This is Why I Love Colorado...

 

It's That Time of Year Again...

Pumpkin patch time! I don't know what it is about pumpkin patches... but I LOVE them! I think that I just love all the colors of fall and the crisp autumn air, so naturally the pumpkin patch would be the place to find those things.

I take the kids to a couple different patches each year. Not necessarily to pick pumpkins, but just to enjoy the activities and to be outside. Here is the first go 'round...

Conference Wall...

So... I'm chalking this up as one of my all-time best ideas, rarely do my ideas work this well. And I share it, not to boast, but to give everyone another idea on how to make General Conference that much more enjoyable for your family. I'm always looking for ideas like that.

I'm always trying to come up with new ways to help my kids enjoy Conference, and make it so that Rob and I can enjoy Conference as well. I always have a few new crafts and projects for them to work on while we listen. And I always print off the Primary conference packets for them to do. But I wanted something to help them actually listen to the talks, that was also fun. And so evolved the our Conference Wall...

 

We taped papers up on the wall with topics that would probably come up often during conference. And then during each talk, if the kids heard one of the words, they could put a sticker on that sheet AND they got one Skittle to eat. I COULD NOT BELIEVE how well they listened. Stickers were going up right and left! I had a whole bunch of stickers for them to choose from, they really loved deciding which stickers to put up. And the sweet reward was also a great incentive. At the end of conference we did an inventory to see which topics we heard the most, and there was one topic that far supassed the rest...

Which made for an awesome FHE lesson the next night. Hope this gives you all one more idea to make Conference great for your family:)

First of Fall...

The first leaves that fell in our yard this year did not go unnoticed. Every kid on our street was out with their rakes and they had a collective pile from all the houses on our street, in about 10 minutes. It wasn't a very big pile, but a pile none-the-less. And what kid can resist jumping into a pile of leaves?

 

 

 

Happy Fall!! :)

Your Guess Is as Good as Mine...?

 

Polski...

A couple of months ago, I met a girl at the park. We started chatting, and I found out that she was from Poland (the accent was a hint:), and very homesick for her country and family. We started getting together to let our kids play, and it's just been so fun getting to know her, and learning about her culture and language (Polski is "Polish" in the Polish language). A couple weeks ago, we took a trip out to an orchard and went on a hayride with our kids. It was such a fun time.
Sophie and Kristian...

 

On the hayride...

 

Sophie and I with Kristian and Marta...

 

First Day of School...

I love back-to-school season. I'm always sad to send my kids back to the grindstone, but it's so nice to resume a regular schedule again. Not to mention that Sophie still takes a nap in the afternoon and so I have about 2 hours of uninterrupted work/play/relaxing/whatever time. Here are the three yahoos on their first day this year...

 

 

Man, I have cute kids:)

Day Camping...

This is my kind of camping these days. The kind where you don't have to set up a tent, try to sleep in it with 3 small kids, and then clean it all up again in the morning. No, my kind of camping includes everything besides those things. The fun, the food, the outdoors... minus the tent.

We went daycamping with some of our friends this summer and it was so fun! Here are the highlights...












We got up early, spent a fun-filled day in the mountains and then packed up (which was cake without a tent) and headed home. It was the perfect plan, and it worked out to be a perfect day...

Hopscotch and Smoothies...

I think that I am the only person in America that did not learn to play Hopscotch as a kid. Well, I wasn't going to let my children have the same fate, so learning how to play Hopscotch was on our "summer fun list". I found the rules in an old-fashioned game book, we got some chalk and went at it...


I had no idea that so much throwing was involved, I just thought that it was all hopping. Oh no, you must first land your marker in a specific box before the hopping begins. It is a LONG game when you have four players with no aiming skills! We also chose a super hot day to do it, next time, we'll play when it's a bit cooler. But it was definitely fun and I'm glad that we tried it...


Since we were hot anyway, it was a good excuse to try out a couple new smoothie recipes...

Lots of helpers = lots of messes. But it's all part of the fun, right? I'm pretty sure that this was right before the whole thing exploded everywhere...

Yum!! Healthy and delicious...

Bikes...

This really was the summer of biking. Ana learned how to ride her's without training wheels, Hayden became an off-roader, and our family took it's first long bike ride, 11 miles round-trip (can I get a Woohoo?!!). We rode part of the Platte River Trail, from the Cherry Creek area to Confluence Park and back again. It was so fun! Especially because I was only pulling 1 kid!

 

We brought a picnic dinner and ate at the park...

 

Sophie thought the whole thing was wonderful. The only complaining I heard from the trailer was that she was hungry about 5 minutes into the ride. I turned around a few minutes later and she had snatched a huge sandwich with lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers from the cooler and was chowing down (she never eats raw veggies, so she must have been hungry). It was pretty funny to see her eating that big sandwich...

 

First bike trip... Success!!

Beating the Heat...

My kids are sneaky little buggers. I'll think that they are playing nicely out in the backyard, and so I try to get something done in the house, and the next thing that I know, they have dragged all the pillows and blankets off of everyone's beds and they are laying on them OUTSIDE!

So I saw this idea for outdoor pillows in a magazine awhile ago and instantly knew that this was the solution to my problem. They were super easy and cheap to make (made out of a vinyl picnic tablecloth and a $3 pillow from wal-mart), and now I don't have to spend the rest of the day washing bedding just so that we can get into our beds at night...

The only downside to outdoor lounging in the middle of the summer is the darn heat. So we remedied that with our swing-set tent...

There was even enough room under there that you could still use the swings. I have to admit, this was one of our families all-time-best forts...


I hope that my kids remember these kind of days, spent in the shade, in our own backyard. Just lounging, reading, playing and laughing. I sure will.

Future Enviromentalist?

 

If you can't read what that says, I'll translate: "I wish you were alive". We found this little message written to the baseboard going up our staircase. At first when I saw it I thought that Hayden may have written it to one of his many "pets" (bugs, frogs, lizards, snakes) that have passed away. But after asking him, nope, it was to the wood. He wished that it was still part of a living tree. What a funny kid!!

Summertime Messes...

What do you do when mom is on the phone and Sophie wakes up from her nap early? Throw every blanket and pillow that you can find in her crib, and dive on in...

 

Little stinkers. It was all great fun until it was time to clean up the mess...