Girl Time

With Isaac in school during the day. Well until 2:30 so we still have pretty much a full half a day with him. But with him in school I've been trying to dedicate Wednesday morning as 'activity' day to do something fun with the girls. The first week we made unicorn poop (basically just pink goo with gems in it). Then the next week we made toilet paper binoculars. Last week we decorated their letters for preschool. They were given the first letter of their name to bring home and decorate. They had fun gluing and exploring my 'embellishment' drawer from my scrap-booking supplies that doesn't see the light of day much anymore. 

Thursday of this week we made a trip to the Children's Museum. It was so quiet!! I couldn't believe how uncrowded it was, it was so nice. The girls pretty much had the scrambler area all to themselves for about twenty minutes.

We explored the backyard area we hadn't seen before and even got to do the laser exhibit. Mary is smiling on the ant above although that face looks like she's in pain, haha.

Thomas had some fun on the infant mats too! He loved looking in the big mirror at himself.

It was fun watching the girls play together from a distance. They are so cute and funny sometimes.

This was Friday. Isaac was wearing a new outfit he got from Kyle's boss. It's an exciting time when he gets to wear BRAND NEW clothes, since we have plenty of hand-me-downs from Isaac. He was so cute in this little fuzzy bear outfit. Emma took these first photos:

And Mary took these, I love Thomas' facial expression.

I saw the pattern for these troll hats in my facebook news feed and emailed my friend who crochets. She made the hats for me and sent them to me with the hair tied in but not finished. So I split the yarn and brushed out the troll hair to get these cute poppy hats from the movie Trolls. The girls love them. I'm not sure if that will be their Halloween costume or not, we haven't gotten that far with costume decisions yet.

Uncle Josh's Visit

Last weekend, September  23rd, my brother came to visit for a long weekend. I picked him up Saturday and we came back to the kids' soccer game. 

He got to experience a 3 year old soccer game and all it's glory, like herding cats. The girls are getting a 'little' better about participating, now that we only have one game left in the season.

After the game they had a quick play on the playground. Josh was excited to check out the zip line at the park.

We came home for naps and then decided to take advantage of the crazy hot weather we were having at the end of September. So we walked down to our local beach for an early evening swim. It had gotten cloudy about this time but it was still hot.

Thomas's FIRST visit to the beach/lake. I was so glad we got to make this trip. It was nice having an extra adult with us to keep an eye on the kids and be in the water with them. And it relieved some of my mom guilt that I haven't gotten the older kids to the beach more this summer. We went a few times before Thomas was born, then Kyle took them once after Thomas arrived.

 

Sunday we stuck around the house a bit before leaving for lunch. Josh got to experience Thomas and his excitement for the star on his playmat. Josh asked "what is he so smiley about?" and had to get down to take a peek. It's a smiley face on the star that Thomas loves!

Then we went to New Bohemia for some lunch. Josh got the MEGA pretzel! Which was pretty much all that Emma ate, haha.

Then we went for a walk on the stone arch bridge to burn off some of that grease from lunch.

We came home for the girls to nap and Josh took Kyle's bike out for a workout at a nearby park. Then afterwards it was still so warm out we decided to hit the beach again, for what we knew would be our last visit of the season.

The next couple days we hung around the house and Josh got to experience crazy life with four little kids running around and about :-)

Fall Harvest

Yesterday we met some friends way out west near Delano at an apple orchard: Fall Harvest Orchard. We were so bummed this year to miss out on our annual trip to La Crosse for apple picking weekend, but we had to embrace the fall season and make it out to an orchard. We didn't pick apples but we did have lots of fun with all their activities.

There were corn pits to play in:

Animals to hold and feed

Tractors to sit on:

A little train for the kids to ride

A corn maze (Isaac's favorite)

(Mary is upset in this photo because she wanted to stand my Logan, as you can see Emma is gloating)

and a hay ride. We got to learn about the orchard land and got a free apple!

We had lunch together at a unique little drive in at the local town. It was a fun and exhausting day. Beautiful fall weather!

OH, forgot to blog this so I'll add it in. We started the morning off with Isaac's soccer game, we have one more week of the kids' soccer. The girls had a BYE week this day.