turkey cookies

It's been so long since I posted an update, I'm not even sure where to start! I had to go back through my pictures to see what we've been doing for the last month...crazy! I'll do my best to get caught up over the next few days.

The kids didn't have school Thanksgiving week, so I thought it might be fun to do a little baking project to pass the time. I'd seen the recipe for these cute turkey cookies online a few weeks before and thought they would get a kick out of decorating them. I made the first one to look just like the picture on the recipe, and gave the kids all of the pieces to do the same. Olivia worked really hard to make hers look just like mom's, but Jackson used his creative genius to create something a little more like...well...a cookie with candy corn stuck to it. The Type A part of my personality had a really hard time allowing either of them to stray from the pattern, but after gently reminding myself that they're only 3, and that the fun part is making the cookies and the mess, I let them go to town!

kinky

One day last week, Olivia came home from school talking about her friend Morgan's "kinky" hair. Now, I've seen Morgan, and her hair has about as much "kink" as a ruler, so I wasn't really sure what she was talking about. But she continued obsessing about how she wanted kinky hair. Today I finally decided to see what I could do with a bottle of water, a few hair elastics, and my rusty braiding technique. Here's what we came up with...

...good thing tonight was bath night! Do you think she knows her mom had that hair about 20 years ago?

(She LOVED it, by the way, so I have a feeling I'll be doing it again!)

what a blast!

We had a blast at The Blast!

Last week, the kids and I met Nikki and Jaci at The Blast in Eagan for a long overdue playdate (for both the moms and the kids!). For those of you who aren't familiar with The Blast, it's a space-themed indoor play area with slides, tubes, and tunnels that provide tons of entertainment in addition to completely wiping the kids out. It's totally enclosed, and on a weekday afternoon, completely EMPTY. It was like we had rented it for a private party for 3 kids and 2 moms! Olivia is really good at maneuvering, manipulating and mastering the equipment, and Jackson is getting there. I did have to climb up to rescue him once or twice, and Nikki was gracious enough to do the same. Thanks for a fun afternoon, Nik & Jaci- we can't wait to do it again soon!

halloween

Choosing Halloween costumes for your young children is kind of a high pressure responsibility. You may think that sounds silly, but last year I chose a monkey for Jackson and a ladybug for Olivia. They were adorable, but Olivia had numerous meltdowns in the days before Halloween because SHE wanted to be the monkey. Well, I couldn't very well put Jackson in the ladybug costume, so I went back to Old Navy to exchange the ladybug for another monkey. Bummer...no more monkeys. She wore the ladybug, and she ended up being OK with it, but she still preferred the monkey costume. I vowed to buy two of the same costumes for them this year (and every year going forward, until they could be trusted to choose their own).

Then I saw a cow costume at a garage sale this summer. It was cute, cheap, and in perfect condition, so I bought it. My plan was to find a second cow costume for child #2. The one from the garage sale seemed to fit Jackson better, so it was his. Once that decision was made, Olivia insisted on being a pig. I don't know why, but there was no way she was going to be anything else (so much for my "everybody's going to be a cow" plan). Maybe she was stuck on the farm animal theme...maybe she likes pink...or maybe, as my sister Cole suggested, she thought of her favorite books about Olivia the pig (Ian Falconer), and wouldn't dream of being anything else. No matter what, once she's made up her mind, good luck changing it (wonder where that comes from?). Anyway, I had to bite the bullet and order a pig costume online (why couldn't Target just stock it so I could pick it up instead of having UPS deliver it to me?). And $36.57 later, we had a pig costume, and she was absolutely thrilled! We'll see what happens next year...Olivia has already announced that she is going to be a princess, and Jackson has every intention of being Thomas the Train. Halloween costumes are a racket, let me tell you.

For the 3rd year in a row, we spent Halloween with Jamie, Wendy, Josh and Julia. We were lucky enough to have Nik and Rod, and Connor and Jaci join us this year, too! We got together early to have pizza (and drinks, of course!), and then went out trick-or-treating as a group. It was such a beautiful night- no need for winter coats or mittens this year! We pulled the wagon along for Jackson, so that he could make it for the whole trip- he's still building up to marathon distances (but is well on his way!). Olivia took off with the big kids, and Jackson stayed with mom and dad so that he wouldn't get run over...kids on a candy mission don't often stop for a wee one who topples easily (not even his sister). They had so much fun running from house to house, squealing at the scary decorations and checking their candy buckets to see what they got.

When we got back to the house, there was the fully anticipated feeding frenzy- Jackson and Olivia tried Milk Duds for the first time, which was really funny. I think it took each of them about 10 minutes to get one down. The kids played for awhile, and when the sugar crash started, we put the girls to bed in Julia's room, and the boys in Josh's room...a segregated sleepover of sorts. Jackson was out within minutes, but the girls giggled and talked for quite awhile. Once they were all down, the adults busted out the Wii. We bowled, boxed, and played tennis. Nikki was the boxing champ, but I'd like a rematch once I can move my arms again! It was a great time, and we're so lucky to have such good friends to create memories with!

harvest party at preschool

Jackson and Olivia have been attending preschool 2 days a week since school started in September. They both absolutely love it! They've got fantastic teachers, and they've really enjoyed getting to know the other kids in their class. When I pick them up, it's like a contest to see who's first to tell me about what they did and who their new best friend is (as it changes daily!). Since I stay home with them, they haven't had a ton of exposure to structured activities- we did some ECFE classes last year, and we do lots of playdates with friends, but this is their first true school experience without me by their side. I'm so proud of how well they've adapted!


Last Thursday was their Harvest Party, and I volunteered to help out with the festivities. It was so much fun to see them in their school environment. They got to put their costumes on at the beginning of the party, and we went trick-or-treating to a few rooms in the school. Jackson was more than happy to walk with his dear old mom, but Olivia preferred to hang with her teacher, Miss Mary. Perhaps that's a sign of a future "brown noser"...she is my daughter, after all, and I was a teacher's pet from my first day of preschool on! (Maybe I shouldn't admit that?!?) Anyway, after trick-or treating, the kids got to listen to a story, sing some songs, and make a few different Halloween related art projects. They were definitely the cutest cow and pig I've ever seen, and they had such a fun time...as did their mom!

the leaves are good for something

The kids and I hit the backyard last week to have some fun in the leaves- had I known it would be so entertaining, I would have done it as soon as they started falling! As I mentioned in my last post, we don't actually have any trees of our own in the backyard. But we do live at the bottom of a little hill, so we seem to collect plenty of leaves from the high ground...and we stole a few more from our neighbors Jim and Sandy to make some good piles to jump in, fall in, lay in, cover ourselves with... and track in the house! These are just a few photos from our fun leaf (or "weaf", as Jackson puts it) adventure!

neighbors, please retrieve your leaves

For a yard with no trees, we sure have a lot of leaves. Go figure.

Thank you, North Wind.

fall fun

The McFamily had a full weekend...here's just a sampling of the things we did.

Saturday was our Fabulous Fun Fall Cleanup Day- well, maybe it wasn't fabulous, and it really wasn't all that fun, but it is fall and we did clean up, so I guess that's half right. We set out early to clean the garage and get all of the summer gear stored before the snow flies (which incidentally was Sunday...good timing!). We managed to accumulate a lot of stuff since last spring, so it took Steve and I some creative rearranging to get things put away, all with the little mess makers underfoot. Projects seem to take twice as long when you've got that kind of help!

Sunday morning we brought the very cold pumpkins in off the front step and turned them into Jack-o-Lanterns. As you can probably tell from the pictures, O wasn't all that interested in digging the "guts" out, but J was more than happy to get in up to his armpits. The Pair-o-Jacks are currently sitting in the kitchen window so that they can stay warm, even though both kids seem to be a bit frightened of them!

We also made some Halloween cupcakes on Sunday...nothing like a little orange frosting to put a smile on your face!

pickin' apples

Last weekend, we took advantage of a beautiful day and took the kids to a local apple orchard. When we got there, there were signs posted explaining that the orchard had been the victim of a hail storm, but that there were still lots of good apples to be picked- some of them just had "dents". I wasn't really sure what to expect...I know what hail can do to a car, but hadn't ever thought about what would happen to a juicy piece of fruit during a good old fashioned hail storm. Now I know.

Now maybe this is normal for mid-October, and maybe it's the result of the hail storm, but there were TONS of apples on the ground, and most of the apples still clinging to the branches had gaping holes in them. After 15 minutes of telling the kids to leave the rotten apples on the ground, and searching for good apples still on the trees, we had 4- yes, F-O-U-R apples in our basket. There were lots of other families experiencing the same dilemma- lots of kids, not so many good apples. But we eventually found a tree that had been overlooked by the masses and spared from the storm, and we wound up with about 10 pounds of tasty Honeycrisp apples to take home.

As part of the orchard experience, we also went for a hayride, and the kids had a blast playing in/on a huge pile of hay and wandering through the mini-maze. We all had a great time, and the kids are looking forward to inviting Grandpa and Grandma to join us next year!

goodbye cribs- it's been a good 3 years!

After nearly 39 months of relative confinement, J & O have finally made the transition to big beds...err...BED. We've been putting it off due to what I like to call "floorplan issues" in our house, but finally found a solution that seems to work, at least for now. For those who haven't been to our house, we've got a split entry with 2 bedrooms on the upper level, and 2 bedrooms on the lower level. The master bedroom is upstairs, so naturally we put the kids in the other room on the same level- an arrangement that served us well, since we do most of our living on the upper floor.

Now, Little Miss O has been vaulting out of her crib for well over a year now- I think we've got a future gymnast on our hands- and about the time she started, I dug out the instructions for the cribs to figure out how to convert them to toddler beds. Imagine my surprise to find that they are not 3 in 1 cribs, rather 2 in 1, and they will only convert to full size beds. CRAP. There's no way 2 full size beds were going to fit in that room, and I just couldn't move my precious little ones to the lower level to fend for themselves. Buying single beds to get them through a year or two until they could move into their own rooms seemed like a colossal waste of money. So in the cribs they stayed, O climbing in and out like she was stepping over a crack in the sidewalk, and J yelling for help when he was ready to get in our out.

Until last Friday.

Steve and I disassembled the cribs, and swapped them for a queen size bed from one of the spare rooms. Our solution was/is to have them sleep together...after all, they weigh a whopping 54 lbs combined, and a queen size bed provides PLENTY of space for them. Plus, they're twins. They like to be close, right? And it's not a lifetime commitment- they'll move downstairs in a year or so when they're ready.

Friday night was pretty rough, but we expected that it would be. Bedtime normally takes, ummm...2 minutes, and it took about an hour for them to settle down and go to sleep. Saturday night was a breeze, but I was out with some friends, so Daddy got to enjoy that victory. Sunday night was a NIGHTMARE. Perhaps it seemed worse because the adults in the house were trying to watch the Red Sox/Rays game (bummer, Sox), but it was like the kids had injected pure sugar straight into their veins. They were wild. J actually laughed at me when I told him he was being naughty and that I was getting mad. Nothing like that to send mom into orbit. But they eventually settled down and went to sleep, and they've been doing great ever since. I check on them before I go to bed every night, and I usually have to spin J around so that he's got his head on the pillow instead of his feet, but he'll get it figured out. And in the meantime, he's got O as a "bumper" to keep him from falling out all together. Kinda like being in the womb again?!?

everybody's doin' It...

...so why not join them! I've been following the blogs of several of my friends for awhile now, and I've found it entertaining...and a little bit addicting, I must admit! So what the heck- I've decided that it's my turn to take a stab at it. We've got friends and family in nearly every corner of the country, so if nothing else, this will be a way for everyone to keep up on what's going on in our neck of the woods. So without further adieu, here we go!