Spelling Tuesday

Our dreams of an extended family road trip are pretty much dashed every time this kid gets in the car.  Give him food and he's happy.  If he gets bored you are in trouble.  He will just scream, "Mom!  Mama! Mommy! Mom! Mama! Mommy!"  For miles.  Caleb finally had the genius idea to blast him with cold air and rain by rolling his window down every time he screamed.  That was actually pretty effective.  My head hurts.

Loralie's preschool class went on a field trip to the Shatto Dairy Farm.  They got to see all the machinery and try lots of different flavors of milk, including chocolate, candy corn, strawberry, banana, and egg nog!  Loralie's favorite: Cotton Candy. Awe!  Cute little baby cow! She had a great time!

Loralie did this dog at school and named it Sweet Sunshine!  Love it!

This little girl turned five years old today!  Unfortunately, both of us have had the stomach flu ALL WEEK  so her party at The Great Wolf Lodge had to be post-poned.  We tried to make today special in other ways. She got balloons and doughnuts for breakfast (which she quickly pooped out).  Her present from Caleb and I was a cool bow and arrow, or, as she likes to call it, that-thing-that-Merida-uses-to-kill-people.  She has been asking for one for months!  Definitely her fathers daughter! She also got the movie "Brave" and we set up a movie theater in the basement to watch it together. I think she had a pretty good day, but I am looking forward to a clean bill of health so we can celebrate properly!

What an exciting and somewhat exhausting week!  I got my first project published and went to an amazing writers conference! It started last November when I was trying to plan some activities for me and Loralie to do together.  The end product was a devotional book, which slept undisturbed on my laptop all year long.  Flash forward one year and my bible study friends were looking for our next book.  Someone mentioned a holiday book might be fun, and I suggested we could do the devotional book I wrote.  My friends enthusiastically supported me, whether they were serious about wanting to do the devotions or not.  (I love them!). So since I had to edit it anyways, I decided to self-publish it in e-book form on Amazon.  Anyone can do this and it does NOT make me a published author, but it is still pretty cool to go to amazon, search for my name, and see a book title come up!  I gotta say though, as soon as it was "out there" i started panicking!  ...

Look at this and be amazed!  Loralie got to take home Freddy the frog from her preschool class this weekend.  You are supposed to do cool stuff with Freddy and write about it in the little journal.  This year I am making Loralie do all the writing by herself.  She wrote "Freddy met my stuffed animals" and sounded it all out by herself!  I gotta say, I would have been pretty ecstatic about a Kindergartener who could do this in October!  She is a writer just like mommy!

YAY!  Fall is here!  And that means... pumpkin patch time!  We end up at the pumpkin patch pretty much every Tuesday afternoon all October long!  Can't believe how much bigger the kids are this year than last year! We played and played, ate pumpkin donuts for dinner, and enjoyed the crisp fall weather!

Last week, on the way home from preschool, the squirrelly pre-schooler started this conversation: L: Mom, I wish I was in Mrs. Gann's Class. Me (freaking out):  What?  Why?  We love Miss Julie! L:  Miss Gann has some bad boys in her class. Me:  Why would you want to be in Mrs. Gann's class if there are bad boys in there? L:  Well... I just like to look at them. Uh oh.

I have noticed that Loralie's drawings have started to have more and more details.  This is a picture of her and Merida (from the movie Brave).  The orange blobs at the top are dresses she designed.  The red blobs at the bottom are surf boards!