Happy New Year!!!

Merry Christmas Eve!

Dear Future Freddy,
I'm sorry to embarass you like this but this was way too cute to let pass. You are very proudly wearing your sisters gold glittery shoe with your camoflauge sweatpants.
Again, I'm sorry. You rock though!
Love, Mommy

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The gang is all hanging out together. Enjoying some wintery sunshine.

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Going to do farm chores with Daddy.

See the look of horror on his face? He is clinging to Melissa to save him from that scary man in the red suit, a.k.a. Santa. :)

This is a message for Julie: Big D wanted you to know he enjoys the hat you made him. :)

Lucy was SO excited to see Santa today! He asked her about her animals and told her to keep being a good big sister. She was thrilled! Freddy would have nothing to do with him. He clung for dear life to our friend Melissa. :)

Its pj day at school!

She is very proud of our entry in this year's gingerbread contest. I actually let her help this year. ;)

This afternoon we decided that Daddy needed some help in the shop.

we woke up to our first snowfall of the year!

Happy Thankagiving!!!

Lucy's glasses came today!!! She looks so beautiful! She does say that things look different. We are supposed to take a week to work up to wearing them all the time. Since they are so strong she does need breaks until she gets used to them.

Lucy is getting glasses. :/ When we started with our new pediatrician I mentioned to her that maybe Lucy didn't see well up close, so she referred us to the eye doctor. After a long wait she was finally seen today. It turns out that she is extremely far-sighted (can't see up close). It is so bad that it is effecting her far away vision and is actually making her eyes turn in a bit. If this hadn't been caught she would have ended up cross-eyed. We ordered glasses and they should be in in a week but because of Thanksgiving it might take longer.
Thank goodness for a mother's intuition.

I'm out to lunch with my girl today. :)

As promised, a picture of some of our leaf crafts. We also have leaf collages and some leaf people but their leaves mostly fell off already. The leaves made a big mess but occupied them for 2 days. :)

We went on a leaf hunt this afternoon. Stay tuned for some leafy crafts...

We are having a Halloween party tonight instead of trick-or-treating. We are wearing masks, watching Pooh's Halloween movie, and eating 'apple nachos' (sliced apples with chocolate and caramel sauces drizzled over them. Yum!) And best of all Kim is here! Both kids are now sitting on top of her and throwing books at her to read to them. :)
Hope you eat lots of candy tonight!

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Ruff!

Kim better watch out, Lucy is ready to take her place. :D

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BOO!!!!!
Happy Halloween!! :D

We can go in the house now. We won't stay dry yet but we can get out of the wind. :)

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New Game or Bad Habit?

There a few readers of this blog who will greatly appreciate this post. Or you will at least laugh at us a lot. :)

So, Lucy loves to play store. It's her favorite game by far, and last year I bought her a pretty nice cash register that even scans stuff. She plays all kinds of stores: grocery, department, puppy, farm supply, etc. This summer we even had a few yard sales, which leads into the title of this post.

Lucy's store playing reflects my shopping habits and I'm beginning to worry/feel bad about myself for how much shopping I apparently do. Her newest store type is JoAnn's. We play shopping at JoAnn's almost every day. She gets out paper and her scissors and asks me which fabric I want to buy. Then I have to tell her how much I want and she cuts it for me. She just came to the desk to find a ruler so she could measure my half a yard order. At least we are learning a little about measuring right? Does that make up for the mass consumerism I am also teaching? I shop at yard sales a lot and I have been making lots, but yes we do shop- a lot I guess.

On that note we are off to JoAnn's today because they are having a big sale and I am buying holiday gift making supplies. :/

Freddy's first really bad goose egg. :( He and Lucy were playing very nicely together this morning but they crashed and he went flying into the wall. It looks awful but doesn't seem to be bothering him now, he cried really hard when it happened though.

This is a puppy Lucy drew. I love it!

The scrappy pumpkins. They are so cute and the kids love them! Well they loved the big one yesterday, I just finished the small one. Oh, that is not laundry you can see in the background that is part of my many piles/bins of fabric. :)

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My day

I typed this all into my update on Facebook but it was too long to post. I had no idea they cut you off after a certain number of characters. Anywho, the upside is I am actually typing a blog post and not just sending a picture from my phone. So add blogged to the end of my list. :)

"I've had a surprisingly productive day: I cleaned the mud room and pantry; put things away from the kitchen counter dumping spot; rinsed, washed, dried and folded the rest of the tie-dye; cleaned out the hall closet in order to find Lucy's lost game piece (found it!); organized a very full basket of ribbon; moved some more of my sewing stuff off the dining room table to my new sewing table in the back room; finished sewing and stuffing my scrappy pumpkin* (the kids helped stuff); did a bit of pottery while Lu played play-doh; washed some bins and the kitchen garbage can; read some stories to the kids and played catch with them; ordered a pizza for dinner; gave Freddy his antibiotics and nebulizer treatment 3 times; and now finally going to collapse on the couch and probably do some crocheting while watching TV with Dave."

To answer your question, yes I drink lots of coffee.

*Scrappy Pumpkin Tutorial Super cute and super simple. I think I have enough fabric left to make another smaller one tomorrow.

This our newly planted pasture. We planted lots of tall grass for Ponter to eat (yes after more than 2 years pony was finally given a name) and there are flowers planted all along the fence. Freddy even added some fluffy white clouds although I don't think you can see those in the picture. This was a very nice way to spend a cold, windy, wet afternoon.

Our newest farm-related purchase: the biggest non-commercial freezer you can buy.

Puppy love

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Why is he wearing his coat, where are we going? Nowwhere! He just likes to wear his coat. Silly boy!

I guess our overnight trip to Grandma and Bobbob's was a bit tiring. I've been sitting in the driveway for an hour now and they are still sleeping. I'm actually sitting in the silence reading a book it's been awhile since I got to do that.

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Big doings on Main Street! They are paving all the way through town. It now takes 30minutes to drive through our teeny tiny town. :( Entertaining for the kids though.

Freddy "as

Lucy recieved this postcard in the mail today. It is so sweet of her teacher to write the note and sweet to know that Lucy is so nice to the other kids. We are all so happy with preschool!

We decided to take advantage of the unseasonably hot weather by taking our snack to beautiful Hemlock Lake. It is extremely windy here though and our snack keeps blowing away. I have to stop typing and hold it down

This is a picture of birds.

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Her first picture from school.

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She is so excited for dance class, she wouldn't stay still long enough to get a nice picture. But hey- an update is an update right? ;)

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FWD:

Freddy likes to accessorize. Call it the product of admiring his big sister. :)

Life

Before I write the post I was thinking about, I have to write about what Lucy just said. It was hilarious and when I asked her if I could write it she said "Yeah!" This afternoon Freddy and I made apple crisp as a special dessert for Lucy tonight. We were just eating and talking about how "super yummy" it was. Then, because Dave is up working on the house, Lucy said "if there's any left over it will be for Daddy (like the way she said if?). He will look at and say 'what is this?' then he will taste it and say 'this feels like marshmallow soup'." I am laughing all over again as I write it. She is so funny!

What I was planning on writing about is how tomorrow our life will be forever changed. Tomorrow is Lucy's first day of preschool (and on Wednesday she has her first dance class). Up until now I have resisted signing us up for anything. We have been free to do whatever we like everyday for the last 3 1/2 years. Now we will have to stick to a schedule, we will be apart for 6 whole hours a week, and she will have out side influences. EEK! :) We are all really excited and have been talking about it since spring. She is totally ready for something other than just me everyday. It will be really weird to drop her off somewhere twice a week, when we have only ever had occasional, irregular separations. And it will be really weird to spend so much one-on-one time with Freddy. They play together so much these days, it is going to be a big adjustment for Freddy too.

So as not to seem like I neglect Freddy, I have a story about him too. The past few days he has been caught carrying things around from the corner, lazy-Susan cupboard. I have one of those child safety cabinet locks on that cupboard so that number one no fingers get slammed as the door goes around; and number two because I keep baking stuff in there and I really don't want baking soda, etc dumped all over. When Freddy was caught I assumed that Dave or I had forgotten to lock the cabinet. This afternoon I found out the truth. My little problem solver was turning around, backing up to the door and putting his weight into, until the lock popped free. He gets into so much because he figures stuff out.

One more thing on the topic of Freddy. He still doesn't talk a whole lot. He has a few words and in the last week or so has been suddenly coming up with new ones. I am not at all worried about it, because he has started inventing his own signs. He has even started combining multiple signs with the occasional word thrown in to get his point across. He also nods yes or no to answer questions. He's no gabber like Lucy is (I sometimes find myself begging her to stop talking for a while) but his communication skills are coming along just fine.

We were all pretending we had mustaches like Daddy. I could only get a picture of Lucy though because Freddy wouldn't stand still enough. :)

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OMG!!!!!

I won something on the internet!!!!!!!! I am SO excited!! I screamed when I saw my name and scared the beejeezus out of Lucy. :) I won on the completely awesome website, Prudent Baby. I LOVE this site so much I check it multiple times per day. They inspired me to stop saying I want to learn to sew, and to go for it.

BTW, that is why I pretty much only post photos from cell phone now. I have many, many projects going and as soon as I finish one I usually start another right away. I'm taking pictures of my creations (well, the successful ones) but I can't bring myself to take the time to download them from my camera and upload them to the internet. Sorry! I really want to restart my other blog, Busy Bees,with all of my crafty stuff, but I would have to be patient with the computer, etc.

Anyway, check out Prudent Baby!

He is definitely a little boy now. Freddy is eating at the island with us instead of in his high chair next to us. He seems really happy about it and I will be sooooo glad to be rid of the high chair, but I'm sad to see another bit of babyhood disappear. :/

Carrying on the tradition.

What bette way to end the summer than kettle corn at the state fair!

Today is a summer only thing, the playground. This is the playground next to Lucy's school so she doubly excited.

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14 days until school starts!
We are going to do something everyday for the next 2 weeks that is either a celebration of summer or of school starting.

Lucy loves Aunt Nancy and Uncle Joe's new dog Lucas!

This is how many days left until school starts!!! (thats 15 counting today)

Happy 1st birthday wonderful nephew!!

A present for the donkeys.