Fall Fun and Kitchen Excitement

OH, cold afternoons, little friends over, and a pile of leaves!!!!  Poor Mitchell has no idea what coming...look at all those conspiring faces!

For Friday mornings, we do a rotating little art group.  For 90 minutes, we do art projects, have snacks, read books, and some sort of charades that include Mitchell and I traveling to the zoo to see the animals (preschool children) being very active!

Tyler, Emily and Cambri

Mitchell just loves the trash can.  I try to only leave it down when it is empty, but that seems to have the same temptation as when it is full!

This is the most expensive jam I have ever made.  My berries were priced a bit high.  Then before I got to them, most went bad (the trials of berries in November), so I went back to the store for more berries to use with my remainder.  All that work, only to have one jar burst...this hasn't ever happened to me before!  The kids have finally decided that they realllllllly like my homemade jam, so I'm happy to make the effort, but we could have had a really nice steak dinner for the price of these jars of jam!  Although, steak wouldn't have lasted near as long....or shown as much love!

Happy Halloween!!!

The carved pumpkins! 

We tried many a group picture - these are the best we came up with!  Mitchell is a pumpkin, Ben is a revolutionary boy, Emily is the Ice Princess, and Annie is a black cat.  I was my traditional witch.  Andy joined us halfway through as a dad.  :) 

We had such fun sorting candy this year!  The most collected candy was kit kats at 27!  So sadly, I had made a pact with myself the day before for no more chocolate; that pact lasted just over a month, but I'm sure saved me a good 10 pounds!  Anyway, Mitchell fell in love with the idea of suckers.  He had several in each hand and carried them around the room.  Then we cleaned up the candy and took his suckers away.  Then we had to do it again for the video camera - such devastation for that little boy!  It was so super cute...we may or may not have given and taken away suckers from him a few more times of the next week to see the tears turn on and off with impressive speed...

Loving on Mom

As most moms know, it is so rare to have pictures with your kiddos as most of the time, you are the person taking the pictures - unless Grandma is around.  :)  However, we had a relaxed Saturday afternoon when Andy came home.  We sat on the floor in the kitchen and just had a little family conversation, which turned into family hugs.  Love this sweet memories!!! 

Emily was sad and didn't want to face the camera until it was just the two of us!

Halloween came so quickly that we didn't have time to prepare everything.  Mitchell and I attended 5 parties in 20 hours!  It was quite the holiday and candy-fest! 

Carving pumpkins has never been my favorite activity.  We held out for Dad until the last possible moment, then we had two hours left until trick-or-treating!  I sucked it up, got out the tools, and dug into those slimy pumpkin seeds!  Thankfully, Ben is completely able to create his personal masterpiece, and the girls are mostly competent, so it was actually pretty fun!  I think it's more the planning-process I don't enjoy...but the actual cutting was great!

Halloween 4 mile Fun Run

I decided that I wanted to do a race to start getting prepared for the 15K I signed up for in December.  This 4 mile Halloween Fun Run popped up and sounded just perfect!

I convinced a few friends that they reallllllly wanted to do it with me.  We each ended up doing our own pace.  The first person finished and came back to find me and run with me to the end.  Then Susan and I went back to find Marianne and Kim.  Kim swore she wasn't going to run...until the last hundred yards, and they sprinted to the end.  What a complete high. 

Who needs drugs when there is running?!?!?

It was a super cold morning, but we made it and finished with beaming smiles!  Andy and the kids made it just in time to see the last group finish and have some Subway sandwiches for our post-race energy.  Such fun, ladies!  Thanks so much for being supportive and encouraging!!!

Cub Scout Family Day Camp

Our little Ben is a Cub Scout and earned his Bobcat.  Super cute.  He is so excited about the whole Scouting process.  For various reasons, he is in both a troop at school and the one at church.  Last night he earned his Wolf and is now working on his Bear.  Such a cute little boy.  Through very little comments from Andy or I, he consistently tucks in his shirt, puts on his bandana/slider, and altogether just looks nice.  Maybe this is a carry-over from when he was 3 and wore his cowboy shirt tucked in with a belt EVERY day.  He is such a hard worker and we are all so proud of him!

We were all excited to go to a very cold and windy Family Scout Day so we could do fun things too!  Well, at least the kids could - Annie and Emily were awesome troopers and just hung with the big boys!

Searching for rocks was definitely one of our favorite activities.  The kids all love rocks - looking through them, finding cool ones, and sorting them by colors.

As soon as we got to the fishing area, Ben caught a fish - it wasn't more than one or two minutes.  I tell you, this kid has the touch!  Although, he is terrified to take the fish off the hook...he got cut once from a fin and is not about to take that chance again!

Annie-bell trying her hand at fishing...

These are some of our favorite friends - the Woolbert girls.  They were the only other girls in our group.  Ben and their little brother have played baseball together the past two years.  Katelyn and Allison do a fabulous job keeping all the little ones happy and on track!

This was another favorite!  I helped Emily, but it was so hard to pull back, she was happily done after two arrows.  Since we had to use all of our arrows, I finished them off for her; it was so thrilling to let that arrow fly!  Many thanks to all of the dedicated Moms, Dads, and Leaders who put this on!!

Saturday is a Special Day

Oh, just the everyday adventures of our favorite little guy! 

 Baby strollers are so tempting!

 The University of Akron had a Staff Appreciation Day for homecoming which included lunch and tickets to the football game.  It happened to be incredibly hot and sunny that day (very unusual for these parts) and our seats were in the stands behind us - those VERY EMPTY bleachers.  After the fun kids' activities, lunch, walking to the stadium, and 3 quarters, we were ready to mosey home.  Go Zips.

 Wrestling is definitely a family favorite.  I had Ben pinned, then Annie decided to jump in to 'rescue' him, only to be caught herself!!!

Mitchell has found a new favorite toy - the sticky spiders.  Ben will shoot it onto the ceiling and Mitchell will stare at it until it comes down again.  He thinks this is the BEST activity!

Fun Fall at Arrowhead Orchard

We made some yummy brownies - brownies on bottom, layer of yummy symphony bars and junior mints, then another layer of brownies.  Wow!  Note to self: don't use junior mints again - much too hard to get the brownies out!

We found a great Groupon to a local apple orchard, which just happens to be where I've loved buying apples the past two years!  We got lost in the corn maze.  Emily and I teamed up while Andy went with Annie and Mitchell.  Ben went solo.  Emily and I definitely got our money's worth of time in the maze!!!

Teamwork!  These barrels were so fun!  Ben and I ran inside one to get it up the hill.  We ended up needing Andy to help us!  The kids also had fun climbing all over the hay bales.  However, we quickly learned why farmers wear pants when working around hay - lots of scratches!

The bucking bronco ride was apparently really fun, although with my kids, they love anything with a saddle!

Hay ride.  The hay ride was included in the entrance price.  The pumpkin from the pumpkin patch that the hay ride stopped at was not... Mitchell loved crawling through this tunnel!

 

It was a great day, made even better by the honeycrisp apples we bought on the way out.  Fall in Ohio means awesome apples EVERY day; snack time is the best part of the day!

Part 2 of Uncle David's Trip

Taking kids to school...acting like everyone loves each other!  David really missed his bike and tried to ride Annie's home for her. 

We took David out to the Butterfly House and just happened to be there the last day it was open!  We were supposed to catch the butterflies and the workers tag them.  Emily was a little bit confused because every other time we've been there, the directions were to NOT catch the butterflies.  David commented that he didn't remember butterflies being so easy to catch when he was a kid.  One of the volunteers explained that with the colder temperatures at night, their wings slow down because the butterflies don't have as much energy.  They were going to release the butterflies that afternoon to start their migration to Mexico.  There is another Butterfly House in Mexico that 'catches' the butterflies.  The Mexican House collects data on how long it took each butterfly to make the journey.  And did you know that 'just by looking' you can tell the gender of a butterfly???

David lifted Ems up to get one up higher on a tree.  Next, we went to our favorite Picken Patch to get some awesome tomatoes and fresh veggies.  The raw green beans were definitely Mitchell's favorite!  Then we took David to our FAVORITE ice cream stand in New Baltimore.  It is just divine.  Then, David took us to Chipotle for a late lunch.  It was a super fun and busy day.  We were all very sad to see him go at the airport and hope he comes again soon (but doesn't get sick again from all of our little bodies)!!!