Arboretum Hopping

Well we're getting really close to a certain someones first birthday and the house is all abuzz with activity preparing for that. For some reason I decided to go crazy and do a major "fall cleaning" and have cleaned out and organized every nook and cranny in this house. Now I just have a bit more putting away to do and then some basic cleaning and we'll be all ready for the party. It's not too much left really. We've donated about 8 large moving size boxes of stuff and 6 kitchen size garbage of clothes and thrown away about 12 large lawn size garbage bags of things. And yet we still have tons of stuff!! Oh well, it's good to pare down! I wonder if it's possible that I'm somehow unconsciously doing the nesting that I missed out on last year due to resting with the high blood pressure and then Joshua's early birth. Hmmm, I wonder.

Well anyway, I just thought I'd share some photos from our recent field trips to two different arboretums. We were doing a short study on Johnny Appleseed and I thought it would be fun to visit some arboretums and try to remember what it was like when walking through the forests was the mode of transportation!! So here's some photos!

PS I forgot the "real" camera, so these were taken via Iphone. My regrets.

Joshua hung out in the Ergo carrier at the first stop.



At our second stop, there was an awesome (and free!!) butterfly house. There were so many butterflies in there, it was crazy!


They also had several different ponds, full of turtles! So cool. We loved the second one so much that we brought Daddy back about a week later and spent a Saturday morning there! We'll definitely be visiting there a lot!

Joshua Loves Spaghetti

A boy after his mother's heart, a lover of spaghetti!! He seems to not be able to get it in fast enough!! He even loves it, as we found out tonight, topped with Skyline and cheddar cheese! He's learning to feed his self and making messes in the meantime. But I wouldn't have it any other way! I love saucy, sloppy smooches!!!

Our Family Tree

This is a little project of mine that I had wanted to do for some time now. I had been thinking for quite some time, about what I could put above our front door to fill in the space, as there is a lot of space there to fill. So I knew I wanted to make a family tree with our names on it, but I wasn't sure how I was going to do it. Paint it? Cut it out of paper? I could never decide. And then one day we were in Kohl's and I found two different vinyl sticker sets that I combined to create this. The tree and birds (three birds for three kids) was one and the saying was the other. I then printed all of our names (first and middle) onto vellum and cut them out in a leaf pattern and attached them to the tree. I am very pleased with it. It's exactly what I wanted, but didn't exactly know how to accomplish it! And below is a picture to give you an idea of where exactly it's located.

Diaper Derby

Joshua participated in a diaper derby at a grocery store in the Dayton area. When we got there, we realized this was a bit bigger than we expected. We got our number 18 sticker on and waited. Baby after baby was arriving. I thought there'd be maybe 10 babies, no it turned out to be 21!! So they divided the babies up into groups of 3 or 4 and had each set race. Then the winners of the races would race again to determine 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners. Steve had to stay home and take Jasmine to the vet for an eye emergency, so I needed the help of Noah and Abby to make this work. Noah placed him at the starting line and also ran the video camera for me and Abby took all of the pictures while I had to coax him down at the finish line. The first race started out slowly. It was soooo loud in there and he couldn't here me calling him or clapping or anything. I thought it was over!!

The other parents were very distracting to him. He didn't even know I was waiting for him!

Finally, he turned around and saw me and starting coming towards me. He got about half way and then stopped again. I showed him my Iphone (he loves that thing!) and he came towards me again. This time he zoomed right up and crossed the finish line first!! I couldn't believe it!! So we waited for the other races to finish and then the 7 first place finishers all raced at the same time.

Again, he was distracted, but this time he noticed me quicker. It was so funny because he would go a little bit and then stop and look around, then go a little more and stop again!! It seemed like forever before he finally made it to the finish line and he just barely crossed before the girl next to him!! He actually crossed the finish line in 3rd place!! I was so excited!!

So out of 21 babies, we got 3rd place!! Yay, go Joshua!! And his winnings were a package of diapers and a pack of wipes. All the babies got gift bags with a bottle of water, a banana, a box of sesame street cookies and a travel wipes container. It was a lot of fun and so cute! I'm so thankful for my two big kids who just stepped right in and helped out without even a thought. So blessed.

A New School Year and Johnny Appleseed

We've started our new "school" year already and so I thought I'd share some photos of that. This first picture is of the very first day, the kids are all bright eyed and bushy tailed!! Check back in a few months and the smiles won't be quite so big!! :) I decided to do a few studies on things that have affected Ohio's history this year and the first one we tackled was a quick little study on Johnny Appleseed. We read a few stories about him, did a blind apple taste test, planted some apple seeds, did apple print art, and made homemade applesauce. We're planning to plant an apple tree as well in the yard, but we're waiting for it to get a little cooler. It was nice to learn that Johnny was a Christian man who planted these apple trees to not only make a living for himself by selling them, but also to give the settlers moving west, a crop to enjoy when they arrived. We learned that there is a tree in northern Ohio that they believe to be one planted by Johnny and we'd love to take a trip to go see it, maybe in the fall. It was a fun study. We're going to also do studies on the canal systems in Ohio, the underground railroad in Ohio and a study on Ohio government with a trip to visit the capitol. I think these studies will help cement some of these ideas in their minds (and mine as well!!). It does amaze me how much I learn right along side of the kids. Well anyway, here's some pictures!!

Our apples for the taste test: a red delicious, golden delicious, granny smith and fuji.

After both blind and uncovered taste tests, the kids decided that they both liked fuji apples best and Abby also enjoyed the golden delicious!

With our results we made line graphs.

Apple print art. I was amazed at how many things they came up with using that one shape. They made angels, hearts, mountains, shoes, butterflies and an eye. I love their creativity.

And the kids peeled, chopped, stirred and seasoned the apples to make our applesauce. I told them to put in a bit more cinnamon than we actually should've, so it was a bit cinnamony, but it was good anyway!!

Crawling in the Grass

Today we stopped at a playground and splash pad. Joshua, Daddy and I hung out in the shade of tree and enjoyed the incredibly nice weather. Not too hot, nice breeze, just perfect. Joshua got down and crawled around in the grass and I snapped some photos. I thought I'd share!

Such a big boy standing!! Soon, he'll be done with crawling and onto walking!!

Kings Island

Wow, it's been a long time since a post!! Well I'll never find the time to write one big post of all the things we've done lately, so as I have time, I'll post about each thing separately. These are pictures from our trip to Kings Island. I actually won two tickets in a contest, so we only needed to purchase two more and we went on a Monday and had a great time. While there we:

Ate blue ice cream...

Let Joshua ride the rides for the first time (and he loved them!)....

Cooled off at Boomerang Bay and Noah and Abby rode tons of the big slides (more than I would ride!!) while Joshua relaxed with a bottle!...

Whipped around on one of our kids favorite rides!!...

Had a blast driving around in cars!...

And met the new Peanuts characters. It was a great visit and we should be going again in a month or so with all of my family. It was a nice day with lots of smiles and lots of fun!