madelyn report card

we are pretty proud of our little student. love.

harvest parties

the candy fun just won't stop! today the boys had their parties at preschool. yesterday mason helped me make all of the snacks for his party (in an highly unusual turn of events, maddux and manning took naps and it was just the two of us). mason had chosen 'acorns' and 'owls' for his class party snacks. maddux chose yellow and orange "decorated" napkins for his party.

the boys had a really great time at their harvest parties (the school does not celebrate halloween in any way)! there are games, snacks and treats. they look forward to it every year. love.

the boys' treat bags. maddux on the left, mason on the right. i really loved their pumpkins!

this poor kid...

maddux took a rare nap today. i have been asking him to nap for about a week now. he just looks tired and has been quick to cry. so he napped for a few hours with his head prompted up so high that his chin was on his chest. he looked incredibly uncomfortable but he was sleeping so i let him be.

matt had a work event that was keeping him from getting home for dinner so i moved some errands around and planned to go to a fundraiser at chick-fil-a with the kids. maddux woke up shortly after madelyn got home and was a little out of sorts after sleeping so long. but he was the best listener about getting ready to go. he was the first one ready to get into the car but was complaining about his neck. as i was responding, "of course your neck hurts, you were sleeping with your chin on your chest!" i saw his neck! he had a huge bulge on the left side and a smaller one on the right side!

i told the kids not to get in the car and called the pediatrician's office. for once someone got sick before 5pm. but the office closes at 4pm. sigh. why can't i remember that?! so i called matt to see what he wanted me to do. i was really concerned about how large his glands had swollen in so short an amount of time. (and, no, it is not the same side where he had that tooth pulled after his face swelled up last time.)

matt had me send him a few pictures. he called me back after showing them to a doctor at work to let me know there was a precription called in for me to pick up for him. one of the perks!

maddux was really miserable and crying. so there was no way i was going to get to the store - even if we were out of peanut butter. but we did still go pick up cfa for dinner on our way to get the antibiotics.

he has been pretty congested for a while and i have been feeling like he wasn't well so i think it was a sinus infection. he felt SO much better after a dose of medicine and some dinner. he was even running around before bedtime.

so now we know, maddux goes with crazy swelling when anything happens in his head. love.

trick-or-treat

it was in the 70s today - and sunny! nothing like any other halloween we have spent in ohio. our neighborhood chose to trick-or-treat at night instead of during the day with the rest of the city. we had a potluck dinner at the clubhouse first and then went home to get ready to go out. we have such a great neighborhood. the turn out was awesome, the food delicious and the company so good we almost didn't have enough time to get home and into costumes! 

madelyn was a hula dancer, mason was a golden ninja from ninjago, maddux was a pirate and manning was jake. they were all super excited!

matt takes the kids out and i stay home to hand out candy. he said that manning was thrilled to be trick-or-treating. so thrilled that he walked the whole time and refused to wear a jacket (even though the temperatures were dropping quickly!). there were quite a few pairs of icy hands when i was handing out the candy.

i think that this might have been the first halloween where none of the kids cried! they were in great spirits, it was almost a shame to put them to bed. happy halloween! love.

procrastinate much?

i am a self-professed procrastinator. but even i usually carve pumpkins before halloween! on the way home from church today it occurred to me that neighborhood trick-or-treating was tonight and we had not even purchased pumpkins large enough to carve. matt had a golf tournament so it was just the kids and me. we talked it through during our ride and they decided that painting our pumpkin patch pumpkins was better than buying one to carve.

it was cold but sunny so after lunch we went out to paint some pumpkins!

maddux hanging his bird feeder he made at the event last night.

since they didn't light up, we lined the front walk with them.

madelyn painted ariel on hers and a jack-o-lantern face on manning's (he was sleeping). mason made a black ninja and maddux just came up with is own design.

some very happy kiddos!

trick-or-treaters, we are ready for you! love.

double booked

today we were double-booked for the first time. not that we haven't had two (or ten) things scheduled at the same time, but this was the first time where two kids with activities that required parents and the other two were not invited. madelyn had a birthday party at chuck e. cheese and mason had a birthday party at a friend's house. thankfully, we knew the family hosting mason's party fairly well (the mom used to be a nurse at matt's hospital) and were able to ask if we could drop him off.  

the monkeys watching me wrap the birthday presents before the parties.  i just thought it was funny that they were sitting in a straight line.

so matt dropped off mason at his party, met madelyn and me at a community halloween event with the other two and then went to run some errands with them while madelyn and i headed over to chuck e. cheese.  

littles making bird feeders at the community event.

this is one of the challenges of not living near family. i know that we have friends and neighbors who would have been more than happy to help us out but i hate to ask if we can make it work (honestly, we would do the same thing if we did have family living nearby). this was just the first time we ran into it. love.

guess which day madelyn hit the top of the behavior chart

don't mess with my candy

our grocery store offers trick-or-treating inside the store each year and usually the whole shopping center participates. i needed a few things from the store so i called matt to see if he would be willing to walk around with the kids and trick-or-treat while i did the shopping. it worked out perfectly! we were even finished at the same time.

we let the kids eat the cookies they had decorated in the bakery when we got home but when manning finished his, he started right in on his candy. i had already told him that he couldn't have it and when daddy told him no and reached for his pumpkin, manning got all teary-eyed. it was so pitifully cute. he didn't want anyone - especially dad - touching his candy. love.

my 10-day fast

for the past 10-days, i have had nothing but water, tea and 1/2 a fruit and veggie smoothie every other day as i have been fasting and praying for wyatt. yes. me. i ate no food for 10 days! me, who can't go for 30 minutes past lunch time without whining and complaining. seriously, God could not have shown me more clearly how much stronger he is in me than i am on my own!

i have recently been convicted to fast once a week for prayer over my family. i chose tuesdays because that is the day when we have the least commitments. i spent my first tuesday fasting and on wednesday, my brother brad posted a request to have all of wyatt's prayer warriors to join him in fasting for the 10 days between ford's and wyatt's birthdays.

10 days. of course i had a million reasons why it wasn't a good idea. what if i got dizzy while with the kids? would i be safe to drive a car? what would my fast look like? could i go with only water? would i give up? but i just kept thinking that this is what my brother wants. this is one of the only things i can do to help them. and they have endured WAY more than the inconvenience of being hungry for 10 days. i can do this.

but what i quickly learned was that "i" wasn't doing this, God was. over the 10 days, i made my family 3 meals and 2 snacks everyday (some of them were my favorite meals due to some poor meal planning on my part when i wasn't paying attention to when the fast would be starting) and i never tasted a thing. not only did i not eat anything, but i wasn't really hungry! i did have some smoothie every other day or so to help with my dizziness in the morning. i would have been fine if i could have moved slower, but that isn't really an option when you have active kids! my stomach only growled twice and it was on the last two days. i think day 9 was the hardest one for me. but it was in my mind giving in and not my body although i was getting a little weaker by the last few days - like matt didn't let me drive any more (although i really was fine).

it was a very emotional 10-days for me but what a blessing to be focused on prayer. God sustained me. i seriously did not think that it was even possible. it flew by too! i am committed to weekly fasting. oddly, by denying myself food for 10-days, i have been freed from my dependance on food. i spend a lot of my time, planning, purchasing and preparing food - it just goes with being at home all day and responsible for feeding my family. but i was always thinking of the next meal (what will it be? when will be eat? when will i start? in what order will i do each part?). i think that fasting each week will keep me focused on my priorities and less distracted by the day-to-day (meals, cleaning, etc.).

if you have never fasted, try it. skip lunch one day each week. you might be really surprised by what it does for you mentally. love.

trunk-or-treat #1

i overheard at the ymca that there was a trunk-or-treat at one of the churches we had considered attending and when i saw that it was on a day where we had nothing else planned, we decided to check it out - and give the costumes a trial run. mason is the "golden ninja" from lego ninjago (the only costume i made), madelyn is a make-shift snow white after we ran into trouble coming up with all of the pieces for her intended costume and maddux went as a pirate in a borrowed jack sparrow costume (manning was jake).

it was drizzly and cold but the event was really nice. there was a hay bale maze, a small trunk-or-treat, decorating mini-pumpkins craft, fire pit s'mores, a costume contest, carnival food for sale and some other activities that we never got around to checking out (manning had a nuclear melt-down at the s'mores station and we made our exit).

waiting in line for the trunk-or-treat

taking a craft pumpkin to-go

one of the better decorated trunks - they had lights running through the balloon 'water.'

this was another nice event that we will watch for next year. love.

pumpkin patch

the kids had the day off for school so one of my friends arranged for a group of us to meet up and get a group rate at a local pumpkin patch. it just happened that we have gone to this patch every year that we have lived in ohio. the kids look forward to it every year (and so do i). i think that there may have been 20 or so of us in total. matt had planned on taking the day off from work but then had an early morning meeting come up that he couldn't miss. but then he surprised us all by joining us for fun and lunch before heading back to work! it was a grey day, but the forecasted rain stayed away and it was comfortable to be outside - with jackets.

a maze that was trickier than it looked.

the staff has parents in the group each do one part of the face painting - assembly line style - and the results are pretty impressive! (maddux had a bat on his nose too.)

i think all of the kids could have spent the entire day in the corn bin and have been totally content.

bunnies!

this time i even sprang for the train ride. it was funny to see the trail of parents following the train around the property to make sure that their child didn't stand up.

it took a while to find an animal that was still hungry enough to eat from manning's bowl. he was thrilled to feed the "moo."

this was a requested picture

fall is so much fun! love.