principal announced over the loudspeakers that it was getting late and the teachers were all tired and needed to go home and go to bed.