Pumpkins, Tractors and Apples Oh My!

This past weekend Greg and I decided to take the girls to get some pumpkins to decorate the outside of our house. Because after all- Halloween is right around the corner! Instead of getting the standard pumpkin at the grocery store, we opted to travel to an actual pumpkin patch just north of our house. There are plenty of pumpkin patches to choose from in Indianapolis and they all offer a different set of activities, but we went with the standard farm setting. Stuckey Farms in Westfield is an actual working orchard and farm, and they let you pick your own apples and pumpkins. So we headed North to start our adventure.

When we got there the place was packed but we found our way to the orchard and I gave each girl a bag to collect their apples. We had to remind both Morgan and Elizabeth not to pick the apples up off the ground- even after reminding them several times, I think we still brought home some apples from the ground.

Morgan was pretty excited about picking the apples. And wanted to pick nearly every apple she saw.

Elizabeth didn't mind picking the apples either. She did have a hard time keeping up with us from time to time.

But once she caught up she didn't mind taking a moment to smile for the camera!

Elizabeth was not a fan of the leaves and stems on the apples. She would pick one off the tree and then have to stand there are take each leave and stem off before it could go in her bag. The process took awhile.

Morgan seemed to only want to pick the smallest apples on the tree. I tried to tell her to pick the big ones, but we now have a bag full of small apples. I guess they are the perfect size for Morgan and Elizabeth!

After awhile Morgan and Elizabeth's bags got too heavy, so Mommy and Daddy had to haul them around.

Elizabeth found plenty of apples at just her height!

But some of them were just out of reach. Mommy helped get some down for her though!

Then when Mommy and Daddy weren't helping the two of them worked together to get the apples they wanted!

The perfect apple picking team!

After picking apples we decided to take a tractor ride out to the pumpkin patch. This seemed much more festive then picking an already picked pumpkin, and Morgan was dying to ride the tractor.

So we waited for a few minutes for the tractor to come back around. I'm not sure Elizabeth liked waiting very much.

But by the time we got on the tractor, Morgan was so excited. She loved every minute of it. Elizabeth on the other hand did not. She held onto me with a death grip and screamed the entire time.

But once we made it off the tractor she was happy to walk around the pumpkin patch. Both girls checked out the pumpkins and Morgan finally chose one. It is kind of lopsided, but she thought it was perfect. So we loaded it up and took it back with us!

Our trip to the pumpkin patch was pretty nice. We got plenty of apples, a big pumpkin, candy and apple cider! Once we brought the apples home I made a home made apple cobbler and everyone loved it! Now we just have to wait and carve our pumpkin in the next couple of days!

What was I thinking!

Every now and then there are just certain moments where you wonder- what the heck was I thinking. Last week I had one of those moments.

On Monday I got a phone call from the pediatric dentist's office reminding me that I scheduled the girls for an appointment. Luckily they called because I had forgotten. Now when I made the appointment 6 months ago I figured Greg would be able to come with me to help because not only would Morgan be getting her teeth cleaned, but Elizabeth needed to enter the world of dental hygiene. But after I hung up the phone I remembered that Greg was busy with meetings at work and wouldn't be able to come with me.

Now looking back I should have called and rescheduled the appointment. But did I do that? NO! I thought to myself- this will be okay. Morgan did okay the last time and Elizabeth might cry a little but it will be okay.

So Tuesday morning I loaded them in the car and took off to the dentist. I waited to tell Morgan about the appointment until we were well on our way- and the minute the sentence "We are going to the dentist." came out of my mouth, she started crying. In between crying all she would say is "I don't want to go to the dentist!" And that's pretty much how it went until we got back to the exam area.

When the hygienist asked Morgan if she wanted to go first, Morgan quickly offered up her sister instead. So our appointment started with me holding Elizabeth down. I didn't bring my camera to the appointment but it looked something like this:

Then is was Morgan's turn. And it pretty much looked the same! It was a stressful time for everyone. But they have great teeth and now have new toothbrushes. And in an effort to get them to calm down: I treated them to Dunkin Donuts on the way to school.

Pre-K...an update.

I thought it time to do a Junior Kindergarten update! Morgan has been hard at work since the end of August and each week she comes home learning more and more! It's been fun to watch. Plus a few weeks ago Greg and I had to go to our first parent teacher conference. The whole meeting took less then ten minutes, but it was really interesting to see what the teacher had to say. Earlier in the school year they did standard testing on the entire class to see how each child was learning, and where their strengths and weaknesses are. Now I'm not talking I-Step testing here, but it was a diverse enough test to see what they knew. The teacher went over the test and showed us Morgan's answers and she is testing right where she should be! They did the normal items: Colors, shapes, letters and numbers, and then the teacher had a list of questions that each child had to answer. Some of the more memorable ones for Morgan's test are below:

Test: "What growls?"
Morgan's answer: "Your stomach"

Test: "What explodes?"
Morgan's answer: "A baby"

Each week the class learns a new letter, and not only do they learn the letter, they learn how it sounds, how to write it and what things start with the letter. So far they are through "I, i". For every letter we get numerous coloring sheets. This one dealt with D. (Again the color comes out funny- apparently the blog and my work scanner do not cooperate well together.)

She is getting much better at her coloring! She uses all sorts of colors and likes to make things look like a rainbow.

Several weeks ago Morgan brought home the paper that said that her school would be taking class pictures. We were asked to write a check and essentially cross our fingers! I didn't hold out much hope, since sometimes getting Morgan to sit still for a picture is near impossible. But last week while I was home with the flu Greg brought home Morgan's pictures from school and it made my day! The pictures were great.

Both Greg and I look at the framed version we have at home and say "Man, she's old!" She looks so grown up. And special thanks to the photographer for doing a once over on her infamous hair. In addition to her own picture, Morgan got a picture of all the kids in her class. Looks like I better start a file, because she already has a class picture and she's only in Junior Kindergarten!

And the last exciting thing to share with everyone is that Morgan can officially write her own name. They've been working on it since the beginning of school and now every day her papers are signed with her own name.

She still has a little work to do to perfect it, but hey- she's only 4 and I think it's pretty awesome!

Daddy's Helper Monkey

Last weekend after we got home from Monkey Joe's I unloaded the girls and they ran to see what dad was up to in the workshop (a.k.a the garage). Without skipping a beat Elizabeth saw the pile of sawdust on the floor and ran to the wall of tools and picked up the broom and dust pan. She then proceeded to sweep up the sawdust as best she could. It looks like Greg might have a helper on his hands!

Monkeying Around

This weekend it was somewhat rainy and cooler and I knew the playground would be muddy but I wanted to find something for us to do so the girls and I didn't go insane. So I was thinking about what in the world we could do that wouldn't be incredibly expensive, or take a huge amount of time or cause me great frustration (believe me some places miss the mark on all three things!). So as I was thinking I remembered that Morgan was invited to a birthday party at Bounce U for next weekend. I also remembered how much she loved the Bounce Zone we went to a few months ago. As I was trying to get info on these places and see what the hours were I came across Monkey Joe's. I had heard about this place before and decided to try it out for a few reasons 1. You can stay there as long as you want. There aren't any time limits like some places and 2. They had open gym times. Most places are booked on the weekends for parties. So I told Morgan that after Elizabeth's nap we would go.

Greg ended up staying home to do some work in the shop so I headed out with both girls after nap time. Once we got there, signed the waivers and put our socks on- we were off! Luckily Monkey Joe's has a Mini Monkey Zone for kids under three. Elizabeth started there while her sister took off.

I forgot to mention that you get a band on your arm when you come in with a specific set of numbers. The adult band matches the kids band so in theory no one can snatch your kids because they wouldn't have the same numbers. Elizabeth did not like her safety wrist band.

Plus there are "referees" monitoring all the bounce equipment so it makes the parents job a little less stressful when you are there. There is actually a whole lounge area near the snack bar with free Wi-Fi. Many parents were just there hanging out with their laptops while their kids burned off energy!

So Lizzy and I were hanging out in the Mini Monkey Zone. And it took her awhile to get her bounce legs down.

But it wasn't long before she was doing it all by herself!

After a little bouncing with Elizabeth, I went to find Morgan to see how she was doing. This is pretty much how I found her. I think her hair bounced just as much as she did!

After Elizabeth and I found Morgan, she decided to show us all the big slides. Now here is what makes Monkey Joe's incredibly awesome- they don't care if adults get on the equipment as long as you are helping out your kids. So what did that mean- Mommy and Lizzy went down the big slides too! Personally I think I made Elizabeth go down the slides a few extra times just because it was so fun. I couldn't get a picture of us going down, so one of Morgan will have to do.

Once Morgan and Elizabeth figured out they could play together they were somewhat inseparable. They bounced in the big houses together and Morgan even played in the Mini Monkey area.

At one point I found Elizabeth climbing in one of the big houses on these big inflated cubes. She was trying so hard to get across......

But it's a good thing they let adults in because I turned around and then when I turned back around she was stuck. While I was taking the picture she was yelling "Mommy....I stuck!"

After a lot of bouncing we worked up an appetite so we stopped by the snack bar to have a pretzel and a lemonade. After the pretzel Morgan pretty much crashed and was ready to go home. We had a great time and I know we will be back soon!

Mommy's Workcation

Two weeks ago I had to make a trip to Chicago for the ASLA (American Society of Landscape Architects) Annual Meeting. Since I am currently the Indiana Chapter President I had to be in Chicago on Wednesday night and stayed through Sunday morning so I could squeeze in all the classes I could. By chance- this was the same week that Greg had to be in the Chicago area for work. So I stayed with the girls Monday and Tuesday and my parents came up Tuesday night to watch them until Greg got back. Everyone made it out alive thankfully! I thought I would share some pics from my trip!

While most of my time was spent inside the Chicago Hilton- I made a point of getting out and walking the 6 blocks down to Millennium Park. It was the only thing I wanted to see while I was in Chicago- primarily because I am a landscape architect and the place is awesome! Lots of plazas, steps, walkways, art and plants. So I made my way down to the park, picked up some lunch along the way and had lunch in the park. While I was there I walked through the gardens. There was a woman there pruning the shrubs and someone started talking to her. She said that there was a huge push to get the plants looking nice because of the landscape architects in town. Well thanks Chicago for making it look extra pretty!

This is a few in one of the gardens along the wooden boardwalk.

More of the boardwalk and small water canal.

The Gehry amphitheater. So incredibly cool!

Another cool picturs of the amphitheater. There was a small concert going on that day at lunch and the sound was pretty impressive for an outdoor venue.

The bean! Technically it's name is "Cloud Gate" but everyone calls it the bean. It is basically a giant mirror, but the amazing thing is there are no seams on it which makes is look like it is one giant piece of sculpted mirror. Very cool.

Everyone loves the bean. While I was taking pictures of the bean, my camera died. So since there were more cool things to see I decided to "borrow" some pictures form the internet.

Right as I walked into the park there was a fountain. On either side of the fountain are these two piers that show faces. The faces change throughout the day, and at certain times the faces spit water which becomes part of the fountain. There were so many kids and adults playing in the fountain when I was there. It looked so fun! Maybe next summer we will make it up there with the girls for a weekend trip and they can play in Millenium Park.

License and Registration Please.....

Not too long ago there was a poster in Morgan's cubby at school promoting a free event sponsored by the Carmel Library. I took notice of the words "free" and figured hey- what else do I have to do on Saturday. So finally Saturday rolled around and it was a nice day and I told Greg I thought it would be fun. So we packed up and off we went. The event was called "All Things Rodeo" and the flyer said that there would be all kids of big trucks and cars that the kids could get up close and personal with. So it sounded fun- besides who wouldn't want to climb on a fire truck. So we got there and the parking lot of Carmel Elementary School was full of all sorts of big vehicles.

They had a tent where you could pick up your bingo card to keep track of all the trucks you stopped at, and if you got nine spaces checked off you won a prize. Let me take a moment to thank the Friends of Carmel Library for realizing this game was a great idea in theory. You saved the sanity of many a parent by letting kids get away with checking off one box. So thank you for the prizes even though I turned in one incomplete bingo card!

The girls were able to sit in a police car. As Morgan climbed into the back, both Greg and I told her- Morgan I hope this is the only time you are in the back of a cop car! Elizabeth chose to check out the front, so maybe she is working towards a career in law enforcement.

They had all sorts of tractors, a front loader and a lawn mower. I didn't get a picture, but Morgan was pretty excited to ride the lawn mower. I think Greg now has visions of getting out of cutting the grass.

I think the best one was the school bus. Now for a little back story: for those that don't know the Carmel schools bus stop for our neighborhood is right out in front of our house. So everyday the buses come and go. Well this year Morgan has finally taken notice in the giant yellow buses. Since school has started Morgan asks nearly every day if she can ride the school bus. We try and explain that next year (and for the next 12 years) she will ride the bus, but that she has to wait. So when we saw the giant yellow bus in the parking lot of Carmel Elementary School I figured we could live Morgan's dream- to ride the school bus.

Morgan patiently waited her turn to climb on board the bus.

Once she climbed on the first stop was to drive the bus. And every bus driver has to honk their horn! I'm not kidding every 30-45 seconds that horn was going off because every kid that sat there had to honk the horn.

Even Elizabeth drove the bus.

Then we took a seat so Morgan could pretend she was riding the bus to school.

All in all the day was pretty fun. All together the girls were able to check out a fire truck (both a new one and a historic one), a police car, a dump truck, a street cleaner, an ambulance, a front loader, a tractor, a lawn mower, and a school bus.
Later that afternoon we went home and enjoyed our free prizes (again thank you Carmel Library!). Morgan picked a bouncy ball and Elizabeth picked her favorite thing- bubbles. In an attempt to capture the wonderful day I tried to get the girls to pose for a picture- this was the result.

Not too bad. On a side note: this was the first day that Elizabeth wanted to wear a specific outfit. Normally she is fine with whatever I pick out, but today she had to wear this pick lady bug dress. Nothing else would suffice. Then when Morgan saw Elizabeth in her dress, she had to wear hers. Thanks Mimi for the wonderful dresses!

The rest of the day was spent being silly and posing for the camera. This is Elizabeth at her finest.