Good Weather

We have been having great weather lately, and have been outside as much as we can, because as per usual it is all going south just in time for Halloween!  

 I love the view from our yard and watching it change with the seasons.

 I am always trying to get us out on walks and the kids (mostly Shane) were super into the continents and maps so I made a map of our neighborhood and marked familiar landmarks as different continents that we would travel to along our way.  Here they are stopping to mark off "South America" on the map.

 The big kids racing off to "Europe" while Sadie takes her time.

Oh the things a mom will do to get her kids to do what she wants!

A Hot Mess

Oh this girl- she is still always a complete mess.  I should start counting how many times a day I say the words, "Marissa get that out of your mouth!"- it would definitely be more than the times I tell it to her little sister.Yesterday she spilled her box of nerds all over the floor, so like any good mom I took pictures while I watched her eat them off the floor.  She had to be pretty meticulous to distinguish the nerds between the little pebbles she had collected from our yard and spilled onto the floor just before.  

 But man she is so stinkin cute.  She may drive me the craziest sometimes but she is the one who I worry about the least, and that is a pretty good gift to this worry prone mama.

My Girl

I am really enjoying the time I have with Marissa these days.  It is fun to see the things she likes and the way she plays, it is so different from the way Shane played at that age.  Sometimes it drives me crazy- she loves to gather everything in our house it seems and she has very specific ideas about where she wants to place them all and exactly how she wants to do it.  And often involves a big mess.

It cracks me up that she really can't smile on command.  I was trying to coach her and told her to make her lips go up and she did this and said, "are my lips up now?" 

Sometimes I manage to catch a good one.  And I know I'm biased but sometimes I just stare at her and think man she's beautiful.   

And then she manages to do something like eat chalk.  

I ordered  a few clothes online to fill out some of her outfits and she was SO excited when we opened the package and very carefully laid out each potential outfit.  

And then danced around in a circle around them.  Pink and purple clothes are VERY exciting.

My Schoolboy

Have I mentioned how good school has been for this boy?  He really enjoys it, and I enjoy all the things he tells me about it- I can tell he is paying attention!  Reading and writing are really starting to click for him and it is fun to see him grow and develop.  He sat down to write all the word wall words he knew and I asked him if he would write "I like Mom" and he whipped this right out (that's Marissa at the top and Sadie kind of backwards at the bottom).

 He was sad one day because he lost his stuffed monkey "vines", at least I didn't know he had until he showed me this picture he drew of him and vines that he wrote "I wot vis"- I want vines on.  I love that he thinks completely on his own to sit down and write things on his own now.

 this is one I found yesterday- I had made a paper with stickers for Marissa to draw lines to match the matching stickers on and he asked if he could make one so while I was outside he stamped a bunch of Halloween stamps and matched them and then wrote the words next to them- some I had to work hard to guess what he meant but you can see "spidre" at the bottom and a little above that "jaclatrn" curving around the side, "Bat", "awl" at the top, "gost", and "it has 8...?" I asked him how he knew to put an e on the end of spider and he said "well did you know that eagle has two e's?  when the letter says its name you put an e on the end"

School has been equally as good for him socially.  He is learning and practicing how to be a good friend and interact appropriately with others, and that sometimes means stories of kids not wanting to play with him etc.  The other day I was asking him about his table and he said, "Mom can I tell you something?  There's kind of a problem.  No matter what I do, L___ just thinks I'm annoying!"  Man I love that boy so much sometimes it really pulls on my heart strings. I know how important it is for him to have these experiences, away from me, to figure these things out.  And I'm really glad he knows I am there to talk to about these things and trusts me to share them with me and I am so proud of the way he lets them roll off his back.  

 And so glad he has sweet Ellynn to always be his friend.

Fall Fun

I love fall.  The weather here has been glorious the past few weeks and we are enjoying all the fun things there are to do this time of year.  We picked  a bushel of apples at the apple orchard- a triple whammy- 1)it's a fun activity 2)the apples taste incredible 3)the kids love eating them when they know they've picked them!

 We've made lots of zoo trips

 and been to fun festivals like this Monarch Festival

and watched and played a lot of football!  Down, set, hike!

 There he goes with the ball,

 and shortly thereafter got his flag pulled.  But the first game he did manage to score a touchdown!  We had told him beforehand to keep running until they blew the whistle, and he did- the ref had to chase him down ha ha.

Fall- please stay around for awhile longer!

Sadie's Surgery

Sadie had her eye surgery last Friday, and it was a better experience than I could have hoped for.  Here she is pre surgery with her glasses 

 and without glasses.  Her eyes were definitely getting pretty bad.

 We had to check in for her surgery at 7 am in Indy, so we stayed in a hotel the night before (Josh took a personal day and his mom came to stay with the older two).  Here we are waiting for them to take her back, I think she enjoyed all the alone time with mom and dad!

 She came out of the anesthesia crying of course, but calmed down pretty quickly and fell back asleep and slept pretty much the whole ride home.  Her eyes were pretty sad looking, but they didn't really seem to bother her at all which was great because they had warned us to try to keep her from rubbing them.

 We stopped and got her some popsicles, and saw Grandma had taken Marissa to the park as we drove past on our way home and so we stopped and she downed two popsicles and then wanted to go play!  Needless to say she recovered very quickly, and stuffed her face to make up for not getting to eat that morning.

 The doctor said to try her without her glasses for the time being, and that we will see what our next move will be when she comes back for her second post op appointment in 6 weeks.  I don't think her eyes are perfectly straight but they look leaps and bounds better than before so that is good news.  We sure love this cutie, glasses or not, straight eyes or not!

Schoolgirl Marissa

Marissa has been SO excited to start preschool and patiently waited for a few weeks of Shane being in school until it was her turn.  I had to document her big day, but you never know what you're going to get when you ask her to smile...

But her natural smile showed up when we got to her school.

 She didn't quite understand what I meant when I told her to take a picture with her teacher, but oh well.

 She loves every minute of the preschool experience- and we have played "circle time" at home many times since.  And Sadie and I now have 2 mornings a week to ourselves, which is weird at first, but fun.  When we pulled up to the house, Sadie pointed to Marissa's seat as if to say, "where is she?"  We got inside and I asked her what she wanted to do and she went right over and got Chutes and Ladders out.  She got to hold each guy and have the board on her lap while spinning the spinner without anyone telling her to stop.  Those are the things 1 year old dreams are made of!