Post Party Pictures

These are kind of in backwards order but enough that you should get the idea. We did a "Thomas" snack with graham cracker raisins bananas and mousemellows (Thanks Skippy!) all held together with peanut butter.  It was a lot of fun and hopefully our new friends will come back.  

Sister couldn't resist helping blow the candle out

The "Thomas" A and Chris put together

G fixing the wheels and refusing to get in the Thomas while A gladly got in the Thomas. 

I Will Be...

We have had anti bullying week here recently. We had anti drug week when I was in school, but now it is anti bullying because bullying is a bigger problem than drugs. This was part of A's journal from the week. We know the ffiend is misspelled, but it is great we think!

I Voted!

Well, this week had been interesting. The kids didn't have school on Tuesday since most of the schools are polling places. I can only imagine the craziness of the security involved if they had both school security and voting security at the same time. Chris took the kids to vote with him and they got stickers as you can see below. G put his to good use.

On Monday it was great. As we were talking about what to do Tuesday with no school and why, A mentioned that she voted at school that day. We discussed the importance of voting and asked who she voted for. She told us, "the woman with the flag of the United States of America flag." We asked if she meant Stein or Hillary. She said Hillary. We asked why and she said, "because it was a girl."

This week I've finally gotten the nasty bacterial infection that's gone around my office. I saw the doctor on Wednesday and have a few explicit instructions about what to do in different scenarios and a nice antibiotic prescription.

We are also getting ready for G's bday and party. He picked s Thomas the Tank Engine theme, so expect some fun pictures tomorrow. We found out yesterday that he will win the first glasses of his class award because he needs glasses now. Chris was surprised at how bad G's vision was. Next week we get to start weaning him into wearing the glasses so hope that goes well.

More pictures and stories tomorrow after the party.

Happy Haunting!

We got to go out in our own neighborhood this year. It was novel and a lot of fun.  G figured out pretty quickly how to get extra candy, most of it revolved around him being cute. He was also NOT shy about asking for an extra piece of he wanted one. We went as a Star Wars family and everyone seemed to enjoy seeing is all dressed.  Chris went Anaken with me as Padme.  We did children with a strong force. A video of Kylo Ren and Rey wishing everyone a happy Halloween.

https://youtu.be/wcW-9VEiY0c

Recently we've worked on painting the kid rooms. Both are blue and green and fun, the kids picked out the colors. It is also nice to have non white or pale yellow rooms. After renting and everything it is quite a nice change. The paint will hopefully hold up well to kids too.

We got to go to the zoo last weekend and saw the elephant parade. There were 7 or 8 with two younger calves. It also looked like one was pregnant. There's a gestation period I don't envy, it takes 24 months to grow a baby elephant. A couple of the elephant's played in the water and we were certain another was going to try and spray us with water, but she didn't.

Second term is going well for A and we all enjoy having her back in school. We will see how the rest of term goes.

Hope all is going well by you!

Painting

We decided that after years of living with whatever color walls the landlord wants, we wanted different colored walls.  We may eventually go back to a more tan/neutral color, but for now we picked a nice blue for kid rooms.  A actually picked it out and convinced G to agree.  After we got it home we were able to paint the room, with help of course.

Not much new is going on here.  We're working with A in school and she continues to do well.  She is better if she doesn't think you are paying her attention or asking her to do something.  She knows what she is doing, however she doesn't want to demonstrate that to anyone.

After a difficult weekend of behavior from the kids, we got to go to a park. We missed out on all sorts of things over the weekend because of children refusing to get dressed or clean up toys or really anything they were asked.  One of G's and Chris's favorite things to do is feed the fish at this park.  There is a place to get food for a quarter and the fish definitely come up for food.  The kids both got a kick out of it, and the first few startled A.  They don't quite jump out of the water, but come awfully close.  These pictures are from the fish feeding.

Our other really big news is that G has decided he is NOT a baby and will wear underwear to bed each night.  We've been working on the potty training for what seems like forever and it has finally stuck! He will still often wait until he REALLY REALLY has to go and dash to the washroom.  However, we manage one pair of underwear and pants most days.  The funny thing with him though is that if he gets his shirt sleeves or shorts/pants wet from water he has to change that article of clothing NOW.  However, if he has a little pit of urine on his underwear he stubbornly refuses to change the underpants with a drop or two of urine on them.

Rock'N'Roll Fun

Yesterday was the third half marathon I completed this year.  I did Chicago in July, one in Philly in Sept, and then St Louis yesterday.  For completing the Chicago and the St Louis races I completed a special "Midwest Quest" for the Rock'N'Roll Series. I got a special medal for it that is a license plate which flips back and forth between the two races.  The kids like just flipping it back and forth.  It was quite a challenging course, and I look forward to a rematch with the course next year.  Hopefully it also won't be so hot next year.

Today I took off since A was out of school and we explored the Missouri Botanical Garden.  Thankfully the children's garden was still open and it had lot and lots of stuff for the kids to explore.  We played with boats in the water ways section for about 45 minutes.

We are looking forward to school starting back tomorrow, and I think A is as well.  It will be just a few short weeks until Thanksgiving though.  Hopefully we get back on the school schedule easily.  We shall see.

Hope all is well by you.

Done with Term 1

Today we had our first parent/teacher conferences with A's teacher.  It went well.  She is doing well in school and marches to the beat of her own drummer as the teacher said.  The teacher also doesn't think that A gives a good picture of what she knows -- similar to us.  When we do her homework and such we always get the impression that she is purposefully not showing all she can do and taking much more time than is necessary to get stuff done.  The teacher agreed with us but she's a bit more patient about it since she's been teaching for 20 something years.  It is obvious that the teacher and A have a good rapport system going on.  It is just hard to believe that term 1 is done!

The past month has been busy though.  We've managed to buy a new to us minivan that was in our price range and sell the Focus.  The Focus has been a good car and we are sad to see it go.  However it is what needs to happen right now for us.  It is going to a good teenager who needs a dependable car and so that fits the bill quite nicely.

We also managed to do a few things in the area here.  We had a neighborhood night out a couple of weeks ago that was a lot of fun.  We walked and surprised everyone by walking.  Not sure what else was supposed to happen in the neighborhood. We had fun until the mosquitoes decided we were a yummy dinner.

Last weekend we managed to go for a bike ride on the Katy Trail.  We did about 15 miles round trip with a group from a church around here.  Of course G fell asleep on the way back.

We also managed to get to a festival around here last week.  It is at the Botanical Gardens and was a lot of fun.  The kids got to decorate pumpkins and milk a cow.  They could have done more but refused to take naps and we refused to go until after naps were taken.  Eventually they did cave and take naps so we went late.  We got to make silly hats as well.  The kids had fun and we were impressed with the gardens so we shall go back.  They also have a butterfly garden and a nature reserve that we can visit since we just bought a membership.  Here are a few pictures from that day.