This Week

I'm so excited that fall is officially here!  

Alison asked to buy some pomegranate and searched youtube for easy ways to seed them.  She is now the pomegranate expert and is ready to teach anyone interested how to do it.

 

See the oranges in this picture?  Colin ate 3 a day until they were gone!

We had open house at Alison's school this week and I found out she's in an inclusion class (i.e. there are kids with special needs in her class).  I'm glad she gets this experience, but would have appreciated a heads up a couple of weeks ago so I could be talking with her about it.  So far, the only difference I can tell is that her teacher lets them eat a snack at the end of the day while some of the other students get some extra help on work.  The blessing is that she comes home much happier and not completely starving.

Eli had soccer practice and is learning that soccer is the one place it's okay to take the ball from someone without using polite words.  This week I learned that our kids listen to what I say to others far more than I ever think.  After practice, Eli said, "Mom!  I ran 10 miles tonight!"

Ben and I both ran another 10.5 miles on our own.  That night we were talking about our individual runs and pulled up our running apps to discover that we finished at the exact same time...down to the second!  Guess it's meant to be :)

Ben is taking a class Thursday evenings and after 10.5 miles, I did not feel like cooking.  Thank you Broken Egg for feeding kids for free!  We got there right when they opened for dinner and had the place to ourselves.

 And since the kids ate free and did so amazing at the restaurant, we just had to get a giant piece of cake.

My desperation for new jeans became apparent this weekend.  Eli convinced me he had taken a nap during quiet time and asked if he could join me on the great jean search.

 He lied.  2 minutes into our car ride, he was out.  

To top it off, I took Alison to the skating rink for a birthday party only to find I had the wrong date...so she had to join us.

Good thing Auntie Anne's always cheers us up!

I forgot how long it's been since we've been to a mall!

This morning, Eli looked so cute for church and I asked if I could take his picture.

Suddenly he became Spider Man.

I guess yesterdays pretzel made him grow, because he looks so much bigger today.

Alison had another birthday party this afternoon at the park.  We thought it would be fun to take the boys to play for awhile.

Ben took the soccer ball to play with the boys (Alison's practicing cartwheels).

Which was fun for about 2 seconds until Colin snatched and said "My ball!!!".  Terrible twos are fun.

Ben grilled dinner, the kids rode bikes and the smiles started to reappear.

"Are you coming Sissy?"

We went for a bike ride as a family after dinner and I still can't believe that Alison is riding on her own now.  She's getting better by the day and tonight she picked up some speed.

Alison's 1st blog entry:

(picture and typing all done by her)

 

Me Alison made this and am going to make it for Thanksgiving and I call it banana cream split.