Festive Food

I love making fun food especially for holidays.  This morning I made pumpkin waffles, not the flavor just the shape.  So far this Fall I have made pumpkin monkey bread, pumpkin chocolate chip bread, pumpkin french toast and pumpkin pull apart bread (which was so good! It was a new recipe and I will be making it again very soon.)  Lydia requested that I please take a break from pumpkin flavored things.  I have one more new recipe to try out, pumpkin chocolate muffins.  She has also been kind of funny about chocolate lately.  She now is more of a fan of vanilla but I think she will like these muffins.  She is also funny because she told me that she is kind of over Harry Potter now.  Jared is still going strong.  She still likes the movies/books but her fascination with is has died down. They also now like Harry and Hermione the most not Ron and Ginny.

The students were allowed to dress up as their favorite book character for school today.  Lydia chose to go as a cat.  We had checked out the Halloween book "Moonlight, the Halloween Cat" from the library and she has enjoyed reading it.

Because they are both so familiar with Hogwarts, and Jared loves it so much I decided it would be fun to have a Hogwarts Feast for dinner Halloween night.  We feasted on: chicken drumsticks, boiled potatoes, pumpkin pasties and ham and cheese acceptance letters.  We made another batch of butterbeer and it was just as good.  The pumpkin pasties were not.  As I as cooking them I thought it very unlucky that anyone would like them but we all tried them.   It was really fun and slightly stressful to get it all done in time but it all worked out.  I think they loved the candles more than the Feast.  I have thought this before but I think it would be really fun to eat with candles more often. I can't see myself making a huge Sunday dinner every week but I could see myself using candles on Sundays.  They would love it.  It would be a fun memory to have and make Sunday more special.

Trick or treating Hogwarts style and Fall fun

We went trick or treating twice this year.  Jared and I met up with Marcus and his family at Baker-Butler's Trunk-Or-Treat and Mark and Lydia went to our ward activity.  It was a cold rainy night so both events were held indoors instead of outdoors.  Lydia and Mark got to the church at 5:45 and Jared and I left to go to school round 6:05.  We stood in line in the rain for about 5 minutes and then someone came out and smartly moved the line in the other direction so most of the line could be under the covered area.  I commented to the person in front of us that the best idea would be to let us line up in the hallway inside and right as we got to the door of the school (a solid 30 minutes later) it was announced that they were moving the line indoors exactly as I suggested.  It was pretty chilly so I was happy it happened.  While we did have to wait in line for a good while, the actual trick or treating in the smaller space actually made the event way more organized.  Instead of having people walking around the parking lot in all directions going to cars multiple times we all got in the gym, nicely spaced out, stopped at each "trunk" mostly tables, and then headed out.  It worked just fine.  It was really cute to see Marcus and Jared together.  Jared, of course, dressed up as Harry Potter and Marcus dressed up as a Gryffindor student so they looked perfect together.  One family decorated their area as Hogwarts which Jared and Marcus loved. It was nice to visit with Marcus's parents, they are such nice people. We met up with them Halloween night and went trick or treating around Forest Lakes.  I know Mark took Jared and Lydia there a few years ago but I was working that night so I hadn't gone over there.  We knew it was a really popular neighborhood and typically really busy so we met up at 6:00 and just parked at the elementary school down the road.  It was amazing weather.  At 6:00 it was still 65+ degrees.  We all enjoyed ourselves, Lydia especially.  Jared is a rather slow trick or treater as he likes to pick the candy he wants when he can and takes a really long time.  Lydia was having none of it and most of the time she and Mark were quite a few houses ahead of us.  It worked out great and was a fun night.

 

Lydia sadly lost her Gryffindor tie. Oh well, she didn't particularly like it.

The only time she was in the back of the group. 

It was a really fun neighborhood.  So many people had fun decorations out. There were a couple of times when I felt like I was on the set of a Halloween movie.  It was great. 

Lydia and Mark seemed to have a nice time at the ward activity.  Lydia was not particularly excited about her costume.  She didn't want to wear all the pieces of it but Mark refused to let her go without at least her tie.  I attempted to curl her hair to try to look like Hermione's and did manage to get some pretty curls, more like Hermione's later years at Hogwarts.  There was no way I would be able to make Lydia's hair full and bushy like hers in the first movie.  The event seemed well attended and it looks like people had fun.  Mark was covering for someone at the airport and needed to leave by 7:45.  When I saw the line at Baker-Butler I was concerned that we would get to the gym doors and then have to leave but it moved quickly enough.  We stopped at the church on our way back from the school to pick up Lydia.  Trick or treating was in full swing so Jared got to do a quick loop which he was thrilled about.  I think Lydia went around three times?  It seemed there was plenty of candy and everyone seemed happy.  We found some fellow Hogwarts students and got a picture with them.

In keeping tradition, we had Jared and Lydia estimate, count and sort their candy before they could trade or eat any of it.  We also did our exploding pumpkins and ghosts experiments.  Lydia especially loves doing this one and asks for it every year. 

First Round:

Lydia: 

Estimate: 50

Actual: 76

Jared: 

Estimate: 55

Actual: 56

April's predictions: 

Lydia:  58

Jared: 52

Mark's predictions: 

Lydia: 63

Jared: 60

Second Round: 

Lydia: 

Estimate: 80

Actual: 118 *But 55 of those were mini tootsie roll pops so were going with 60.  I could not believe how many she had! 

Jared: 

Estimate: 78

Actual: 56 *strangely the same as last time

I'm sad to see my favorite month ending.  I wait and wait for Fall to come and then it moves on so quickly.  Charlottesville looks so beautiful right now.  The trees are peaking and I am loving my walk to work around UVA each morning.  It's actually been nice to have my drive down there (its about 18 minutes) the past few weeks because I am seeing new areas of pretty trees which I love. The Carters' had their first snow in Alaska and she sent me a few pictures of it.  She then asked me to send her some pictures of Fall here because she was missing it so much.  It's been fun to see these beautiful spots. 

Back before it had cooled down so much Lydia made a cute leaf"woman" one afternoon too.  I think my love of Fall has rubbed off on her pretty well. She made sure to give her leaf person a skirt of leaves.  

Mums, pumpkins, de-cluttering and church

We picked out our pumpkins on Saturday.  Since we had already gone to a fun pumpkin patch we headed north to a cute little nursery about 12 minutes from our house.  Mark was at funeral all morning, he got home around 1:20 and then had to be at work at 4:00 so we were very short on time.  Picking the pumpkins was fun but the prettiest part was checking out the mums in the greenhouse.  They were gigantic!  They looked like huge cupcakes. They were having a special, 2 for 20$ and while I hadn't planned on getting any mums this year we ended up picking out 2.

For whatever reason Jared and Lydia have been doing a poor job of dressing for the weather. 

Every day I tell them the temperature and say take a jacket (if needed) yet they rarely listen.  

They were both quite cold in this picture!

 

They were so full and beautiful. 

They were so large that we could barely fit them in the car.  This was largely because I spent the morning doing one of my favorite things de-cluttering and had 4 boxes of stuff to get rid of.  Jared and Lydia have both made up Hogwarts "trunks" and filled them with things they would need at Hogwarts and they had been spread out all over the room along with lots of other misc. things.  Now that I am not having preschool in our basement it is not kept as clean as previous years.  I think Jared and Lydia have been just fine with this but it was starting to drive me crazy.  I had them clean up their Hogwarts stuff, etc. and then I went through some preschool teacher books and toys.  I hadn't wanted to do much with preschool stuff because it is sort of sad but once I started I felt great (and I am really happy at my new job its been great).  I took a box to the church for the nursery and three boxes to goodwill.  There is still lots of stuff to go through but I am going to wait a bit.  It already looks so much better, it doesn't feel awful to be in there.

We carved our pumpkins after church Sunday.  Lydia, in true Lydia fashion had lots of ideas for her pumpkin and in the end decided to carve a cat.  She has carved many cats over the years and only needed a little help from Mark.  She and Jared both did most of the work on their pumpkins.  Almost 7 and 9 are pretty magical ages in kids.  It was so nice.  Last year Lydia was so squeamish about cleaning her pumpkin but this year she just dived right in. Jared knew he wanted a Harry Potter theme and went with a stencil of Hogwarts. He really did a decent job. Mark helped out at the end after Jared accidentally poked out the wrong section and it turned out well.

 

Speaking of nursery our nursery finally got split.  I have had this calling for a little over a year now and am still perfectly happy to be in there.  It was getting pretty rough this Summer though.  We had 18 kids on the roster and were regularly having 16 kids in there.  It was too much.  I moved into the "new to our ward" Nursery room with the person I had been serving with (who I love to be around) and we have the younger class.  We still have 10 kids and the other nursery 8 but it was so much nicer.  It will be an even better calling when we move to one hour classes.  I am so interested to see how that will look more so for primary and nursery than the adults.  I am so excited for the primary workers and the primary kids.  This past Sunday was the Primary program and it was so nice.  The songs were great and Jared and Lydia did a nice job on their parts.  I loved being able to sit with Mark  and watch Jared and Lydia with all the other primary kids.

Parent Teacher Conferences

Over the last two weeks Mark and I attended parent teacher conferences for Jared and Lydia and they were a lot of fun. They are both doing awesome in their classes.  They love their teachers and their teachers are happy to have them in their classes.  I am so proud of them and relived too. I don't really get nervous because if there were real problems I like to think I would have already heard about them but I am always curious how they are perceived in class.  Previously at dinner we had asked Jared and Lydia what they thought their teachers were going to say about them and they were both pretty confident their teachers would only have nice things to say and they were right.  Mark also talked about how he wanted to ask Jared's teachers why they never turn on the lights.  Every day they have the lights off all day.  He thinks it's bizarre.  Jared said they voted on it and the class wanted to do it (use the natural light instead).  Which leads to a funny story.  One of his teachers (Ms Graybill) got  married this weekend so she was gone after Wednesday.  His other teacher was actually the Maid of honor at the wedding so they had one substitute Thursday and then both teachers were gone on Friday.  When Mark walked Jared to class Friday he noticed right away that the lights were on.  Mark said all the kids looked super confused about it.  Jared said it was the first time he saw his classroom with the lights on.

We had Jared's conference first and as we sat down his two teachers said "we love Jared."  It was so nice to hear.  He is respectful, kind and helpful which is what we care the most about.  He is meeting/exceeding expectations in all subjects academically and socially.  He is in the highest math and reading group (well above grade level) which he is always proud of.  We talked about his love of Harry Potter and how he has introduced it to kids in his class and now they are reading it which he is happy about.  They mentioned how well he and his best friend Marcus do in class. They talked about how sometimes best friends distract each other and have a hard time in class (like Jared and Tyler in Kindergarten but that could have been a 5 year old new to school thing too) but that he and Marcus never get in trouble together, they are always on task. They also mentioned a test they gave recently that had some harder extension problems on it at the request of the gifted teacher which led to an interesting discussion about that class and giftedness as a whole.  The teacher wanted to make sure students were being challenged enough which is good.  I don't think Jared really fits in that group and he doesn't particularly want to attend that class.  He went last year for a math class and didn't enjoy it.   I think it was because it was harder and he would rather feel smart and know what he is doing.  This is concerning to me as I don't want him to not try hard things or be willing to work hard.  When we asked him about it he said again he didn't really enjoy the class and her bunny (its massive with crazy long hair) was really distracting.  We are so glad that he is having a great year and hope that he will continue to work hard and be respectful.  We really like his teachers and are so glad the class has turned out so well.  I really had no idea what to expect at the beginning of the year.  At the end we asked them how their year was and how the class worked together as a whole and they said that it was a really nice class and things were going so much better than the previous year.   It's still a pretty new thing for them and I am glad it seems to be going really well and that they are really enjoying it.  It makes such a difference when a teacher is happy to be doing their job.  Of course, they definitely use computers way more than I think is necessary but Jared is enjoying it.  We are so glad he is having a great year.

Lydia's conference went really well too.  Mrs. Hairston said that Lydia is a joy to have in class.  She is curious, happy, respectful and helpful.  She showed us her testing results and she has already met all the benchmarks for 1st grade and is performing more like a 2nd grader at the end of the first quarter.  Lydia has really grown to love reading.  She has said that she loves language arts and reading the most at school.  She will often sit down on the couch after school with a big pile of books to read through.  She also loves creating art projects.  Lydia's feelings about school have really improved the last few weeks.  She was so sad at the beginning of the year.  She didn't particularly like the kids in her class and was missing her friends and teacher from last year so much.  She never disliked Mrs. Hairston but she did not immediately take to her like she did to Ms. Hunter.  First grade was a big adjustment for her.  She still talks about her friends who have moved away but now she also talks about kids in her class.  She seems to have made some good friends (Kitty, Regan and Asher) and is much happier at school.  I noticed it the last few weeks, she would come home and say, "I almost made friends with ____ today." I'm really happy for her.  She never really complained but I am happy to see some of her excitement about school come back. She is a sweet girl and we are really so proud of her.

To celebrate we took them out to ice cream today.  We are so grateful that they are not making teaching harder than it has to be for their teachers.  We are just really happy that they are kind and respectful and are happy to go to school.  It's great that they are doing well academically and seem to be challenged and interested enough.

Mark on the other hand is not having a great school year.  He is teaching 8th grade civics now which is always less interesting and his 4th block is a horrible combination of kids.  The sad thing is that the counselors and administration new it was a hot mess they set him up with and didn't offer any extra support for him.  When he mentions the kids in his class the other teachers can't believe they put that group together.  And they will stay together next semester when they switch to science which Mark can't wait for although he feels bad for the science teacher but maybe they will magically have a great time with them.  He contemplated making a countdown chain but hasn't yet.  We have been talking about his school and from the stories he has shared with me it seems as though the teachers at his school have really low morale right now which is really hard.  Two teachers are teaching together somewhat similar to what Jared's teacher do and they still don't have their classroom space.  They have to meet in the library which makes it hard for the librarian to do her classes.  Mark is on his 10th year of teaching and really wants to take a break from it.  He is hoping to find an instructional coach job for next year to just step away from the classroom for awhile.  Or just try a completely new career path.   

Cox Farms

I took a half day at work (which is funny since I only work 4 hours) and picked Jared and Lydia up from school at 10:45.  One thing they really wanted to do this year was go back to Cox Farms.  We didn't make it last year and loved being there today.  We tried to time it to get there as the school/preschool kids were leaving but the local families hadn't arrived yet.  The lot was full of buses when we arrived so I was nervous we were too early (we got there at 12:30) but it was perfect.  The crowds died down by 1:00 and we rarely had to wait in line for any of the slides or other events.  One thing I really appreciate it is that everything (food excluded) is included in your entrance ticket.  They offer one free apple and mini pumpkin per ticket and delicious (free) apple cider.  Its really well run, had lots of cool slides, fairly cheesy and really fun.  We had gorgeous Fall weather and bright blue sky.   Its 1.5 hours away and totally worth the drive.  We all loved their beautiful pumpkin display.  It is so cool how pumpkin growers have introduced all kinds of new colored pumpkins.  We loved walking around the display checking out the different shapes and sizes. They also had the biggest pumpkin (winner at the Virginia State Fair) on display.  The same person won 1st and 2nd place.  The first place pumpkin was 1217 pounds.  His 2nd place pumpkin was 1047.  They were massive.

We headed over to the hay pyramid where Lydia and Jared played hide-n-go-seek and tag and then played on the rope swings.  Both Jared and Lydia loved the rope swings this year.  We went on all the slides but contrary to previous visits the big blue slide was not Jared's favorite this year.  He said it gave him a headache.  The farm slide was the winner this year for him and Lydia loved the big blue one the most.  I asked the people at the top which lanes were the fastest and they said 1 and 6 had just been waxed and Lydia and I flew down them.  It was so fun.

After sliding we headed over to the Corm Maze.  The maze here is more of a walk through, you literally cannot get lost in it.  They have weird and random exhibits in it I would say 75% of them are homemade out of wood and then painted.  I was telling Jared about how at night they make their corn maze a haunted corn maze and he is desperate to go.  I think it could be fun to go with a friend for his birthday one year.  But not this year, maybe in 5th grade.

 

Walk through the inside of a pumpkin.  This was pretty cool and life like and grossed you out.  

Tilted house full of bugs and rodents.

We enjoyed fresh apple cider donuts, a hay ride, a walk through Fairy Tale Forest and more sliding.

We also saw goats, sheep, chickens, rabbits and so many pigs.  One set of piglets (12 of them) had just been born on October 04th and were so cute and little (and stinky). Jared was in rare form wanting all kinds of pictures and taking so many good ones.  He is a pretty handsome guy.  

He wanted to play in the penny pit so badly that he stayed there while Lydia and I went back to the blue slides.  It was nice to know that he would be okay by himself while we went on the slides.  Six and a half and nine are awesome ages for kids.  We had such a a fun day together.  I was slightly concerned about traffic going back but it wasn't too bad.  We left the farm just after 4:00 and made it to our dinner stop in an hour and 15 minutes.  It should have been just under an hour but there was some traffic right by the farm.  We stopped and ate at Ihop a place Mark would never want to go.  To our delighted surprise kids 12 and under eat for free on Tuesdays and they have an art project for the kids to work on while you wait.  Today it was a Q-tip skeleton.  So we only had to pay for my dinner which was just the cherry on top of an awesome Fall day. It was definitely worth the drive and skipping school. We rocked out to The Beatles on the way home and it was fun to hear them singing along on parts they knew.  I was a huge Beatles fan from like 10 - 20.  I still love them but it has scaled back a bit.  I'm happy to introduce Lydia and Jared to them.