Go, Go, Goers!

I started off the week with a fun trip to a HUGE craft show on Sunday afternoon with my mom. I have just a handful of Christmas gifts left to get, and we should be ready for the holidays! I really need to find someone who would happily wrap all of the gifts, and then I'd feel like we are set. We took a well-deserved break after walking through the entire craft show I did manage to order our Christmas cards and a custom gift today, so I feel like those are two more items off of the never-ending holiday checklist. Whew! Ava had a fun field trip this week with her science class...they went to a STEM based museum and she built a catapult! Ironically, she just finished building a catapult in her Tech Ed class, so we now have two mini-catapults at our house. Scott and Ava had a competition with them to see which one worked better...and the Tech Ed one won! G also had a fun week that included a play date at a friend's house on Thursday night. I was out with my friends at t...

What a surprise, another busy week! It feels like we really are on a countdown to the holidays as I've already booked tickets to see The Nutcracker with my parents and Ava, picked out a date to make Christmas treats, and have decided that we MUST decorate next weekend for Christmas, or we'll run out of time to do it. It's all happening so quickly. Yikes! G had a fun week at school. They celebrated the 50th day of school by dressing like they were in the '50's. They even enjoyed root beer floats! He also had a super fun playdate at his "brother's" house on Saturday. Ben, his little buddy from daycare, have been calling each other "brother" for years. It's pretty cute! He also had another request for a playdate this coming week. Even with his behavioral issues, I'm glad that he still has friends. He even told me this week that he has a girlfriend, and they they like each other. Ummm. And, unbeknownst to me, I met her (Julia) on Friday...

Last Sunday's birthday party was a success! I was a sweaty wreck by the end of it, but all of the kids had fun. We had 14 little friends show up to play at The Blast (space-themed indoor playground), eat pizza, cake, and ice cream. And then open the gifts as fast as possible. The two hours flew by, but I was in a constant state of high alert, just waiting for one of the kids to get injured (no one did) or feelings to get hurt (all good.) Thank goodness a few parents stayed, and my parents were on hand to also help wrangle the kids. It really does take a village. I'd say G enjoyed his 6th birthday party! The calm before the storm... He got so many Lego sets! We had conferences this past week, and just as suspected, Ava is doing incredibly well. It was a different experience having conferences at the middle school vs the elementary school. We met with her core teachers, as well as her band teacher/adviser, and reading teacher. Everyone had such kind words...

And the holiday season has officially kicked off! My parents hosted us for dinner last Sunday, and we had an early mini-birthday session celebration for G...he opened presents, and had a yummy cupcake and ice cream. Plus, we all enjoyed the wonderful meal and the time spent as family. Very special! On Tuesday we had a million places to be, but managed to squeeze in G's birthday dinner request (mac and cheese and hot dogs, of course) after Ava's baton session. Thank goodness he opens presents so quickly because we didn't have a lot of time to spare that night! We also managed to devour another (mini) cake and sing another round of the HBD tune.   Sugar is not in short supply this time of year as Halloween was just two days later. Ava was a beautiful angel who did NOT want to wear a coat over her costume (but it was below freezing outside, so...) so we had a bit of a scuffle about that. She ended up wearing 5 layers of clothing under ...

One of the new items on the spooky holiday bucket list is to hit up the MN Zoo pumpkin fest. There are 5,000+ pumpkins on display, and because the spectacular runs for a month, the pumpkins are switched out regularly. Last year the theme was all about the different decades. For 2019, the theme is "Around the World". It's hard to get tickets for a weekend show, so we ended up going on Wednesday night, and there were still a lot of people there. We learned last year that while there's a people-jam at the beginning of the display, the path is wide enough that we can skirt around the crowds and get ahead of them, so we aren't blocked by a ton of people. We all are much happier when we follow that plan! There are so many pumpkins there that I only captured the carvings that I really loved. France Germany Germany Greece Greece The Count Ariel  Minions Egypt Africa Zombie eating a brain b...

Another fall week has wrapped up and we're seven days closer to the holidays. I've noticed that as I've gotten older, my year seems to be broken into chunks, according to what's happening with school, the kids, the holidays, etc. For now, we're inching closer to the 2019 holiday kickoff, starting with G's 6th birthday next week!! But, that's a tale for a future post. :) This week we focused on the upcoming Halloween adventure. Both kids have confirmed their costumes will work, and we have the appropriate layers to wear if it's super cold outside. We have a slight change in plans from our usual Halloween escapades, as a key member of our trick-or-treating crew has moved out of the neighborhood...and I'm not quite sure what we're going to do, and where we're going to go. Gotta get that figured out soon! Last year we ran out of time to carve pumpkins, and for me, that's a key activity of the Halloween season. So, yesterday, we made sur...

One of the things on our fall bucket list that we do each year is a trip to an apple orchard. We've bounced around to a variety of different orchards, and a few years ago, we discovered one that is just right for us...not so packed full of activities that it's overwhelming, but not so simple as to only have a store and not even allow us to pick our own apples. The orchard we now visit is juuuuuust right! There's a little playground for G, a tractor/hayride to take us out to the apples, and even a small pumpkin patch to comb through. The little shop on site has plenty of treats and goodies, and it promotes a laid back atmosphere. Perfect for us! We picked a variety of different apples....Honeycrisp, Sweet Tango, and Honey Gold. We discovered the Sweet Tangos last, and man, I think we all wish we had found those first. They are SO good! When we got home from the orchard on Sunday afternoon, I used all of the Honey Gold apples to make a yummy apple crisp. I even had enou...