Visiting the Country Barn

The Saturday before Joshua's birthday (Saturday, September 13), we went to the Country Barn as a family. We had a free pass that Joshua earned from the library's summer reading program that was about to expire, and we also purchased a BOGO coupon, so we only needed to buy one ticket to go with Joshua's voucher for the whole family to get in. We had asked our babysitter to watch Ryan, but a half hour after she was supposed to show up, she still hadn't arrived and didn't answer her cell phone, so we ended up taking him along.

When we got there, the older boys road these tricycle-type things along a path while Ryan enjoyed the corn table.

 Then the kids and Daddy climbed the hay bails.

I had booked Joshua's 7th birthday party at the Country Barn, based on a review from Trip Advisor. We gave Joshua some options for his birthday, and he wanted to invite his school friends to a party so that's what we did this year. But I hadn't ever been there before, so I wanted to get a feel for what things were like before being responsible for a bunch of kids his age.

 The boys enjoyed being spiders on this net.

 Then they each took a turn riding the pony.

I was picturing this place being bigger from the sounds of their marketing, but there wasn't as much to do as I was expecting. It was still fun, though, and much better than trying to do a party at our house and keeping everyone entertained. There was a limit to the number of people we could invite, though, which made it a little bit tricky.

The older boys enjoyed the tractor ride. Ryan wanted nothing to do with it. In fact, he'd rather have been napping. But, unfortunately, our babysitter flaked out on us (she did tell us later that her mom had fallen and she went to check on her. But all it would have taken was a phone call to let us know that BEFORE we waited around for her. Sigh).

We paid $1 extra to have food to feed the animals. There wasn't much of a petting zoo, so we ended up bringing a lot of it home with us.

 Ryan and the other kids DID enjoy the straw tunnel and played there for a long time.

The kids enjoyed exploring the tractor (which you can see in the background of the picture below) and the swings.

Then we went to the pumpkin patch (for our own fun; we knew this was NOT something we were doing with our big party). The hayride was free, and you paid something like .45 per pound for the pumpkin you picked.

The guy warned us not to pick a pumpkin unless we were sure it was the one we wanted. The boys carefully explored and really wanted the perfect one. They'd point to one and we'd say "not that one" if it had a funny side or something. Shawn went to look at one and the stem snapped away. The guy said we didn't have to buy it, but Shawn felt like it was the right thing to do just to take it. We got THE most lopsided pumpkin ever, but we had to giggle. It was good enough, as we were basically just paying for the experience anyway.

I snapped a picture of the boys with their pumpkin on the wagon ride. Ryan cried on the way to the pumpkin patch until I told him how brave he was. He agreed, and another family fell in love with our little man for overcoming his fear. :) :) :)

After the wagon ride, we made the mistake of stopping in the sweet shop (where you have to pay for the pumpkins) and we also bought a pumpkin roll (YUM!). It had been a fun day, even though our poor little Schnook was exhausted. We were looking forward to Joshua's birthday party!

A Glow Stick Bath

 One of my friends posted this idea on Facebook, and I thought it looked like fun. The boys wholeheartedly agreed! Turning off the lights and playing with glow sticks in the bath tub was a blast! :)

Brothers :)

The other day I stopped to think about the sweetness of my kids' ages. I love to hear Joshua read to his brothers. I love to see Caleb help Ryan grab something he can't reach. I love to hear Ryan giggle at his older brothers. I love to hear the pitter patter of little feet and even the goofy conversations of their imagination as they play.

I love that Joshua still wants to hold Shawn's hand as they walk. I love that Ryan insists that only Mama put him to bed. I love that Caleb wants to snuggle at night with us after his brothers are already in bed.

I love the silly conversations at dinner. I love hearing the boys' favorite parts of their school day. I love even the arguing in the minivan and playing Wii

This is a special stage of picky eaters and favorite outfits and playing games. I don't want to miss even a second of it!

Thank You, God, for blessing our household with boys!

Fall Crafts

Okay, so once again I'm horribly behind on blogging. We're so busy doing the activities that I don't have time to write about them! But, I do want to keep this going for my kids' memory books if possible. So, here goes my attempt at catching up somewhat...

At church one week, Caleb's craft was his family. The helper in the room said he was so impressed that Caleb knew all his family member's names and how to spell them and that his abilities were way beyond the rest of his class. I just smiled - that's Caleb! The picture is really cute! Look at how big Daddy is (the boys look up to him so much!) and how big his arms are for hugs. I love all the names and places of us, too. So, so sweet!

I looked up some new craft ideas on Pinterest. I love this time of year! The first one we did was on Monday, September 9, with Caleb and Ryan while Joshua was in school. We traced our hands onto brown paper and cut them out.

Then we glued them onto another piece of construction paper and used various circles to make leaves. The one thing we used that worked well was water bottle caps, trying them both ways.

Here are the boys in action:

Caleb wrote his name on his when he was done.

I called mine "early fall" but Joshua said Caleb's was WAY better and looked more like a tree. Indeed...

Ryan had fun painting his as well!

When we were getting our craft together, it was driving me crazy trying to find all our supplies. I have some upstairs in my old kiddo desk, some are downstairs in the laundry room cabinets, some are in the dining room cabinet/drawer. I decided to use Ryan's old 31-diaper bag and put the items into the various pockets. It worked great! Now everything (except the paint) is in the same spot. Brushes, glue, pipe cleaners, construction paper, tissue paper, beads and more are all together!

Caleb added his craft pen, one of his birthday gifts from Cousin Jess and Don and their kids Ben and Jordyn.

I love organization! (But not quite as much as I love my kids...)

After our fun time at the Apple Festival, the kids asked if we could make apple heroes again. Our neighbor down the street has a beautiful apple tree. I love to watch it sprout blossoms on the spring and see them turn into tiny little apple buds in the summer and then full apples in the fall. It is a beautiful tree (although I'm glad not to have the clean up of it in our yard!). I sent her a message to see if she would mind if we would steal a few apples from her yard for our craft time since she said they aren't really eating apples or good for much. She said yes, so on our next walk, we picked just a few off the ground that weren't too rotten.

We used toothpicks and marshmallows and some other little fuzzy balls I had. Caleb ate as many marshmallows as he put on (which was a lot!). He even has some in his cheeks in the picture above.  And while Joshua wasn't home from school for our walk where we picked up the apples, we waited for him to make the apple creatures since he really wanted to participate.

Joshua called his "Bido" (from the Minion movie) and Caleb called his "Weirdo."

After our apple creatures, we did some apple stamping/painting - we cut them in halves and quarters to see the painting affect. The boys love to paint!

Here they are in action.

Here was the beginning of Caleb's stamping paper.

And one of the finished products:

Another fun craft we did in September was a scavenger hunt, where we tried to find anything on the ground that reminded us of fall. Joshua went along on our walk to find items that we collected in a bag. We pulled nothing off trees but looked for things on the ground.

Then the following day (unfortunately the Bean was in school), we made wreaths using foam plates (just happened to be what we had on hand) and the items we picked off the ground. We found a ton of the little acorns, some leaves that were starting to change color, some of those red cherry-looking things, and some mini pine cones. It was fun!

Ryan loves to be able to participate in craft time, too. Even though his projects aren't quite the same as his brothers, he is getting so big and loves to be a "helper."

Here was another finished product:

While I was out and about, I found cheap foam leaf stickers for a dollar at the dollar store. We did another hand print (this time tracing and coloring it in on a card) and put the stickers on our "tree." On this day, I was watching my nephew John as well and he also put some of the stickers on after I helped him trace his hand. We were in the middle of the project when Jen came to pick him up (she was on a field trip that day with Faith).

 I love Caleb's face below. That is SO him!

 And here's Ryan concentrating on adding the sticker to his card:

More crafts and stories to come!