A Visit from Papa and Grammy

This past weekend we had a surprise visit from Grammy and Papa. Well, not completely a surprise, but they decided on Thursday that they would come for the weekend, so it was essentially a surprise--which made it that much more exciting. The kids were so excited and all day on friday, Sadie kept saying, "GrammyPapa" as if it was one word! We had a great time with them--as you can see by the expression on the kids' faces. (Unfortunately I only got the camera out on Saturday night when Grammy was playing the kids, so I missed quite a bit!)

All depends on your perspective

Would this be considered a good day or a bad day?


-play outside in pile of leaves while waiting for bus

-ride on the city bus into downtown(something Wyatt's been asking for ever since the Jeep died)

-see a sign while on the bus that says the buses won't be running from noon-1:30 because of the Veteran's Day parade

-too late to turn around, so get off the bus at planned stop

-begins sprinkling outside

-walk a few blocks to COSI (Columbus Science Museum)

-have a GREAT time playing with the kids

-look outside every 30 minutes to see it's still pouring

-get kids some lunch at COSI

-wait for rain to stop

-rain continues

-thank the nice gentleman at COSI who lent us his big umbrella (I still need to take it back to him) for our several-block-walk back to the bus stop

-venture out in the cold and rain

-get soaked despite having an umbrella

-leather sandals get ruined in rain

-kids don't notice the cold and rain as they are enamored by the parade

-Wyatt sees soldiers and says, "Mommy, those are the good guys that keep us safe" loud enough that they could hear

-National Guard humvee throws a soccer ball with American Flag on it to Wyatt

-volunteers give the kids flags to wave

-still walking in the pouring rain and cold, not sure what we are going to do when we arrive at our bus stop since the busses aren't running

-stop under an overhang and let the kids watch

-get emotional seeing all the men and women who have served our country

-see the appreciation in their eyes for the people who are there to honor them--including my kids who are waving their flags vigorously

-kids get some candy

-make it to the bus stop

-parade ends

-wait over an hour for our bus in downtown Columbus, soaking wet, cold, and tired

-talk to woman sitting next to us to discover we are at the wrong stop

-walk to stop she directs us to, but still not sure this is the right stop

-can't get a hold of my husband who is at the hospital only blocks away

-wait for our bus

-try husband for about the 5th time in the last 2 hours--goes straight to voicemail

-while on the phone with a friend to come pick us up, see our bus arrive

-quickly fold up the umbrella and stroller, pick Sadie up, tell Wyatt to hold his soccerball and run to catch the bus

-sit down and hope this really is our bus

-Sadie gets cranky

-Wyatt suggests we sing and belts out "Jesus Loves Me" for the entire bus to hear

-think we are on the correct bus

-see our stop coming, but forget to request our stop (since we didn't have to in the morning)

-request next stop only to get out and have to walk several blocks back to our house in the "still pouring" rain

-Wyatt cries the entire walk home from cold and exhaustion--it's now 3:30pm

-walk in the door, get everyone undressed and into clean, warm clothes

-say,"That was horrible!" only to have Wyatt say, "No it wasn't mom. That was fun!"

-get kids in bed for a late, quick nap

-change into dry clothes and finally get myself some lunch

-husband walks in the door having no idea what I've been through and says his phone has been working just fine all morning!



This was my day last friday and even as I write this, I still don't know if I'd say it was a good day or not. Parts of it were great and parts were horrible! But I did have the camera for some of it, so here is the picture version of our day!

Can you see how wet these poor kids were?

(Wyatt was holding the candy in his sweatshirt for fear he'd lose it!)

Monet in the making

Well, maybe not exactly. But Wyatt loves to color and we do it at least everyday if not several times a day. He's really great at staying within the lines for a 3 year old and really enjoys the 'precision' or coloring. We are still using both hands--so much easier than moving the paper, right?? He writes his letters mostly with his left hand, but I've noticed lately that he always writes my name "mom" with his right hand. I copied a friend's idea of scanning artwork--a great way to preserve it without it taking up any room in our small place!

The only thing I'm trying to figure out is how to get him to write in the correct direction. If you notice in this first pic, he wrote his name backwards (and missed the letter Y). When he writes with his left hand he writes from right to left and vice versa with the other hand. It's as if he doesn't want his hand to cover what he's written. Any teachers have any idea on how to remedy this one??

We've been working on learning the sounds of letters and what letter words begin with, so these pictures were done as we were learning what green starts with, pink, etc. He really loves coloring these because the spaces are small and very defined for coloring. I don't know if you can tell this from the picture, but he hasn't yet figured out that if there are two "Y"s next to each other, that both spaces will be colored yellow. He colors each space individually and is careful not to color outside the lines. I just sit and watch him thinking, "You could save so much time if you just colored all the yellow spaces together!" but of course that isn't the point and I try and remind myself to let him figure it out on his own. It is quite humorous, though.

Trick-or-Treating

Wyatt woke up on Halloween at 5am asking if it was time to go trick or treating yet--I knew it would be a long day. But the time finally arrived and he was so excited. Wyatt went as Brett Favre (of the Packers) for the 2nd year in a row and Sadie went as a WI cheerleader. I loved that Wyatt was still excited to be Brett Favre for another year and it was great because he was definitely the only Green Bay Brett Favre we saw!

I love this pic---Wyatt was so serious about taking his picture as a football player and Sadie was just watching him!

Sadie got a sucker at the first house we went to and was content to just follow us around and suck on it....she was such a mess but so happy.

The great thing about trick or treating at this age is that it doesn't take long and just a small amount of candy makes them so happy. We went to about 10 houses and were done. But the kids wanted to sit outside and eat some of their candy.

After trick or treating, we headed up to church where they had a HUGE party complete with games, candy, straw maze, and every blow-up play thing you could imagine. Wyatt was of course immediately drawn to the hockey shot game and got a goal on his first try!

Matt and the kids on the giant slide

At the end of the night, Wyatt had to dump out all the candy and inspect each piece.

It was a fun night but I am really thankful that Halloween is over. I was getting really sick of all the scary stuff we saw everywhere we went. I'm fine with the kids dressing up and getting candy, but we don't allow any 'scary' costumes or witches, devils, etc. It's just not edifying for anyone and Wyatt's not really at an age where he needs to hear about witches, death, tombstones, ghosts, demons, etc. They are all very real things that someday I will explain to him but not yet. The poor kid finally said, "Mom, let's not go by the scary houses" or "Let's not go down the scary aisle" at the store. If only everyone could keep this 'holiday' fun and upbeat! But thankfully it's over for another year.

Pumpkin Carving

I'm a bit behind with my posts since our laptop just died last week---yes, another in the long list of things in our life that are breaking--but more about that later. I took it in and found we had a hardrive failure so we need a new one. :( The good news is that I actually had everything from our laptop backed up on an external hard drive (I had asked for an external hard drive for Christmas last year and Matt made so much fun of me, but now I'm so glad I had it.)
Anyways, we aren't sure what we are going to do about the laptop, but in the meantime I have to use our desktop which is in the basement and is incredibly slow. I loved having the wireless laptop and being able to work on it anywhere and am slowly adjusting to having to sit patiently for this ancient thing to keep up. But it is teaching me patience!
Enough about the computer---on to our pumpkin carving!

We carved our pumpkins on Monday night because it was the only night all week that we would all be together as a family until friday on Halloween. I wasn't sure if they'd still look that great on Halloween, but it was more important to be able to do it together!

This was the first year Wyatt really enjoyed getting dirty and sticking his hands in the pumpkin.

Sadie sat in her chair and attempted to eat the pumpkin--YUCK!
He was so proud of his pumpkin and wanted to make sure it was a 'happy face'

This is what happens when you pick the biggest pumpkin you can find! You'll have to see the finished product in the Halloween post!