Kaytence being girly or as Jack would say: Grilly

I have tried a few times now to tie Kayte's hair in "rags" at night in order to have some curl the next day - very old fashioned I know, but there's no risk of burning her, and I tried it on myself when we lived in Ethiopia with great success. So far, for Kayte, the ones that stay in work well, but I always seem to have one fall out and then it's uneven and looks funny. She sure is cute when it's all tied up though. I'll let you know if I'm ever successful :)My Great Aunt Mim wore hats often and recently I was given several of them.

Here Kayte is showing off one of them.

The others you will see on top of the doll house -

since I have yet to find the best place to keep them.

This is Kayte's new doll house and I am very proud of it. Bubba made it for her when he was here last month, but I was in charge of painting it which is why it's picture is just now getting published. Needless to say, she loves it! (Thanks Dad!!!)

The above picture is before she got her "accessories" and the one below is her showing off her dolls and their things...for some reason her favorite thing is the toilet, and she likes to have the dolls sit on it. Yet she won't use a real one, I know that day is coming though, and I will be done with diapers for good - oh the things we look forward to as parents.

Last week

Last week was an eventful week. David had a business trip to Israel, so I was home with the kids. The problem was that I had been sick with a sore throat before he left, and once he was gone my voice decided to go too. Being a Mom without a voice isn't easy.

During the week we had our final football game - I was happy, the boys were not. Probably because playing is a whole lot more fun than sitting on the sidelines trying to keep track of Jack and Kayte.
TJ also got his cast off. He played every football game with that cast on, and continued with his piano and violin lessons - amazing if you ask me.

At our new house we have a large pile of dirt that has been keeping the boys busy whenever David and I have things to do over there. They are building a fort. This is the view from inside it.
Here is the shot showing the steps they made to go up. And here is a shot to give you perspective on where it is near the hous, and how big the pile is.
They have been warned that the pile will not always be there, someday we'll need that dirt to fill in around the house.

Mak's Lego Marble Run

Mak spent a lot of time creating, and to give you a glimpse into who he is you have to listen to his explanation. I promise that "thereby" is not a word I use when I talk to him! Even though you can't see as much as I wish you could, I think you grasp the complexity of it by how detailed his description is. You will also have to excuse Kayte's screaming in the background.

Also take note of his face when it actually works!

pumpkin carving

When my family was here we carved the pumpkins that we had gotten at Apple Hill.

Bubba was the main carver, and he tried to do what each boy asked for.
Mak wanted to do his own, and was quite private about it.

Chatham had fun cleaning them out.

When Bubba asked Jack what kind of pumpkin he wanted, he said "a grumpy one". So here we are with his grumpy pumkin. Mak's turned out

really cool as a skeleton pumpkin, and Jack's grumpy pumkin actually made him happy. So we have a Happy Jack and a grumpy Jack-o-lantern.

My Little Girl is Two Now

Lolly the Trolley tour of Cleveland

We took a trolley tour through Cleveland the other day. It was something that the Great Grandma's could handle, and it was also an opportunity to mix "fun" with learning.

We learned a lot of interesting things about Cleveland. Did you know:

• Rockefeller developed a consistent buring oil (kerosene) which he called the "Standard" - and by the way, the bi product of it is gasoline, which they had no use for so they threw it away.


• Paul Newman got his start here.


• So did Chef Boy-ar-dee


• Cleveland was the first outdoor electrically lit city.


• We have one of the few free Art Museums left, and it has Marie Antoinette's bed in it.


• Cleveland is where the traffic light was invented


• It has one of the last working swing bridges


• Mail delivery was started here.


• Bob Hope's father built one of our bridges.


• Moses Cleveland, who whom the city was named, only lived in the "city" 90 days.


• There are several churches that were used in the underground railroad, one with a literal underground tunnel (pictured).


• The city had a bell that was rung to warn people to hide their runaway slaves.


• I wrote all these so that I don't forget :)
  
  
  
  
  

When the tour started we were told there would be one stop, but not told where. Would you believe it was a greenhouse?

Kayte's learning

While my grandmothers were sitting down playing a game, Kayte pushed a chair up behind G.G. (which stands for Great Grandma), stood up on the chair and began giving her a backrub. She's learning from her big brothers.

apples and pumpkins

Yesterday we went to Apple Hill, an apple orchard just down the road from us. The kids love the hay maze and pumpkin patch. And this year we walked out into the orchard and picked a random assortment of apples, enjoying them along the way.

They have some bunnies, donkeys, goats and little piggies - which Kayte loved.

Jack is 4 now

Sunday was Jack's birthday. After church we went to Macaroni Grill and one of the waitresses sang to him, in Italian, in opera style. I only got the last part of it on video but his facial expression were hysterical!!!
He has learned to show how many fingers he is! Ane then he just played with that delicious cake!

The spoiled boy also got to go for ice cream that night because our local favorite, Dairy Twist, had it's final night of the season. We closed the place out! The group picture was taken in the dark.

Baseball!!!

On Friday night we had our 2nd annual company baseball game. There were three bus loads plus plenty of independent drivers that went from Express Seed Company and Green Circle Growers. The kids thought the bus was extremely cool! When we got there we all gathered to eat, and a nice lady gave me the small pennant flags you see sticking out of the kid's hats. They thought those were cool too! (Bet you couldn't have guessed that!)

To our kids any time spent with their cousins is something to get excited about, but Friday they were at a place that they were allowed to scream as loud as they wanted.

I don't know how much of the game they actually watched (except T.J.) They were too busy being frustrated that no one else was doing the wave with them.

Our seats were right next to the bullpen, which they loved leaning over and looking into.

The 7th inning proved interesting when a huge brawl broke out on the field, we sat in the stands trying to figure out what was going one, while I'm sure everyone at home had full commentary on it all, either on T.V. or radio. For us we just had displays on the board telling us there would be fireworks after the game.

We entered the 8th inning three runs down, but someone (forgive me, I don't know who...) hit a three run homerun. The ball bounced about 4 rows ahead of us and landed in the bullpen. The men down there were kind enough to throw it up, and guess who caught it!!! That's right, good ole lefty with the bright red cast!!! It made his night! (not to mention they handed out bobble heads at the entrance - that Mom got to carry around all night).

Kayte had a great time, but didn't make it all the way through the game. She did wake up in time for the fireworks though.

why it's been so long since the last post.

First, let me start by saying that all of this is written with a smile on my face. No complaining just explaining.


Here is Kayte with her Daddy. If you look close you can see the fading bruise on her cheek. I honestly don't remember where it came from, only that it came AFTER she fell out of a cart at a garden store on Labor Day. She's a tough one!


Our school had a mix up this year and our supplies have been late, but coming in slowly. The main thing missing was the print outs. So I set out the night before school to print things out...I had no idea it would take two hours and all my ink. Poor TJ couldn't read half his papers!

The next week we managed to remember to buy ink, but wouldn't you know it, we ran out of paper.


Then during school, TJ says "Mom I can't find the mouse". After coming over to his computer I realized that the screen had frozen. Once we had restarted it about a dozen times we accepted the fact that something was wrong, so we turned it in, determined to have a good attitude and press on with school despite our many obstacles.

Sometime during these past few weeks we've been to the orthodontist twice. Once because TJ lost a screw from his appliance, and a second time to learn that Chatham is going to get an appliance!

Saturday we had our back to school picnic, after raining for two days it actually stopped long enough for TJ to go out and play football....and break his arm.

Sunday we went to church and Chatham fell asleep during the sermon (which isn't anything really new) but then he fell asleep in the foyer, and also at the restaurant where we went because Aunt Carebare and Jessica had come for a surprise visit. He and Mak fell asleep at the table and didn't touch a bit of food. By the time we got home all three of the big boys were raging with fever and sore throats.

Monday I decided to prepare for this weeks school (we may get to it before the week is done). I finally printed everything out for this week, and guess what! The door bell rang with the delivery of all our printed material.


So life has been busy for us, each day an adventure!

Today is a sit back and wish there was something better on T.V. day!!!!












And then there is Jack who it seems is never content. But as you can see his last big adventure is not too noticeable, anymore.

Labor day pool "olympics"

Uncle CJ had the boys compete today by doing things like freestyle race, relay race etc. The final competition was on the diving board. First was the pencil smallest splash round, then came the cannon ball largest splash round. The final one was about creativity. They had pratice rounds where they did flips and funny things, but when the real thing came this is what Chatham did and no on expected it! He won.

Below the concept was for the kids to stand on the raft and see if the big boys could make them fall off just by jumping near them.

The next one is the same concept only Uncle Scott threw TJ for a loop. It was TJ on the raft and uncle Scott was supposed to do the jumping.

TJ calls this one his "gymnastic flip"

Mak loves to do flips.