Fun fall randomness... and a preschool update too!

Just a few quick pics of some fun fall activities from the last few days, mostly courtesy of Todd because I spent my weekend compounding Tamiflu for the sick munchkins in North Raleigh! I *really* hope this mess skips our house! Anyway, onto the pictures!

Playing outside on a nice fall afternoon:






Playing with the fun gel window clings that Mommy found at Target - I had no idea what a big hit these were going to be!








Playing at the Pumpkin Patch with Daddy









Kate sure does love those flowers!! She points out the flower colors everywhere we go, and always wants to touch them!

I've had several people ask me how the kids are adjusting to school now that they've been in for over a month, and the answer - GREAT! They absolutely love it! We're getting used to the routine, and the chaos that comes with Brett flip-flopping classes every other day. They sent home the "Autumn Update" for each child this week - kind of like a preschool report card.

The 2 year old class had 4 "skills" that they've been working on:
Classroom Transitions - "Kate sometimes has difficulty separating from parents in the morning. Kate is making good progress and settling in to school."
Peer Interaction - "Kate sometimes screams when faced with sharing or taking turns. We are encouraging Kate to use her words. Again, Kate is making good progress."
Matches 2 Color Samples - "Kate is able to match colors appropriate to the recommended level."
Listens to Stories & Songs - "Kate frequently looks at and enjoys books. She sits well for circle time and sometimes sings with us as group."

What?! My kid screams?! Never! HA! Definitely no shockers there.

The 3 year old class had 4 "skills" that they've been working on:
Classroom Transitions - "Brett enters the classroom easily and begins playing with his friends. He moves easily from activity to activity. Brett has no hesitation entering the classroom and engaging in activities. He can transition well through centers as well."
Peer Interaction - "Brett enjoys playing with his friends on the playground. He is working on apologizing to friends when needed. Brett plays well with friends in the classroom and on the playground. He also does well taking turns."
Handling Writing Instruments - "Coloring and painting are not Brett's first choice of activities! He is willing to try new tasks and his fine motor skills are age appropriate. Brett has shown use of proper hand-writing grip. We'll keep practicing pre-writing skills all year."
Self-care Skills - "Brett uses the bathroom, washes his hands, and cleans up after himself independently. Brett needs help with his belt, but is otherwise self-sufficient using the bathroom and washing his hands."

I've soooo pleased with how well Brett is doing in school this year. Thinking back on this time last year still gives me anxiety. He cried every day, didn't handle transitions well, didn't know the kids in his class, etc. It's seriously a totally different kid this year! It's funny to see how the different teachers view his behavior and attitudes in class - the first sentence in each skill above is from one class and the second sentence is from his other class. It's just funny to me...

Needless to say, both kids are doing great and we're very proud of how far they've already come this year!

Tagged!

One of the other lovely Target pharmacist mommies, Liz, tagged me this week in her blog. The question - how did you come up with your kids' names? So, here we go!

Brett Matthew - As soon as we found out that I was pregnant, we started talking about boy names and girl names. We didn't agree on much, but we did agree that we weren't telling ANYONE the name until after the baby was born. Eventually, we had a girl name - Gabriella, and we would call her Gabby. There was another girl name too, but now, for the life of me, I can't remember what it was. Then came boy names. I would come up with a few, which Todd would veto. He came up with a few, which I would veto. Then, one night, sitting in McAllister's Deli, we started being goofy and suggesting names that we knew the other would veto. I won't mention them in case you named your child one of those names! Anyway, Todd jokingly said "Brett, you know, after Brett Favre." (Brett Favre was the quarterback for the Green Bay Packers at the time... the Packers being Todd's favorite pro football team.) I actually stopped for a second and said, "Brett... I don't hate it." It ended up being the only boy name we really agreed on. I knew that I wanted to use Matthew in the name somewhere - my grandfather was Mathew Leonard, my dad is Mathew Stenton, and I would've been Mathew Harrison. We eventually agreed on Brett Matthew, but then came the spelling - one "t" like my dad, or the traditional "tt." Finally, we decided that Brett has two t's, so Matthew would have 2 t's as well, and that's how we came up with Brett Matthew!

Katharine Renee - So, like I said above, we had a couple girl names in mind when I was pregnant with Brett. Suddenly, with the 2nd pregnancy, I wasn't feeling those names at all. I remember watching the season finale of American Idol in the hospital the night after I delivered Brett, and watching Katharine McPhee, thinking to myself, hmm... I kind of like it. KathArine was a little bit different than the more traditional KathErine, but it wasn't out there. Of course, Katharine is too long for a little girl, so we had to have a nickname. Common sense for a little girl would be Katie, and, trust me, almost everywhere we go, someone tries to call her Katie instead of Kate. Why did we go with Kate? I had this friend in high school (everyone had a friend like this), and her name was Katie. Chances were, if I was getting in trouble for something, Katie was involved. Isn't it funny how one person can change a name for you? Anyway, Renee was really a no-brainer. My middle name is/was Renee, my mom's middle name is Renee, and Todd's sister's first name is Renee. So, Katharine Renee it is! Oh, and our boy name... yeah, we never had one! Thank God for ultrasound techs being right!!

Now it's your turn! I tag...

Normal Living?

Josie and James Journal

Eric and Heather + Travis

Wall of Art

Last year, during Brett's first year of preschool, I got this idea to showcase all of his art work on this random empty wall in between our family room and the toy room (aka - formal living room). It's sort of a bar area, but we have the bar cabinets stocked with toys and crayons and puzzles and play-doh and other fun random kid stuff. (We do have alcohol, in a bar, in our dining room... did you think we seriously turned our bar into a kid toy area?!?!) So, I thought that wall would be perfect... plus, you can't see it from any room, so it's strictly for us and the kids (and the neighbors whose kitchen window backs up to the ginormous window in this "bar area." I'm sure they love to see our kids' art projects too.)

Anyway, back to the story here...

So, last year, it took us close to the whole year to fill up this area. Of course, I was being pretty selective as to what got put on this wall... coloring book pages, for instance, do not qualify for the art wall. Maybe the fridge door, for a few days, maybe. Well, here we are, not even 2 months into the school year, and we have almost filled our wall. I either need to get more selective, or just accept the fact that we will be cleaning off our art wall every few months. I'm still trying to figure out what to do with last year's creations. Right now, they're in a box in my attic. I don't foresee myself keeping boxes of preschool artwork for years to come, but I want to remember it somehow. Hmmm... that's something to think about.

Kate & Mommy's Morning of Fun

This morning started off like any other Thursday morning - rush, rush, rush - get out the door to school. Kate only goes to school on Mondays and Wednesdays, so she was with me this morning. A few weeks ago, she would've been perfectly content to drop off Brett and come with me. She's turned a serious corner and now LOVES school! She knows the kids in her class and likes to see them and give them hugs (and two of the boys like to give her kisses). So, needless to say, she wanted to stay at school today. I convinced her that we would listen to "her" music in the car and go to the new library and do other fun things, so she reluctantly agreed. We headed off to the new library that just opened up right down the road. It's much smaller than the usual main branch that we go to, but I thought it had a nice set-up, especially for the smaller kids. Then, we made a quick trip to Target (when do we NOT make a quick trip into Target?!). Finally, we were off to the Farmer's Market. It was definitely hustling and bustling today with lots of people and lots of school field trips and stuff, but Kate seemed to really enjoy walking around and checking it all out. I was mainly going to look for mums, and I let Kate choose the colors - she chose purple and yellow. Memere and Poppy will be so proud! While we were checking out all of the mums, Kate found thsese enormous pumpkins! She was completely enthralled with how big these pumpkins were! I was so tempted to buy one - they really weren't that expensive, but I resisted, and I ran out of cash after buying mums!

Kate was so good at the Farmer's Market, and we still had 2 hours until we had to pick up Brett, so I told her that we could go back to the new park beside the new library. She said she had fun at the park, but in reality, I should've checked it out before we went. It really wasn't appropriate for her age - the stuff they did have for her age was really boring, and the stuff that she wanted to do was really meant for much bigger kids, but we managed and I think it was decent. I don't know that we'll make a special trip back to that particular park, but she still had fun. This chair thingie spins around using their body weight - she thought it was cool until she got really dizzy and couldn't stop spinning!

This was kind of the same thing, but a stand-up spinning thing - she was NOT impressed at all with this one!

These steps have springs or something and she could bounce on them if she was holding my hands. That was definitely the favorite activity of the morning, I think!

Chefs in training

Todd had the guys over to our house Monday night for the highly anticipated Packers vs. Vikings Monday Night Foootball. Needless to say, it was a confused house that night - do we cheer for Favre (who Brett is, at least, sort of named after) or do we cheer for the Packers? The guys had a good time giving Todd their opinions :) The kids and I were in charge of food - they were specifically in charge of stirring the brownie mix. I think they did pretty well for their first batch of brownies. Brett wanted to taste the raw mix sooooo bad, but Todd made me promise I would not feed our son raw eggs - and I won't... yet.

Soccer, parties, and camping... who needs sleep?

This weekend, like many others, was packed full of fun activities. Friday night, we didn't do much - mainly recovering from the family-wide-Kate-induced lack of sleep the night before. After a few doses of Sudafed and Benadryl, she was her happy little self again. I'm sure someone at the FDA will come get me for giving Sudafed to my 2 year old since it's no longer indicated for that age group. Oh well :)

Saturday morning, I got to sleep in and Todd fed the kids breakfast. I woke up to them playing softball in the foyer - awesome. Brett and Todd took their softball/t-ball game outside and Kate and I went for a long walk with the intention of detouring by the preschool playground and then making it to Brett's soccer game (it's only a couple miles). The walk was fine. We made it up to the playground, only to find that it was locked! They never locked it last year. I was annoyed. Kate was annoyed. Kate showed her annoyance. Loudly. We'll leave it at that. Luckily, we didn't have much time to kill before Brett's game.

Brett still loves playing soccer. I'm sure it helps that Todd is on the field coaching, but I'm pretty sure that Brett would like it no matter what. This week, though, I think he was the only one that really wanted to be there. They were missing their 2 older boys (read: bigger, faster, stronger) and they were playing a pretty good team. Todd was missing his assistant coach. The game was not pretty to say the least!

This picture pretty much sums it up - by the end of the hour, half of the kids were more interested in watching the cars on the road behind the field!

Post-game wrap up

After the game, we went to Chick-fil-a for lunch, rushed home, cleaned the kids, and got them down for naps. They NEEDED naps to get through the rest of their busy social schedules! Kate had a birthday party for a little boy in her class. I didn't take many pictures, but check this out - Kate used to be scared to death of this climbing wall thing, but look at her go! Yay, Kate!

Of course, she still loves the slides :)

Brett and Todd went camping with our friend, Brad, and his oldest daughter, Ally. They went to Jordan Lake, which is about 30-45 minutes from our house. We used to go camping there with Brad and his wife, Sarah, and two other couples every year about this time - you know, before we all started popping out babies. When we first started going, about 6 years ago, we had no kids - now there are 10 kids!

They went fishing with Ally's fishing pole. She caught a fish. Brett "caught his worm" and was very proud of it.

It looks so relaxing... and to think I was at a birthday party with 2 and 3 year olds. I think I drew the short straw!

Sitting by the fire to stay warm - it got down to about 50 degrees that night.

Picking out the pumpkins...

On Sunday, after naps and after football, we took the kids to the pumpkin patch up the street to pick out their big pumpkins. Now, looking at the pictures, you can tell that it was pretty warm that day - not really "fall weather." The day before, it was about 15 degrees cooler and definitely fall weather, but also very very rainy! We decided that we needed to take advantage of a weekend day when we were all home together, even if it didn't feel like fall! The kids had fun trying to pick up the pumpkins. Some how, Brett convinced me that I can carve Lightning McQueen in one of the pumpkins. We'll see how that goes!!

Meet Milo

Nope, we didn't get a pet, but we did get to spend two fun days with Milo the Monkey. For those who don't know Milo, he is the class pet for Brett's Tues/Thurs 3s, The Monkeys! Brett LOVED having Milo here for 2 days, and to be honest, I did too. As soon as he got home from school on Tuesday, he walked Milo around the house, showing him where things were, most importantly the toy room and the car bucket! They read stories together, took naps together, played Play-Doh together, and Milo even sat beside Brett at the table. We had to explain that Milo couldn't go to school on Wednesday because Milo is a Monkey, and not a Shining Star (his Mon/Wed 3s class). That class also has a class pet which will be with us for FIVE days next month. I haven't told Brett yet... it's all I would hear about for the next few weeks!

Brett noticed that Milo had a stitch undone on his mouth, so Brett climbed up on the kitchen desk and got about 3 feet of tape to "fix it."

I finally convinced him that he only needed a little piece of tape.

Brett and Milo eating a banana for breakfast - silly monkeys!

Brett loved walking around the house and giving Milo hugs!

Memere's birthday

Whew, it's been a long time since I posted anything... some weeks just go like that! We've had a busy couple weeks here! Sandy & Vivian (aka Grandma & Grandpa) were here for about a week, mostly to visit the kids and see Brett's soccer game. They also made a quick trip through Banner Elk to visit Renee on their way down. Like the slackers we are, we forgot to copy Sandy's SD card before they left, so we don't have ANY pictures of their trip! (I almost never take any while they're here so that the kids don't get bombarded with cameras!)

The kids have been busy with preschool and soccer. Todd has had his own soccer games and some Marquette Alumni functions, and I've been busy at work, gearing up for the start of the flu shots and picking up an extra shift here or there. I think those extra shifts may be over for awhile. I'm not feeling nearly as generous after the chaos of yesterday!

In between all of that, we celebrated my mom's birthday. As you can see, the kids were, once again, very eager helpers! Brett thought that every present was a car of some sort, and showed his disappointment when it was "just clothes," as he put it.

Waiting for Memere to read the card so they can tear open her present

You can't really tell from this picture, but Brett opened the present all up, very anxious to see some new cars, and then said "It's just clothes!" and crossed his arms as he pouted. We all laughed.

He still held them up so that Poppy could get a quick picture

Kate wanted to model one of Memere's shirts... or is it a dress? Where's a belt to cinch the waist?

Brett never wants to open his own cards, but he was more than happy to rip into Memere's!

This was before Kate tried to strangle herself with the curling ribbon. It got taken away after that.

Dad gave Mom a new watch. Inside of the watch box was this little box. Brett thought there should've been a car in the little box. Todd tricked him into thinking that it really came with the little car inside. Once he realized it was all a hoax, Brett put the box in the trash.

We were getting ready to put the kids to bed when Brett remembered that we hadn't done cake and candles yet. He insisted that Memere get Lightning McQueen candles on her brownies (her request - brownies and ice cream, no cake). Brett helped to blow out the candles, ate a small brownie, and then went to bed happily.

"Poppy, show me my picture!"