Happy Halloween

Halloween was such a beautiful day.  We could not ask for better weather.  Every year it seems like it’s either cold, cold and windy, or cold and wet.  This year it was fairly warm (70’s), sunny, just a gorgeous evening to walk around and go house to house, watching the girls enjoy what Halloween has to offer.  We went to Riverton to trick-or-treat with Papa and Grandma N.  The girls had a great time in Riverton, but quickly got tired.  They hadn’t had a nap, so it was understandable.  After that we went to family homes around us.  We got home and the girls were quite anxious to unload their candy and see what they got.  I have this tradition that I have them dump out all the bags (3 big bags this year + more) and I take a picture of them doing so.  THEN I torture them by making them watch me go carefully through the candy to make sure it is safe before I let them eat it.  LOL.   Oh wow, it was a great Halloween this year.  The weather made it that much better, but the best thing is Megan was old enough to walk around and not make us carry her.

Art

Today is the first day Kylie has art class since we found out she was crying in it.  I talked to her a little bit about it last night and Ryan may have too.  This morning I gave her another pep talk about it while brushing her hair and hopefully I gave her enough courage to go to art class happily, have confidence in what she’s doing, and come back home and tell me how much she enjoyed it.  I’m crossing my fingers.

You don’t know how much it pains me to see her sad about something like this.  She loves art, she has a passion for art and I want that to continue in her life.  I don’t want something like school, something I may have a little bit of control of, but not as much as I’d like, shy her away from art.  It drives me mad that I don’t have more control over things.  I can’t protect her, or her sister, when they are at school.  That makes me sad.  I am their mother, the one that went through 9 months of growing them and LONG hours of labor to bring them into this world.  I am supposed to be able to protect them at all times and some days I feel like I fail at that.  I know I do when I can’t protect them from myself, when I have a bad day and take that out on them.  sigh.  Parenting is so hard.  You only get one chance, you know?  One chance to shape them into happy adults.  I just don’t want to screw that up.

Random Notes

• Ryan and I went to the girls parent teacher conferences on Friday.  Megan is doing incredibly well.  She’s starting to interact with other kids, not throwing many tantrums, and just overall responding well to Pre-K.  This is great news to us!  We were skeptical on how well she’d do and her therapist said it would be the best thing for her.  Arina (her therapist) was right!  It’s amazing how much happier she is and the tantrums are less than before.  She’s still stubborn, but happier.  LOL.   Kylie is doing exceptionally well, too.  She’s exceeding Kindergarten expectations and just doing well in school.  We knew she would do well.  She is having problems in regards to Art class.  The teacher said for the past three weeks she’s crying about Art and just not happy about it.  Come to find out after talking with Kylie that she thinks the Art teacher is mean to her and gets mad at her often.  We’ll have to keep up on this situation and see if we can try to resolve it.  I hate to think of her being unhappy about something she LOVES to do.
• We went to the Haunted House over the weekend.  They had a special kids day where they had the lights on and no monsters there.  The girls were scared to go in, but once they understood the monsters were home sleeping they were a bit more at ease.
• We went to a family weenie roast Saturday, as well.  It was so cold and windy that night.  The girls hadn’t had a nap that day so we didn’t get to stay as long as we had wanted to.  The roast made me think of the roasts I went to as a kid at my grandpa’s.  Lots of kids, fun and food.  I miss those days.  I wish our girls could have seen that kind of roast.  They have some kids to play with at our family one, but nothing like when I was little.
• The girls went over to MoMo and PoPo Tafts Sunday afternoon to help them in the garden.  They seemed to have a lot of fun.

Football game and the pumpkin patch

This past Friday night Kylie was dancing at the half time of our local highschool football game.  It was so rainy and cold, but well worth the wait to see her dance.  It was so cute and I know she had a lot of fun with her friends!  It’s weird thinking that our school has a football team.  They didn’t have one when we were there.  The school district is changing so much.

On Saturday we went to the pumpkin patch.  We thought about going to a new one, but Kylie wanted to go to the same one we went to last year – The Robinson family farm.  We loved it last year and did again this year.  They have so much to do – haunted room, face paintings, hay maze, pony rides, pumpkin sling shot, hay rides and the corn bin.  I personally like the corn bin, lol.  It’s fun getting in there and playing around with the girls.   The only thing we did not get to do that we enjoyed last year was picking out our own pumpkins from the patch.  Why, you may ask?  Because this was a very wet year and a lot of farms didn’t even have a pumpkin crop.  The Robinson family farm did with a lot of dedication, but the weeds and thorns took over the patch making it hard for customers to go out and pick their own.  So this year they picked them and put them in a place for us to choose our own.  It was still fun, but not the same as last year.  Hopefully next year there will be a better crop and less rain so we can go back to that tradition.  I have lots of pictures, but not up on our website just yet.  I should have them on in a day or so.  Check back if you are interested!

Later that evening we went to Russ and Wendy’s block party.  It was fun, but I think we were all a little tired and the girls were fussy from a long day so we didn’t stay as long as we had anticipated.

Baseball has ended

Last night was Kylie’s last coach-pitch baseball game for the fall season.  She did so good.  I was so proud of her and I know Ryan was, too.  I think she ended up having a lot of fun playing, despite the fact that in the beginning she seemed to hate it and wasn’t good at it.  She improved fast and is pretty good for her age at hitting and catching the ball.   I was suprised, though, that the coach did not do a bit more for the kids at the end of the season.  He game them a certificate and a $5 Kicks card.  While we appreciate that, we really thought Kylie would get a trophy (blushing).  So Ryan and I decided we’d get one made for her.  Hee hee.

Hopefully she gets back into it in the spring.  What’s next?  Gymnastics!

Our first Fall event

Our first fall “event” was this past Saturday.  We have made plans to do several activities this month to celebrate fall and Halloween.  Our first event was a trip to the Apple Barn.  The first year we went there we picked out pumpkins.  Then last year we decided that we’d like to go to a real pumpkin patch to do that.  So the Apple Barn event is just to go get a smoothie, a carmel apple, take some pictures of the kids against the beautiful scenery they have around there, etc.  Saturday was a warm day.  It was around 80 degrees and those lovely buffalo gnats were biting like crazy.  Despite the heat and bugs, we had a great time.  The girls got their faces painted – we walked away with a beautiful butterfly and dragon, lol.  The girls looked so cute.  Kylie got the butterfly painted on her face and Megan got the pretty pink and blue dragon on hers.  LOL.   Then they got to visit a funny clown who made them a balloon rose and a balloon butterfly.  Ryan and I shared a very yummy banana-strawberry smoothie.  Megan had some kind of keisch pastry (???), and Kylie had a carmel apple and a piece of chocolate fudge.   We also picked out smaller pumpkins which the girls painted when they got home.

It was a wonderful day, a wonderful first fall event for us this year. You can see pictures of our day on our website under the October photo section.

Next is the Robinson family pumpkin patch!  I can’t wait.

The greatest advertisement

for schools is kids.  Isn’t it?  I mean, come on.  You have to admit it.  lol.  The girls brought home papers last week telling us that the school was having a fundraiser at Chuck E. Cheese this week and the school gets 15% of what you spend there.  Yeah, ok.  Ryan and I had agreed we wouldn’t go there because it would be way too busy and Kylie also had a game that night (last night).  Well, wouldn’t you know it – yep – it was raining yesterday so Kylie’s game was canceled.  I think the last three weeks worth of games have been canceled.  SIGH.  The girls came home from school yesterday with Chuck E. Cheese stickers on them and they were beaming with excitement about going – especially after the school had Chuck E. Cheese himself come visit all the kids at school and oh yeah, can’t forget how the teachers reminded them to tell their parents.  So what did we do last night?  Yep, you guessed it.  We braved Chuck E. Cheese.  LOL.  It actually wasn’t as bad as we expected it to be.  I think a lot of people went earlier, like right after school.  We made it out of there at a decent time and of course we didn’t make it out of there without spending $35+.  So the school got even more money out of us.

Funny how that is.  How the school keeps bleeding us like turnips.  We already pay a very large amount of money in property taxes which goes to the school.  Then there is scholastic book club every month, lunch money daily, breakfast money when Kylie decides she’d rather eat breakfast at school, cost of donating food for particular events (that they make the kids feel bad when they don’t participate – yes, you know they do!), PTC fundraisers, school spirit shirts, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.  I could go on forever.  I don’t even want to think of how much I give to the school each year besides my taxes.  UGH!  The sad thing is I thought things would be better once we weren’t paying as much in daycare.  Nope, folks.  Daycare is CHEAPER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  lol.

We did have a good evening last night, though.  So I guess I should thank the school for that one