Fire Station #41

We went to the fire station last week! And wouldn't you know that it just happened to be Fire Safety Awareness Week??? (Yeah we TOTALLY did that on purpose!.....no we didn't...just got super duper lucky.) Emily and I thought it would be great to take the kiddos to visit one of the local stations to learn a bit more on what they should do if there were a fire or flood (mostly we just wanted to ride in the fire trucks!)

As you can see by Kendyl's face (second cutie in from the left), the kids were a little bit on the nervous side at the beginning. The fire men were SUPER friendly, but they were BIG!

We talked about Stop, Drop and Roll and then we got to see one of them get all of their cool gear on! They talked about how important it was not to be afraid of a fireman and how they are just there to help you in an emergency.

Now for the fun stuff! They got to hear about all the cool gadgets on the trucks and go through two fire trucks and one ambulance! The kids thought they were pretty hot stuff as they were sitting up in the trucks :)

Of course the kids were sooo cute that they invited them in for some cookies before they left! Nothing like good ole' OREOS with bright orange filling right before you get in the car :)

The kids really had a fun and educational time at Fire Station #41 and of course now Sawyer wants to be a fireman for Halloween!

Vala's Pumpkin Patch

If you live in Nebraska and have kids, you know that a trip to Vala's Pumpkin Patch is a MUST! So, we have been taking Sawyer and the Day Care kids to Vala's for the past couple of years and it's so much fun every time! We went with my good friends, Emily, Camille and Laney who all brought their day care kids too! So we had a large bunch :)

And what better way to keep track of a whole motley crew of rambunctious kids than giving them matching outfits?!?! They were SOOOO cute! We got compliments on them all day long of just how adorable they looked :)

One of the kid's favorite stops is the petting zoo part (Emily and I always cringe a little bit-it's just a stinky germ fest....). We got little buckets of food pellets for the kids to feed to the goats, sheep, camels, lamas, and a huge bull! Sawyer and his friend Jack thought that using the contraption to get the food to the bull was like the best thing since soft toilet paper.

Hand sanitizer anyone?

The kids made their way through a corn maze, went into a slightly haunted house, climbed up the tree fort, watched the pumpkin cannon and best of all-went flying down the two story slide! They come flying out the bottom sooo fast!

Then it was on to the pig races! They have this little play that they do and they start out with the little tiny piglets and work their way up to the huge hogs. The kids know that the farmer asks for volunteers to cheer for the pigs as they race and they all wanted to be picked SO bad!

Sawyer stretched his hand up so high, it practically came out of it's socket!

And how could he not get picked?!?! Look at that face!!

After lunch we made our way over to the education barn where they had a lesson on the life of an apple. They learned about bees, pollination, how they keep the trees small for picking and all the different varieties of apples!

But much to our dismay, this was not a good year for the apple orchard....they didn't produce apples so instead of going out to the orchard to pick the apples like we normally do, the kids just got bags of pre-picked apples to take home. Little bit of a bummer, but what can you do?

The kids also got to go in and see this HUGE apple peeling and coring machine!

All in all, it was such a fun filled day! The kids loved it, we loved it and we were all exhausted!

It was a nice and quiet ride home.

Labor Day 2011

(Thank you Bill for this really flattering picture of all of us....wait till we are ready!)

We headed over to Standing Bear Lake to grill out and enjoy what was left of summer.

Burgers, brats, dog dogs and real dogs :)

Who needs to wash dishes when you have a Great Dane to lick it off for you?!?

We wanted to get a good picture of Phoebi and her pal Beau......John and Ashton were determined to make that happen!.....this was the best we got.

Happy Labor Day 2011 Everyone!

4th Annual Mid Summer Night's Thanksgivng

For the past four years Bill and I have hosted an event called The Mid Summer Night's Thanksgiving Dinner. The idea was born when we discussed how sad it was that we only yummy Thanksgiving/Christmas food once a year! So why not have a huge fest in the heat of summer and gorge ourselves on all the fixins?

Bill and I always provide the turkey and the ham and everyone else pitches in with the sides. We had mashed potatoes and gravy,corn, green bean casserole, sweet potato souffle, homemade dinner rolls, cranberry sauce, salads and pies.....oh the pies......they were so good.

Phoebi enjoyed her ham bone out in the backyard!

We still love having the new deck and all the entertaining space it provides!

By the end of the evening, the kiddos were pooped so we popped them down to watch 101 Dalmatians (the old school cartoon one....the new one with real people weirds me out....)

Who am I kidding? We were all pooped! So we snuggled up for a movie too! As always, it was great to have the house full of friends and yummy food :)

'I Swimmed Really Good!'

A while back, Kathy had mentioned to me that maybe we should put Sawyer into a swimming class to get him a little more comfortable in the water. We looked into it and found this wonderful swim school called 'Swimtastic' right near Nana & Papa's house! And wouldn't you know, that the only evening that they had available for his age group is Tuesday? And Tuesday is one of the days that Sawyer spends with Nana & Papa since Bill and I have Bible Study that evening? Doesn't that just work out nicely?!? (Can you hear me chuckling in the background?) So, Nana's bright idea landed her with taking him to swimming class every week :)

He just LOVES it! He can't wait for Tuesday to come so he can go see Mr. Alex, his teacher. The water is a nice 90 degrees (apparently the optimal temperature for little bodies to learn to swim naturally.) There are only four kids in his class and he has learned SO much already!

They are learning the back float, how to kick their legs and paddle with their arms and will hopefully be able to swim across the pool by themselves by the end of the course!

And Sawyer's favorite part is at the end of class when they each get a turn to slide down the big purple slide :)

Camping With Nana & Papa

Up till a couple of weeks ago Sawyer had never been camping! I know! We are terrible parents! But thankfully we have wonderful grandparents to remedy situations just like this! So off they went on a crisp Friday afternoon to 'rough it out in the wild'.

(Sawyer apparently took this picture all by himself!)

Obviously I wans't there, so I don't know of all the fun little stories and captions that go along with these pictures that Papa Steve sent over....but we did hear about grilling hot dogs, making s'mores, night hikes, playing flash light hide-and-go-seek, Sawyer loosing his flash light, finding a snake skin and how Papa found a really little frog!

He had SUCH a great time! Bill and I are so blessed that Sawyer has grandparents on both sides that are so loving and really make an effort of creating memories and investments in his life!

When Did THAT Happen?

Something happened.

I'm not quite sure when it did and I always knew that it would, but now that it has, I'm sad. I think every mom can agree with me that it is a sobering moment when you realize that you have somehow gone from 'Mommy' to 'Mom'. Mommy made me feel needed. Mommy reminded me of sippy cups and chubby fingers......Mom means that we are moving on towards homework and school dances. I won't ever be 'Mommy' to Sawyer anymore. Mom it is~and that's great too*