Family Fall Festival

 Happy Fall, Y'all!  Yesterday being the first day of Autumn around here, we decided to pack up and have our traditional trek around to welcome the season!  Every year we visit a local mill for a tour, have a picnic, then go to a nearby Orchard to pick apples.

 These are the kinds of faces I get from Cal these days :)  Silly goose.  This was before they sang their fall songs for Daddy and I.  We've been working on songs about leaves and Autumn all week.  Seeing as we homeschool this was a family day/fall party/fieldtrip all rolled into one cute little package of a day!

 By picnic I mean we got take out from Panera.  I know, how planned of me.  But seriously we love their soups, it was a crisp, good day day for soup, Sunday.  And Daddy treated them to these cookies from there...yum!

 I had to document this as this is the most stubborn little boy I've ever met.  Seriously...ever!  Anyway, the boy won't even try to tie his shoes because he doesn't know how, or so he claims...Here he is tying his shoes.  He got most of it on his own and then Emma helped him finish.  But seeing him actually try to tie his shoes is a very rare photo indeed.

 Here are Emma and Daddy exploring the Dahlia garden...gorgeous, right?  By the way, this girl is looking too tall next to her 6 foot 4 inch Daddy...I'm just saying :(

 Hi Baby!  I love you!  This is the picture we always take, with the Mill behind us.  I'm pretty sure Nick thinks I'm insane that I always make him take the same pic of us every year :)

 These two...sigh.

 And these two together.  I called them my Puffy Vest Fellas.  These two go at it like cats and dogs with each other.  But here's how they really feel :)

 Then it was inside for a tour of the mill.  It wasn't on when we got there, the kids were bummed so this kind man who worked there turned it on and actually took us through the steps of how the grain is made.  That's right folks, it's a gristmill that still works!  We buy our year's supply of cornmeal there everytime we go and this time I picked up some bread flour too.  Excited to try to make wheat bread with the kiddos.

 The kids really enjoyed watching the stones grind the cornmeal we were able to take home!  Nothing like learning where your food comes from!

 Then it was onto picking apples!  Seriously, how cute are these kids?

 It's all about the outtakes, right?  How silly!!!

 Emma picked the biggest apple of the day and then proceeded to bite it before we could slip her a smaller one.  Not kidding, the four of us split that apple and it took us about 45 minutes between the 4 of us to eat it.  GINORMOUS!!!

 I think we ended up with two more bushels on top of this and then we were ready to go.  Momma's got lots of apples to make goodies with!

This was his proud moment when Daddy finally let him have his turn with the fruit picker.  He carried the apple in the basket all the way to the scales to pay.

So that was our day, hope you all are enjoying your fall!  Our house is all decorated for the season and we are loving the crisp weather!

Happy Fall, Y'all!

Our Weekend

As I mentioned in the last post, this weekend we celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary!  So exciting!!!  But I think what may have been even more exciting was...

 The finding of the old legos!    Nick has been asking his mom for the past three years to look for the legos he had when he was a kid.  They are in Portland on vacation right now so he seized the opportunity and stormed their basement for his toys.  He said he found them in about half an hour.  Three years of waiting for these makes for some very, very exciting children!

 How cute are these vintage legos?

 The kids have been having so much fun with them!  His mom kept the boxes and instructions and everything...they are so cute and fun!

 Our little boy is in heaven!  Sunday Nick sent me out for milk after supper and when I got back this was here...

 A wedding cake!  A real, live wedding cake!  In eloping we didn't have one and Nick surprised me with having this made!  A cake for 30 people for the four of us makes for a lot of leftover cake!  He remembered  the cake I had planned for our wedding, the color and everything...isn't he just the sweetest thing ever?

I was so shocked and I am so in love with him!

Awful picture but after cake Emma thought dancing was appropriate. Aren't they just adorable?

So those were the parts of our weekend you hadn't heard about yet.  I'm loving our life! Up next is our anniversary get away!  Packing and cleaning and preparing for that.   :)

Cleaning the Ins and Outs of Me and the House

As Summer has crept in I have noticed my laziness growing.  After all it is hot and humid and these are supposed to be the days when you are out of school and able to throw some of your grown up inhibition to the wind, right?

Unfortunately I also find that my wanting to be a free spirit somehow contradicts itself.  I don't want to go to the gym because I don't want to be kept indoors when it is so beautiful outside. I don't want to go running because it is too hot and sticky...see what I mean about contradictory?  I don't want to clean because there are so many more fun things to do with the kiddos but then I don't go outside with the kiddos as much as I should because there is just so much to do around the house.  Grrrr.

However I find that during quiet time I sit down at the computer to pinterest away at pinning: cleaning tips for cleaning I am not doing, workouts I am not doing, and recipes I am not making.  And before I know it my free time is gone and I have accomplished very little to feel satisfaction about.

Yes I know  I sound lazy because in these past few weeks I have been incredibly lazy!!!!

So today it hit me as I was playing with the kiddos outside and working out in the yard...

What would our yard look like if I took just 10 minutes every day to work out here?  Weeding, picking up sticks, and in general tidying up may not be so daunting if I did a little bit every day.

And in that I thought what if that and my cleaning (which I also felt convicted to do after applying my few minutes a day rule to cleaning roo) were my workout too?

To test it out I cleaned the  bathroom today.  And in doing that I am not talking my normal cleaning of I got out a clorox wipe and dabbed around a bit but that I did a hard core cleaning.  Scrubbing the walls, toothbrushing grout, I was all over the grossness of getting the grody out of the loo.  And in doing that I found myself panting, sweating and using muscles that haven't been used in July yet.

So that is my plan for the summer.  Cleaning up the inside and outside of this house to get myself cleaned up.  We'll see how this goes :)  I think it's going to be a messy job!

Happy 4th of July and Weekend!

Yesterday was the fourth of July and sadly we had no friends having cook outs or anything going on.  Poor Nick has been painting the house every day he's had off of work, the children have been slaving away around the house with school, and quite frankly we all just needed a break! 

So we headed out to Chicago which is only about an hour and a half from our house for the day.  We were very thrilled to just get out of the area for a little while.  Emma had a gift card to American Girl to spend which is conveniently located right next to the Lego store.  Our two favorite stores were checked off the list and then Mommy's fave store, H&M was visited as it is right across the street.  

After the shopping we went up to Lincoln Park to visit the zoo.  We had a picnic and then headed in.  

 Mr. Laid Back and Miss Sassy Pants.  Yep, those are our two kids.

 The children rode the Endangered Animals Carousel which they seemed thrilled with.  Emma had a big, glamorous bow that matched her dress but she didn't want to wear it.  I'm trying really hard to not let OCD get to me and just to let her be.   What a sweet girl she is!  She kept telling Nick thank you over and over for the day.  
 Here was Cal going around and then...

 Before long this whirled around.  Apparently as Cal reported to us, his name is Frank and he REALLY, REALLY wanted something on his head.  What a silly boy!

  I think our family favorite part of the day was seeing the Polar Bear.  Emma and I studied them last year and she remembered so much about them!  I was pretty impressed, actually!

 After grabbing some Garrett's popcorn we headed down to Chinatown for some shopping and strolling.  Cal found some ninja swords he just had to have and Emma got a stuffed animal.  What is up with girls and stuffed animals?  Anyone else's daughter just seem to not be able to get enough of them?

Calvin was very over sensitized by this point so as much as I wanted to stay and eat we headed home. Which was fine because he got progressively worse the closer we got to home.  So glad I didn't have to wrangle that in a sit down restaurant!

When we got home we let the dog out, had dinner, and then headed out for local fireworks.  It was a fast paced day and it was choked full of so much fun!  Hope your's was too, sweet friend!  And hopefully you're just having a super duper long weekend of celebrating!

Ag Days

With us living in the Midwest you'd think that I would be able to tell you all about my vast amounts of knowledge concerning farming and Agriculture.  

But...nothing could be farther from the truth.  Truth is I grew up  in what could probably be considered suburbia.  And while Nick grew up in a small town and did things like bale hay in high school, he doesn't know much more than I do.  

Thank goodness for Ag Days!  An event that our county's 4-H Organization puts on, it has a cute little hunt where you learn how to harvest foods, then you put a sample of them in your basket as you go along.  At the end if you have everything they treat you to milk and cookies.  I mean seriously, how cute is that?  

This year Daddy had to work while we went but we still had so much fun.  

 Here was an apple Cal picked from a tree for his basket...they had so much fun!

 There were a lot of vendor booths...Cal loved the fountain behind him.  I love that he's getting to the age where he will go and check things out.  He doesn't touch or mess with things, just quietly observes.  He is so amazing :)

 Here's our annual shot we take at Ag Days...say cheese!

 An extra special treat was running into Cal's very best friend in the world!  How cute are these boys together?  Watch out ladies :)

 They sheared a sheep while we were there...the kids were not impressed.  Neither was the sheep.

 We planted tomato plants.

 The kids learned how to milk a cow.

 Emma petting a cow.  How adorable is she?  She gets cuter by the day!

 Baby cow!  I believe the proper word is Calf but I like to just call them baby cows.

 Giddy up

 He liked lassoing.  Is lassoing the right word?  But seriously he almost took out my eye with this activity.  He was flailing the thing all over the place.  I guess that is how they do it on tv, right?

 Going for a ride :)

And their treat of milk and cookies at the end.  It was such a nice event.  Afterwards it was about lunch time and they had homemade chicken and noodles for $2 a bowl!  So we bought a couple of bowls and it was so, so yummy!  And we had so much leftover we had a huge heaping bowl amount that we took home for Nick to enjoy.  I'd consider lunch for 4 for $4.00 a pretty good deal, wouldn't you?   

Not to mention that the entire activity was free.  It was a lot of fun and very educational.  It was a lot of information all together that saved me the hassle of having to wrangle (ha!) together.  Plus what could be better than hands on learning?  

Ice Fishing

This past Sunday we went up to Nicholas' Grandmother's house to go Ice Fishing.  She lives on a lake which she assured us was frozen enough so off we went.  

Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house we go...

 There was no way in this whole wide world that I was going to go on the ice.  I stood on the pier with my mom parts all in a ball of worry as my children stood in the middle of a frozen lake with 40 degree temperatures warming the earth.

I was so, so scared the ice was going to crack and just envelope the whole fold of them.

EEEeEEEeeEEEk!

The picture above is Emma and a friend of Nick's Grandma's, Keith, who was taking them out.

 Nicholas and Calvin making their way.

 Calvin on the ice....allow me to interject an EEEEK!

Here they are doing the actually fishing. Nick had the camera.  So at this point my beautiful children, my hot hubby, and my uber expensive camera are all standing on ice in the middle of the lake.  Oh joy.

Here's a picture of Nick's mother and me standing on the dock.  At this point I think we were both yelling at them, trying to entice them inside with hot cocoa.  Heehee.

They are pretty cute ice fishing though :)

I mean, seriously, look at all that water!!!  Freaking out looking at these photos!  And they are safe in our living room right now, ha!

They finally came inside and I was okay.  I stopped hyperventilating a few hours minutes later and realized they had a lot of fun and got to experience something interesting!