Z-O-Ë

The other day when Riley was over, they (along with Benjamin) were in the backyard playing with the sidewalk chalk. I heard some funny scraping noises on the side of the house and looked out of the window to see those two three-year-olds had abandoned the sidewalk and were drawing on the side of the house, which isn't a terrible thing to do because it will wash off but it's best to be in the habit of drawing where one ought so I decided to intervene. 

I opened the back door and Riley and Zoë leapt away from their graffiti. 

"Who's been drawing on my house?" I asked in a silly storybook villain voice (like the troll from The Three Billy Goats Gruff or the witch from Hansel and Gretel).

"Not me!" they both said, each accusing the other with their little pointer fingers.

Unfortunately for Zoë, she's reached the age of self-incrimination because I'm pretty sure Riley didn't put that Z-O-E on the wall (though the series of vertical lines belong to him (if you look closely you can see that Zoë is written in green chalk and the lines are done in a turquoise colour (blue and green are actually rather difficult for me to tell apart and I always call things green that others think are blue or think things are blue when others swear that they're green so I dunno—those two colours are distinct in that picture, right? One of them is green-ish and the other is more blue (at least in my opinion))).

The three smalls

This little man was probably the most frustrating one to take pictures of. By the time we got home his pants, which were woefully caked with mud and salt, had dried and he wasn't even able to bend them. It's a good thing he's a cute, funny kid.

We did quiet a bit of snacking on the way out to the salt flats (a two-hour drive from our house), having left right around lunch time without much lunch in our bellies. When we were very nearly there, Benjamin asked if he could have a packet of applesauce.

"Not right now," Andrew said. "We're nearly there—only eleven minutes to go."

"I can eat an applesauce in ten!" Benjamin quickly countered.

"Well, that's not really the poi..." Andrew started to say before Benjamin cut him off with...

"I can eat an applesauce in one!"

He did not get his applesauce, but that was quickly forgotten because...water. My kids cannot resist water. (Oddly enough, last weekend I found a paper about Benjamin wanting to go leaf peeping and then we did; this weekend he brought home a paper about going to the beach and I was like, "Oh, buddy! The beach is too far away!" but then we ended up splashing around in salt water anyway, though we weren't really expecting to find as much water as we did (and that particular rest stop isn't always a lake, either, that lucky little boy)).

Outtakes

At first we were going to take family pictures on Saturday but then we decided we wouldn't because we hadn't decided on a location or a wardrobe or anything and we were running out of time to make such suggestions. But then Rachel suggested that we take family photos at the salt flats and this Saturday was the only date available for such an outing for quite some time so we decided we'd go for it. 

The idea was one part brilliant and one part messy, messy, messy. 

It was quite the adventure, that's for sure!

Glen Ray's Pumpkin Patch

We've been watching Riley more frequently than usual recently due to a change in his daycare situation. Knowing that my children were all going to be home today and tomorrow, I suggested to Karen that we take them all to a pumpkin patch place so they didn't go stir crazy but then she got sick so instead Reid and I ended up taking the kids out. 

I had found a place called Bert's online but other than an address I couldn't find much information, so we drove to the address, which was out in the middle of nowhere, and found nothing. So we decided we'd head over to Jaker's. On our way to the highway, however, we stumbled upon Glen Ray's Corn Maze and Grandpa pulled into the parking lot, declaring, "Let's just go here!"

So that's what we did and it was a pretty fun place, though I think I enjoyed Jaker's more (but that could be my attitude's fault than the place's fault). 

The first con would be the price. It's $4 for general admission and $4 for the corn maze, which of course the kids (Rachel and Miriam specifically) were super excited about doing. Plus there were other add-ons, like I believe it was $15 for the spooky corn maze and $2 for each additional train ride. It felt like things could get pricey real fast (and we all know how I feel about that). Agrotourism is great, but, like...shouldn't be as outrageous as Disneyland (which I also believe shouldn't be outrageously priced).

Jaker's is $3 for everything, but they don't have a maze through actual corn stalks (they do, however, have a hay bale maze, which I didn't do because I only had Zoë and Alexander with me, but that's just as much fun (or not fun, depending on how you feel about mazes)). 

The first pro of Glen Ray's would be that it wasn't nearly as crowded as Jaker's was. We got to ride the little tractor train right away, which Benjamin and Riley were both terribly excited about. Rachel volunteered to take Alexander, who wasn't thrilled about the idea, and Zoë cried and screamed and said she'd only go on if she could sit on Miriam's lap (so Miriam let her). They all had varying levels of fun...

The con for Jaker's would be that it's a super popular place so it's quite busy (but that's really only a con because I don't like crowds)...

Pokemon and crushes

I found my sweet little Benjamin taking care of his cousin Riley in the kitchen this morning. I had been wondering who he had been talking to—counting backwards with the microwave timer and prattling on about all sorts of things—and it was sweet to see that he'd made oatmeal for the two of them (complete with a sprinkle of chocolate chips to make it "special").

"Oh, hi, Mom!" he said when I popped into the kitchen where he was on a stool, wiping out the microwave. "I put too much water in this bowl and it kind of exploded all over the place, so I'm just cleaning it up!"

I helped him finish cleaning it up so he could get down to business (our mornings are rushed sometimes and he needed to be eating, not cleaning) and he sat down by Riley to eat his breakfast.

"Oh, you do have to take me to school today," Benjamin said (I'd told him this last night but he didn't believe me). "Rachel is at orchestra and Miriam is at choir—on a Wednesday!"

Due to fall break their extracurricular schedules collided; ordinarily orchestra and choir don't fall on the same day.

"But don't check my pockets, Mom. Never check my pockets," he added.

"Why not?" I asked. "What have you got in there?"

"Nothing," he said. "Maybe some acorns. I am an acorn collector, you know."

"Oh, I know that about you. I do," I said. "But you wouldn't happen to have any Pokemon cards in there as well, would you?"

"Yes," he sheepishly admitted.

Alexander at 12 months

Although I managed to get all the other kids in for their well-child checks at the beginning of this month, Alexander's appointment isn't until next week so I don't have official stats for him yet, though my guess is that he is about 22 lbs. He's catching up to Zoë at an alarming rate.

At one year, Alexander...

Jaker's Pumpkin Patch

This morning we went to Jaker's Pumpkin Patch with our neighbourhood co-op preschool. Part of me always feels a little guilty when I go do fun things while the kids are in school, but it's only fair to the little ones still at home that we do, right? After all, when my big kids were the little ones we would go out and do fun things!

Alexander's cake

For Alexander's birthday cake I made a double recipe of the Incredibly Moist Pumpkin-Spice Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting from the Betty Crocker website. The base of the recipe is a boxed cake mix, just as a disclaimer (I'm not culinary goddess), but the mix-ins take things up a notch. Almost everyone seemed to like it, but the birthday boy (and girl) seemed to enjoy it so that's what really matters.

FHE Quidditch Practice

As room mom (x3) I'm suddenly in charge of putting together several Halloween parties. I also volunteered to be on the "safety week" committee at school, thinking that safety week would be, like, in April like it was last year. But, no. This year safety week falls the same week as Halloween because if I'm planning things I may as well be planning things. 

I don't have to do anything for Benjamin's class because my co-room mom is taking the party on since I've been organizing literacy center volunteers. Phew.

For Miriam's class I decided we'd have a Harry Potter theme and I came up with four stations, each representing a different class (or sport, in the case of Quidditch) from Hogwarts. And then when no one was stepping up to plan the 6th grade party (they have a big joint party with all four classes) I suggested we just do more or less the same thing and build our stations around a Harry Potter theme.

I've been floating my ideas to the girls to see if they think they'll be fun or not but I'm always a little unsure about whether my ideas will work the way I think they will. Having taken a handful of pedagogic classes (and having taught in numerous situations), I know that I am an excellent lesson planner. I am much less good at executing my ideas than I am about having them. 

"Fails to command the room..." and so forth.

My lesson plans always got top marks, but my teaching evaluations were never as positive, so I thought that perhaps I should test out an idea or two before the big day (so I could scratch activities that were a complete flop). Tonight for FHE we played Indoor Quidditch (or Quidditch Pong...or Potter Pong...I don't know what to call it). It's definitely a take on beer pong, but instead of putting beer in the cups I put trivia questions because, well, we're teetotalers (and also my target audience is children).

Finders keepers

This morning Benjamin couldn't find his...

• pants
• home-reading book
• socks
• shoes
• jacket
• jacket (again)

And he left his lunchbox at school again so will, yet again, be visiting the lost and found. 

The items he was missing this morning were subsequently found...

• in his dresser (the issue, specifically, was that he hates wearing jeans and only ever wants to wear sweat pants but only had jeans in his drawer; we should probably get him more sweat pants)
• by the television (where he also found the Humphrey book he's been reading (in a whole stack of books sitting there))
• in his drawer (shocker)
• in his shoe box (the issue, specifically, was that he'd jumped into the river when we went hiking on Saturday and his shoes were still too wet to wear out in this cold weather so we had to find a different pair of shoes but then we could only find one shoe of his back up pair because the other shoe was in Grandma and Grandpa's shoe box)
• on the couch upstairs (after lamenting, "Why is the couch all full of stuff again?!" because he'd cleaned it off the other day (the answer to that question was, "Because you guys cleaned off the bottom stair yesterday by putting everything on the couch instead of putting anything away!")
• on his head (he'd put the hood on his head and was walking around with the rest of it flapping behind him like a cape and when I asked him to put it all the way on he ran to the coat rack and panicked because he couldn't find his jacket)

"It is on your head," I seethed as calmly as I could. 

He also whined this morning about how he's not allowed to take books from home to school (his sisters, on the other hand, get to do it all the time). I pointed out that he's also not allowed to take school library books home (first graders (or grade oners)) have to keep them in their desks at school. I then pointed out that we'd spent the entire morning searching for things that he'd misplaced (or simply didn't look for long enough to find) so having him cart books around from three different sources would be a disaster. 

Taking his home-reading book back and forth between school and home is plenty responsibility for him!