Patch Time!

I feel a little behind the times as I type this on WEDNESDAY and the rest of the PPC (aka: Pumpkin Patch Crew) wrote their blogs Sunday night as soon as they returned home from our fun-filled day! :o) But alas, here it is...

We had such a great day doing our annual pumpkin patch trip with the pumpkin patch crew! The sky was blue, the animals were attentive, the pumpkins were abounding, the kids were excited, it was truly a great day! They did the corn maze a couple times, bowling, played in the wood chips, fed the piggies, picked out pumpkins (and didn't realize when we didn't take any home!), played with their cousins and friends, the parents got to chit chat, a bazillion pictures were taken!!! (from five cameras, so yes, a bazillion pictures!) We then went to the Wagner's house to watch the rest of the football game, let the kids play, and eat some dinner - more chit chat time for the adults! (can you tell what my favorite part is?!? I love visiting with people...and getting out!)

Alrighty, I'll try to narrow down the pictures...

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Happy Half-Birthday, Jenna!

That's right, Jenna is 6 months old today! And how did we celebrate??? By taking her to the doctor to get shots... :-) (however Jacob said we should make cupcakes...and as you know I'm ALWAYS up for treats, so I may have to give in to Jacob's puppy dog eyes) Anywho, Jenna did well at her appointment, of course screamed during the shots, but promptly took a nap afterwards and has been doing well ever since. When the doctor comes in, of course the babies are undressed at that point, so the first thing she noticed were all her cute little rolls! "Well aren't you just the cutest little thing!!!" as she whisks her up and cuddles our chubby little ball of fluff.

She said we can start upping the amount of formula if she's unhappy with just the 5-6 oz. that we currently give her, and the solids we're giving her is fine. Finger foods don't start until about 9 months of age, when they start crawling and their gag reflexes have advanced. (yes, we've found that we're having to re-train ourselves on a lot of this stuff! It's funny how quickly you forget, even when it's your third) :-)

She weighed 20 lbs 8 oz (99th percentile), height was 26.5" (79th percentile), and head was 17.25" (85th percentile). She's staying right on track, pretty proportionate and cute as can be :-)
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Jenna's 6-month growth picture next to her monkey.

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Happy Jenna's growin' up!

What a cutie patootie!

Disregard Jacob making rabbit ears,

this picture is merely to show her hair growth ;-)

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Just messin' around - looking at Jenna through a blue toy :-)

...and now through a red toy...apparently red DOES equal rage!

Just one quick pic of Jacob and his amazingly straight eyes!

Jacob's Class Field Trip!

Matt and Jacob went on their first Kindergarten field trip on Thursday! The forecast looked a bit crummy so they dressed in layers, wore their boots, and headed off to school. They boarded the big yellow bus in anticipation of a day at Remlinger Farms. Matt volunteered as a chaperone so he had two additional boys under his care, Joshua and Hunter. Hunter is from Jacob's class, they're buddies, Joshua is from the PM class. The boys had a GREAT time! They got to pet all kinds of animals, go on a bunch of rides, do the hay maze, play in this crazy trampoline/hay area, ate lunch, picked out a pumpkin, just a fun day in general! It only sprinkled on them a teensy bit, YAY! Here are some pictures of their fun and successful day at the farm.

I Washed My Van!

Yep, I washed my van...but THAT wouldn't be worth blogging about, I mean come on! The real story is "WHY" - why would Denise wash her car on a chilly October afternoon when she could be spending her time warm indoors eating bonbons while watching soap operas (as all stay at home moms do!).

The story begins on a brisk Fall morning as the leaves were dancing along the streets of Maple Valley... OK, kidding! Really, the story is that I went to Sam's Club with the girls on Thursday morning after shipping Jacob off to school. The skies are gray, the forecast showed rain, and as most moms try to do, I wanted to park next to a Cart Return. Well, the spot next to the cart return was a "Compact" spot, and there was already a car in the next space over. So I carefully rounded the corner to pull into the spot, and (may I remind you that I'm still learning the fine lines of where the edges of my van are...I could SEE where the Jeep ended for the most part, the van falls off into an abyss and you can't see the hood in the least!) yes, I successfully miss the first pole that holds up the chains which form the cart return's boundary lines, but I decide to widen my turn slightly so there's enough room on my side of the van, and scraaaaape...my stomach tightens into a knot and proceeds to leap to my throat as I realize what just happened! BOB HAS BEEN INJURED! What makes it worse is that there was a man walking through the parking lot and HEARD the scrape, and CHUCKLED! (I'm sure as he noticed it was a woman driving the van - dumb woman drivers) Needless to say, the entire time I'm going through Sam's Club, I'm almost in tears as I'm picturing the yellow paint on my shiny new van - "should I buy these dino nuggets?!?...what about this yogurt???...with the economy the way it is and I may have just cost us a pretty penny in order to repair Bob...what about that wine over there..." (yes, I was close to drinking over this one!) ;-D

Anywho, I get home, feed the kids, put Jenna down, and Juliana & I head straight outside to begin seeing if I can get that yucky yellow paint off of my precious Bob! I am proud to say it was successful, all yellow paint is OFF of my van! However I can tell it ever so slightly goes in on one certain part, and that grates me to no end...it will forever be a reminder to me that it's OK to get a little wet and it's OK to park a little further away and run the cart to the cart return after the kids are all buckled in - they will be FINE!

And now I shall go ice my poor arms for scrubbing the front fender for so long...another reminder of my stupidity...

- BEFORE -

- AFTER -

Chalkboard Fun!

I finally took the time (which was no time at all!) to paint over our old little yellow Ikea table with chalkboard paint, and it turned out GREAT!!! I had bought a quart of chalkboard paint a few months back to make a little chalkboard for the kids, and they love it, but only one can use it at a time. After seeing how well it worked, and how much I had left, I kept looking around our house to find something else to paint! I've had my eye on that yellow table this whole time, but just never took the time to do it (which is SO silly, because no taping or anything was needed, so it was just a ROLL ROLL ROLL with the roller, and BAM - DONE!). I did it on Saturday and I've been anxiously awaiting the 3-day waiting period to be done so we can use it. Juliana and I played with it this morning for the first time, then made a "Welcome Home" sign to greet Jacob with as he walked through the front door. Needless to say, he was SO excited to see that we could finally play with it! They played with it for well over an hour until I forced them to stop for lunch time. I'm so happy to have such a large drawing space for them to work at, and that they can sit down at it. Juliana of course didn't want to stay on her side and proceeded to erase Jacob's drawings many times...he was less than thrilled with that...so we'll have to work on that. But they're still having so much fun with it! (actually Jacob is drawing on it by himself right now, it's a Christmas tree with presents, and it reads "I Love Christmas Tree") (That's my boy!!!)

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Jacob is Superstar Of The Week in his class at school right now. So one of his weekend homework projects was to fill out a poster that talks all about him (favorite color, thing to do, what he wants to be when he grows up, etc.). It was so neat watching him fill it all out, coming up with all his answers, and how he wanted to draw each one. He's still itching to go camping apparently, as many of his answers revolved around camping!

His eyes are still doing great, and we couldn't be more thrilled! It has been odd looking at him without his glasses, but we're finally getting used to it and he's becoming "Jacob" again :-) Every now and then he'll just bust out with "my eyes aren't red anymore!" And I notice from time to time that he'll be reading things from really far away, or tiny print in general, which tells me that he appears to be seeing fine. We are SO thankful!!!

Alrighty, that's enough for now, I hope everyone's having a good week! Awana tonight, both kids have their vests now, and Juliana even has her first patch!!! They're so excited when they come home every Wednesday night, showing all their Awana Dollars and the projects they worked on. And I have been enjoying having those nights with just Jenna, and then a little time with JUST ME!!!

Just a pic of the kids having fun with Daddy.

Daddy helped them make a fort (which they called a tent) for movie time.

A very happy Baby Jenna!

"Cheeeeeze!!!"

A Day At The Beach

Jacob has been asking all summer long if we can go to the beach and make sandcastles, but our lovely Jenna has made that an excursion we haven't been excited to take. But now that she's sitting up and doing better in general, we figured we should take advantage of the shreds of decent weather that we have left before it's gone! So after church today, we rode off to Dash Point in anticipation of finally building a sandcastle at the beach!!!

We found a perfect little spot to set up shop and get to work! We built various sandcastles, complete with moats and feather flags (just like on Curious George!). Matt wrote Juliana and Jacob's names in the sand. He did Jacob's name really close to the edge of the incoming tide so we could watch his name fill up with water. The kids tromped through the water with smiles plastered on their faces, found shells, meanwhile Jenna played with her toys on the blanket. We were able to stay just long enough, the kids were content with our adventure and Jenna was definitely ready for a nap in the van!

This N That

Thursday night was an exciting night for the kids, they finally got to pick a couple of the pumpkins in Matt's garden (and they are PERFECT pumpkins if I do say so myself!). The kids got to draw on them, Juliana's was quite interesting... (I didn't get after shots, they're on our front porch right now, I should take new pictures...) Anywho, they were very excited, I love that Matt grows pumpkins every year!
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Little Baby Jenna...she fits right in with our other kiddos! All have been Michelin Babies, which if I do say so myself is very cute!!! She's doing so much better at sitting up on her own, and is liking the freedom of sitting up and reaching for toys. She still doesn't like when I leave the room, so it's not helping me get much done...YET! It's coming, I just know it (quiet you, Jen!). In the meantime, at least she's cute! ;-D

Our cat, Jack, and the squirrels we feed in our back yard on a regular basis are SO fun to watch! They play tag, honest!!! Jack could have gotten the squirrels many times over the last year, and never does! He crouches down in the grass, the squirrel hops one, Jack hops one, the squirrel runs up the fence, Jack runs up the fence, they go all around the yard like that, slow and steady, just messin' around! It's so entertaining :-) So yes, I took pictures... (through the window, so they're not the best)

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We went to Greg & Stephanie's tonight (a ton of pictures are on their blog) (SUCH a great night!), and in preparation for this evening Matt made his famous crescent rolls! This turned into a lesson time for the kids! They were extremely giddy to get to help brush the butter on, put the little weiners in, roll 'em up, and even learn how to properly lay them on the pan (Matt's such a thorough teacher). It was neat watching them do that together, and LISTENING to them! (Juliana was giggling through it all!)

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Oh yeah, and this morning Jacob was ECSTATIC to see the first real morning frost of the season! He ran to the shoe rack, threw on his boots, ran out the back slider and proceeded to stomp all around our back yard as if it was the first SNOW of the year! What a fun way to start the day, Mom & Dad had huge smiles plastered on our faces as we watched our son tromp around the yard in utter delight as if we had gotten 6" of fresh snow!!! Ahh, to be in a child's mind... :-)