Wednesday, October 21, 2009

September and October

This past month has been filled with soccer, ballet, and a whole lot of apple picking. We are very much enjoying the fall. You all know we are now homeschooling and that is going very very well. I am loving the extra time I get with the kids and everyone is learning a lot and having fun. The homeschool group on base is fantastic and we have had a great time on the apple picking and fire station field trips. Cole’s soccer team is called the wolves. Jim thought it would be funny to howl loudly after the team huddle and “Go Wolves” cheer. Cole gets so embarrassed and rolls his eyes. After 4 games, the howl is now part of the team cheer. Cole is still embarrassed. Very cute.

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DSC_0852 Cole got an Air Force tattoo at the Base Fall Festival. Jim was so disappointed and pretended to fake cry. Cole thought this was hilarious and told Jim all night that he s going to join the Air Force one day.

DSC_0922 Cole’s apple graph. Thanks for all of your help!

DSC_0923 Our neighbor is a former art teacher. Now she has triplets so that is on hold for a bit but she teaches a weekly art class to Cole and another homeschool neighbor. Cole is LOVING it.

DSC_0073 Cole and Sparky at the Fire Prevention festival.

DSC_0112 The grease fire demonstration

DSC_0377 I love this picture of the two of them laughing.

DSC_0425 Cole and Alli covered themselves in googly eyes and called themselves aliens for a day.

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DSC_0161 Jim has been doing a Science club with some of the neighborhood kids on Sunday afternoon. He likes to do explosions.

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DSC_0554 This is the soccer team in their coats this past weekend. It actually snowed the day after this was taken. The kids took their coats off to play and then bundled up as soon as they got on the sidelines.

DSC_0614 Science club this past weekend.

Alli really likes preschool. I had her parent teacher conference the other day. The teacher had wonderful things to say about her and said that she was such a sweet and caring girl but she also told me a funny story. Every day she rings the bell and the students are supposed to clean up their choice time toys and go to the bathroom to wash hands before snack. Every day the teacher rings the bell and Alli is suddenly missing. She continues to find her in the bathroom already washing her hands. Last week the teacher finally told her, “Alli, we clean up our toys first and then wash our hands. Alli replied, “Oh that’s okay, I don’t really like cleaning up. I’ll just wash my hands instead.” I told the teacher that she should definitely keep working on Alli following directions and not thinking she is queen of the world.

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DSC_0842 We made Dora cupcakes with Alli and her friend

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DSC_0935 Alli and I put together the dinosaur puzzle one afternoon and she decided she wanted to pretend to live with them. She played on top of this puzzle for about 45 minutes.

DSC_0937 She is a great big sister

DSC_0200 The “biggest, giantest leaf ever”

DSC_0469 Alli has also been playing soccer. Her season just ended and she was thrilled to get a medal.

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Avery seems to be changing overnight. She is determined to be one of the big kids now. She wants to do everything they do. She is saying more and more words all of the time. She also has a newfound love for Elmo. She carries an Elmo doll around with her all of the time and gives him hugs and kisses. She also likes to put him on the potty. Her favorite words right now are “snack” and “Mine.” Alli’s dance studio is offering a six week mommy and me ballet class during Alli’s regular class time. Since all Avery and I are doing is hanging out is the waiting area with the other moms, I decided to sign her up. I also decided that she needed a matching dance outfit for this 6 week class and that $15 was a small price to pay for this picture perfect preciousness.

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DSC_0835 She loves to pull out everything in the cabinets and drawers while I cook.

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DSC_0011 We took the preschoolers and Avery on a separate trip to the fire station. Alli and Avery weren’t all that into it but the boys we went with loved it and I found it interesting.

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DSC_0376 Jim showed Avery the dancing Evian babies on youtube. Now every time she sees the computer she starts screaming, “Babies!” She can watch it over and over again and she laughs every time.

We have also been apple picking like crazy. We have gone with the homeschool group, our neighborhood friends, and a couple of times with our family. We have visited several different farms/orchards but our favorite has several animals you can feed. Alli absolutely LOVES this. She spent a better portion of the trip running around from goat to goat feeding them. She talked to every rabbit, every sheep, and every chicken. She was memorized. She has now decided that she wants to be an animal doctor when she grows up. We are really going to encourage this since this is the first time she has said she wants to be anything other than a princess. We are trying to find all kinds of animal pictures to hang up in her room. Avery loves eating the apples when we go and Cole pretty much likes everything although he thoroughly enjoys the hay mazes.

DSC_0568 With the neighbors

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DSC_0677 Picking her first apple

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DSC_0361 I bought corn at the farm and Cole didn’t know what it was! He did not remember ever having seen corn in its natural form. He learned all about growing corn that night along with how to shuck it. Avery was scared of the corn husks. She kept coming into the kitchen and then running away screaming. Cole and I couldn’t help but find this sort of funny.

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DSC_0366 Crazy amount of apples

DSC_0368 No more corn!!