Gage's Halloween party

Parents were not invited to the 3rd grade party...but we were invited to the 1st grade party!  Here is Mrs. Nau, Gage's teacher...

Here is the whole class..except Gage's buddy Matty. Apparently his parents decided he should stay home because he's allergic to peanuts and they worried there would be beanie candies at the party.

This is gage getting ready to play who's the ghost - one kids went out into her hallway, and gage curled up on the floor and Mrs Nau covered him with a sheet. When she came back in she had to guess who was the ghost.  It too her firever and gage was sweltering when he came out of hiding.

After games...it was time for cookies, treats, and crafts.

On campus trick or treat

One perk of college campuses is that tr big kids love to give out candy to the little kids. We have Harry Potter and a vampire!

The dorms had different themes. This was frozen complete with a guy dressed in white (Olaf) with sticky tape wrapped around his belly that the kids threw snowballs (cotton balls) at and tried to get them to stick. Gotta love college kids.

Another dorm was a spy theme. They made soy if cards and crawled through a laser maze

!

They had foosball ghosts, Frankie, and all sorts of fun stuff!

Added bonus..it was a gorgeous night!

Whoa!

Whoa, that's a big leaf!

Pumpkin patch!

Time was running short to get to a pumpkin patch, so luckily the rain ended and we made it today. First up was the corn maze. They had a mystery built into the maze (who stole the hens eggs), so you had to find hint stations along the way to rule out the suspects. They argued at every.single.one about who would use the hole punch on our card. We take turns guys :-/

We fed goats. They had the best names. Coconut. Macadamia nut. Cocoa. Caramel.

They also got to practice milking cows ;-)

And finally, we made it to the pumpkin patch.

Homecoming

It was homecoming recently, and we started with a Bloody Mary bar at a friends ' house. We ended up piling into our car - with the dean squished in the backseat with me, Jess, and the 2 kids!

The first "person" we bumped into was Rufus!

Next up..the parade

Which was...

Really fun

Full of random groups like the zombie squad...Bernie sanders supporters...sororities, and..shellfish?

Next up....playing on the big slides...a little tailgating...and the game

 

Followed by...smores!!

Go Gage

Well, gage is coming into his own when it comes to schoolwork. He had his first math test 2 weeks ago (100%), and his first spelling test last week..and yes...

He got 100% on this test too..AND..he aced all of the challenge words...which he has never seen before! 

Although last year involved a lot of whining and crying at homework time...this year, he just does his work and moves on. Yes! Yes! Yes! :-)

this and that around the house

Well, the ugly worn out old brown barn has been painted a nice, bright barn red. We also added diagonal accept beams to the front porch, which everyone agrees...look amazing!

 

Playset

Adam and Jess spent a few weekends building this awesome playset for the kids. It's not quite finished, but it's quite the contraption!!  We have a rope ladder that is hanging from the monkey bars "wrangler style" --it's not attached to the ground, so when they climb it, it swings all around, which apparently is very fun ;-)

 It also makes for a great spot to  hang upside down for extended periods of time...

 We still have some railings to add, and possibly a roof of some kind to make their "fort" more "fort-like", but....for now...they still have an awesome area to play.

 And...we even found a use for the gazillion rock climbing holds that Adam bought when he was in living in Texas (and we have been lugging all around the country).  A built-in rock climbing wall!

Chestnuts roasting...

The chestnut tree out front is loaded down. It's so full that the branches are almost touching the ground. Last night was chilly...and we found about a dozen on the ground this morning. It has begun....

These things are HUGE! And spiky. Really spiky.

And there are thousands of them!

Anyone want to come pick these things up for us over the next few months?!?

Mouse in the house!

So...gage crawled into bed with me at 6am and started smothering my face so he could rub my earlobe (that's his comfort thing). Suddenly, he heard my phone chime for a text message, so he launched over me to grab it and yelled "mom you have a text!" Her it is:

Yes, it was savannah texting me from the iPad to say "mom, there's a mouse in my room".  Her room, of course, looks like a bomb went off. So, we followed the cats and started pulling things out from under her bed.  After a few minutes of searching, I said we would put out a mousetrap later. I went downstairs to make coffee and take pepper out.  Not long after, she came outside with a yellow  cup and a pair of kitchen tongs. Yep, she had caught the mouse, using the same technique I used to catch the last one. 

So, we walked down the road to a field to let the mouse free. I think we need a mouse trap. Where there's one, there's more! 

Paw paws

So, you know the old kids' song "way down yonder in the paw paw patch"? Well, paw paws are REAL! It turns out, they don't travel very well, so they are not sold in stores, and we have a paw paw orchard that is trying to bring the paw paw back. So, we have been very excited to taste our first paw paw, so we snatched them up at the farmers market.

It turns out that everyone except Savannah think that paw paws taste like poo poo. Seriously. Yuck. They are so mushy it seems like someone threw the fruit into the floor over and over until it turned to paste. But...low and behold...that's just how a paw paw should taste when it's ripe. Savannah may like them, but I say the paw paws should stay in the paw paw patch!