water, water everywhere!

A couple of weeks ago, Dan actually had a Friday and Saturday off of football! We had a nice weekend, lots of family time! Friday night, we went grocery shopping at Trader Joe's and then made a yummy dinner. While we were finishing up dinner and talking, Emily and Louie were in the bathroom with the door closed.
This is what I found....notice the water level in the sink.... needless to say, the bathroom was flooded!

A Sneak Peek

Halloween costumes arrived yesterday and all is well with the world. The kids are so excited to be pirates!
I need to do a little sizing modification to them, but minor ones. Nothing that can't be fixed with Velcro...love that stuff.

The Mystery Plant

We had a mystery plant in our garden this year. The seeds must have been in the organic compost that we got from Kern Landscape. I knew it was in the squash family, turns out that it's a pumpkin. It's not this one, but it's a creamy butter colored pumpkin. There are two of them and Louie thinks they are really cool!

The Rain Stopped

It finally stopped raining, so we went outside to run around yesterday afternoon.

Emily and Louie are really into chasing each other right now.

I managed to get a couple of shots of them when they weren't tackling eachother or playing hog pile.

The Pumpkin Patch

We took the kids up to Pinehaven Farm to go to their huge pumpkin patch. I've never been to a pumpkin patch myself, it was a fun morning.
Pinehaven is up in Wyoming, MN. There were lots of farm animals, a pumpkin cannon that can shoot a pumpkin a half a mile! There is a big pirate ship with an observation deck, corn mazes, hay mazes, train rides and a wagon ride out to the pumpkin patch to pick a pumpkin. It was lots of fun!

Feeding the sheep.

Petting the donkey.

There was a bunch of these weird looking cows. They had the longer hair. The farm hand was throwing pumpkins into their pen for them to eat and it was a funny to watch them. There was a definite pecking order for who got to eat...

The calves didn't eat the pumpkins, they didn't stand a chance.

Friday nights

Last fall, during football season, the kids and started a tradition of having pizza and a movie on Friday nights when Dan is gone to football, basketball or baseball games. We've watched many movies and I've introduced them to many Disney classics.
Tonight we watched "Pinocchio." I don't remember seeing that movie when I was a kid, but am pretty sure that I did at some point.

Louie at four pieces of pizza! Normally, he won't eat the sausage or pepperoni that is on a pizza. Tonight, he turned it upside down and ate everything on his plate tonight!

matching game

we've been trying out the various matching games that the kids have received as gifts and this one is the winner!

The cards come in 6 sets of 12 cards, so for little ones, it's nice to have a smaller game to play.

Louie is very much into playing an organized game. Just the past week, he's figured out that each person gets a turn and that we go around in a circle.

This is one of the cards. Dan, isn't that cute???

Autumn is in the air!

and the petunia's were dying. it was time to change the flowers in the window boxes. I like to change the window boxes as the seasons change. I love autumn! The leaves, the colors, college football and the weather!

Nativity County Fair

The annual Nativity County Fair was last weekend. Louie saw all of the rides being set up when he was at preschool last Thursday and since we didn't go to the State Fair, we decided to treat the kids to an afternoon over there. It was so much fun! and small, perfect for kids that are overwhelmed by huge crowds.




This was the Dinosaur Scrambler. Emily and Louie loved going on the different rides. I'm not a rides sort of girl. Unfortunately!


The giant Dinosaur bouncer. Louie must have spent 6 of his tickets in there. He loved it. They had blow up dinosaur egge and a giant slide inside of it.



Then he spotted the Pirate Ship. He loved that too. Emily loved all of the rides, she loved the movement. It really surprised me.



Then, Emily and I went on the ferris wheel, while Louie was in the bouncer again (3 more times).


It was pretty cool up at the top of the ferris wheel. The main runway at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport is under construction, so planes are being routed to the runway that comes and goes over Highland Park in St. Paul. When we were sitting at the top, a plane came in for a landing right over us.

Then, we hit the (mini) Giant Slide. So much fun.


Back to the ferris wheel for Emily and Daddy. Louie and I headed to the Dinosaur bouncer (again).





We grabbed a malt on the way out. Food was so inexpensive. Pronto Pups were $1.50; cheeseburger, $2.00; beers, $3; Bloody Mary's, $4. All the food was delicious and the Bloody Mary on a Sunday morning was fantastic!

Patience and Consistency

The other day, I saw this post on Karen Russell's blog. I felt like I had written it.
My top three weeknesses as a parent are:
1. Lack of patience
2. Lack of patience
3. Lack of patience

As parents, we all try to do the absolute best that we can for our kids....but sometimes that is a really difficult thing to accomplish.
My lack of patience has definitely been my biggest downfall as a parent (I'm sure Emily and Louie will tell you that). The area that I don't feel that I lack in is consistency. When I tell them something, I will (almost) always follow through with it.
The thing that made me laugh, is that the day before Karen posted this, I had told Louie that if he didn't help put his toys away, I was going to throw them away. That meant that his pirate ship would have gotten thrown in the garbage.
I haven't seen him pick up his toys so fast, ever! It worked and thankfully, I didn't have to resort to throwing anything away!
As for consistency, Dan and I have really done our best to remain consistent. The biggest hurdle is the dinner table. I feel like we're constantly riding them about table manners and eating their food. Sometimes, dinner is just one time-out after another. Anyhow, these days Louie rarely will eat his dinner and then is hungry 45 minutes later. It's so hard to put him to bed hungry, but we have stuck to our plan and not given in. Maybe someday he'll eat his dinner!
(no pictures this time, broken camera...I have a loaner but haven't gotten it out of the bag yet.)