studying

Just a few snapshots of Mason and Emma studying the wildflowers.  Several bouquets have graced our kitchen table. 

A great way to spend a summer afternoon.

five

Hard to believe this guy is five!!  These years really have flown by.  We are so proud of you Mason.  You are such a kind, thoughtful fellow.  We appreciate your attention to detail and observations about the world around you.  You amaze us every day with the things you are learning.

 

You do love to learn.  You are reading like crazy.  You love numbers and patterns.  At the moment you love puzzles, mazes, and cards.  You love to play Nertz any chance you get and win more often than not. You are also very creative when it comes to drawing and making things.  You will sit and color, write, and draw for hours.  Then out comes the scissors, glue and stapler.  The walls in your room are covered with masking tape and your artwork. 

 

 You are very careful and pay attention to details.  You love to plant in the garden, water the plants, and help with the greenhouse.  You know the names of all the plants and how to harvest them.  I love that I can send you to the greenhouse and you will return with a bowl of salad greens or a handful of chives.  You have your own tomato plant, locust tree, and sunflower plants that you are taking care of. 

 Most of all we love your sense of humor, your memory, and the way you tell stories.  You entertain us and are so fun to hang out with.  These five years have been full of so many memories and special moments.  You are such a joy and we are so blessed to watch you grow up.  We love you Mason man.

xoxo,
mommy

ducky

Today we celebrated Ducky's birthday.  In case you're wondering who Ducky is, he's one of Mason's stuffed animals.  You see, Mason got a calendar around Christmas time.  We went through it and put in all our family member's birthdays.  A few weeks later, Mason grabbed a pencil and wrote in all his stuffed animal's birthdays as well.  So, Ducky's birthday is March 18th.  Mason decided that we should celebrate tonight since he had Awana's on Tuesday.  So, him and Emma set up the party with all his friends.  Then we made pudding for dessert.  We sang, Mason did a few magic tricks, and everyone had a good time. 

This isn't the first party for his stuffed animals.  About a month ago I came home from school and Mason told me that he and Emma and Grammie had celebrated Pup-pup's birthday.  Grammie made cookies and they celebrated all day long.  After I had been home for about an hour Mason came up to me with a huge grin on his face.  "We tricked Grammie!" he announced triumphantly, "Pup-pup's birthday isn't until June!"  Then he ran off laughing.  Sure enough, after a careful check of the calendar, Pup-pup is written in his cute handwriting right there close to his.  So, now we check the official stuffed animal birthday calendar.

PS...as I'm writing this, Mason comes out of his bedroom with Pup-pup (his smallest animal that is always getting lost) and says, "Pup-pup missed all the birthday fun.  He was under my pillow!"  Then the big tears start to slip down his face.  So, I show Pup-pup the above photos and we sing to Ducky one more time and all is well.   

play

It's so fun to watch and listen to these two play together.  Most recently you can find them playing camping, office, or hunting.  The first two require getting out lots and lots of toys and setting up "camp" or the "office."  When playing office there is usually a lot of work to be done.  This requires crayons, stamps, markers, tape, cardboard, and paper.  Hunting usually requires lots of animals and Emma's kitchen utensils to "take all the meat." 

Either way, listening to their imaginations run wild never gets old.

car talk

It's Thursday...which means Bobcat Day at our school.  Gotta love jeans and t-shirt day.  This is an oldie (taken before Christmas.) 

One of the fun things about Mason being in preschool this year is that he gets to come in to school with me every morning.  Two days a week Emma rides in to town with us too.  Those days in the car are full of singing and story telling and any tricks I can pull out to keep them from going all "he's-looking-out-my-window!!"  You know those moments, right? 

But two days a week it's just me and the boy and some pretty fun conversations.  Here are a few snippets:

Me: Mason...look there's some deer!
Mason: (almost in tears) but I don't want to see the does, where are the bucks?
Me: I don't know.  Where do you think they are?
Mason: Oh, probably in the trees.  They're much smarter you know.

Mason:  How do you become a grandma?  When does it happen?  You don't have to look old.

Mason: I'm going to count the whole way to school.  1...2...3..4....187!  We're here.  (That was a fun one:)

Mason: When are we going to Steamboat again?  You know that dad doesn't need a map to get there?  Remember when you got lost three times?

And most currently Mason feels it is his job to announce the speed limit and make sure that I'm following it. 

Mom, it's 65. 
Mom, it's 55.
Mom, it's 40.  Why do we always have to go slower in town?  I don't like going slower. 

How come your car has 100 on it if we never get to go 100? 

You know that dad's big white truck can't do 65 with a full load of wood?  You can go less than the speed limit, but not more.  Mom, you're going more.  

Mom, it's 35.
Mom, it's 15.  (insert really sad voice).  This is when we enter the school parking lot.  He always tries to convince me that it really is 51 and we need to go faster.  Like a race car. 

And my favorite:

Mom, God loves me infinity. 

favorites

The two favorites of the moment...Cow for Mason (always has been the #1 choice) and Karly-Baby for Emma.

It's a good thing these two can make me laugh when I'm about to lose my mind.

Most recent reason:

I'm working on a difficult knitting project that I planned on giving away this Christmas, but I wasn't even half way done with it when that time came around.  Sooo, last night I decide to pull it out and work on it.  I find my way into the pattern and realize I have three needles, so I throw one back into my knitting bag.  I do a couple rows and realize my tension is way off from the last time I worked on it.  I keep going.  After a few more rows I'm a little shocked at the difference in the gauge.  I show Ryan. We laugh about how pregnancy must really affect your knitting tension.  I keep going.  I'm not at all happy with how it looks, but I keep going trying to make it tighter until my eyes fall out and I go to sleep. 

Today at naptime I pull it out again.  I'm looking at it trying to figure out how to make it tighter.  I look at the pattern again.  I see something about size 3 needles.  I look at the huge needles in my project.  They're size 9.  Yes, size 9!  It all starts to become clear.  Both my size 3 and size 9 needles are green.  Apparently I pulled out my project and knit the first row onto a green size 9 needle.  That's about when I realized that I had 3 needles, so I kept the two that matched (the 9s) and threw the size 3 into my bag.  Funny right? Yeah, maybe if I wasn't doing things like this all the time.  It's a small miracle that I finish any knitting projects:)

snow day

It snowed all weekend and today we woke up to this.  Actually I woke up at 5:30 as usual and about 30 seconds later I got the call from our school district that school was cancelled.  Awesome!  I crawled right back in bed.  

So today will be spent at home and will probably be a repeat of yesterday: 

We're loving an extra day at home.  It makes for a very short week, with just school tomorrow.  I should probably grade papers and clean the house.  But we're busy playing the piano, throwing snowballs, drinking hot cocoa, and baking bread.  Is it too early to start Christmas cookies?

oh, hello.

Well, somehow October came and went and I hardly even turned the computer on...let alone do this blog thing.  We've been plenty busy with other things around here and fall sort of seemed to slip by. 

 

This has been one crazy start to the school year.  Learning several new curriculums, gaining six new students in seven weeks and mentoring a new teacher has kept me on my toes.  Parent-teacher conferences are now behind me and the stack of papers to grade is slowing decreasing as I finally get into a routine.

 

The garden and greenhouse supplied us with plenty of food to keep us busy.  We canned 25 pints of green beans and turned ten gallons of cabbage into sauerkraut.  We had our first frost weeks ago and have had a couple snow storms as well.    

 

 We dug up all the potatoes.  This is all the fingerlings, most of the purple vikings, and about a third of the sangres (the red ones).  They are delicious.  We figure we got about 90 pounds total.  They keep finding their way into soups, stews, and breakfast potatoes.   We ended up with lots of tomatoes too.  We pulled all the green ones before the greenhouse had a frost and made a lovely green tomato pie. 

 After we opened up the garden for the chickens, we also found a few other visitors. 

 Last weekend we spent Saturday with Grammie and Grandpa down at their property.  The boys got the rest of the siding on the bunkhouse.  Brats and sauerkraut were on the menu for lunch! It was a crisp fall day...beautiful all around.

 That pretty much brings us to this morning.  All costumed up and ready for the preschool party.  Mason was a superhero and Emma was a cowgirl. 

These cuties sure help keep it all in perspective. 

Tomorrow brings November.  I'm looking forward to a new month, maybe not such a whirlwind.  We're spending the day butchering our older flock of chickens and cleaning out the coop.  Time to fill the freezer once again.  So much to be thankful for!

preschool

Mason's first day of preschool.  

 

He had a blast.  I had morning recess duty, so he had to hang out with me for a couple minutes before the preschool opened.  He was super excited all morning.  When we got outside and he saw all the big kids he held my hand a little tighter, but didn't stop smiling.  I dropped him off and he joined right in.  I gave him a big hug and he was on his way.  

 

 Emma had to get in on the picture taking too.  She did awesome this morning.  I dropped her off at daycare all by herself.  She turned to Mason before getting out of the car and said "Have a good day at school Mason, see you at lunch."  Then she went right inside and after I left she waved from the door.  It was more than I could ask for really, since I leave her crying more often than not. 

 Sayings from the preschooler when he got home:
~I made lots of friends today...about like 12.
~I called you on the phone mommy.  But it was a fake one.
~Me: Do you want to go back tomorrow?  Mason: Yes!  They have to teach me every day!
~We didn't get to write our names.  Our teacher had to do it. (This came from his carpool buddy, Lucy.)
~Me: What do you want to learn at preschool?  Mason: How to jump rope.
~Mason: I really need a lunchbox to bring to school.  Me: But you don't eat lunch at school.  Mason: I'm just getting ready for kindergarten, mom.

You are so excited to learn and have fun.  We are proud of you!

August

I was a little hesitant to turn the calendar page this morning.  Is it really August already?  That means school is just around the corner...both for me and Mason.  He's getting excited about preschool.  Although the keeps reminding me that as soon as he turns 7, he will get to be in my class. 

 

 

We went camping a few weekends ago.  Lots of exploring, marshmallows, flowers, potty-training in the woods, rain, and laughs.  Not a lot of sleep.  Oh, and Daisy decided to find herself a porcupine.  Luckily it was little and we had pliers. 

 

 We're still hoping for another camping trip or two in the near future. 

On Tuesday we spent the evening fishing with Karly.  I'm really not sure what we're going to do when she leaves for college.  We're trying not to think about that yet.  I love these fishing pictures.  We didn't catch anything, but we sure had fun playing in the water.

 

Lovin' these last weeks of summer!

super mason

Mason got the coolest (handmade) super hero cape from his Aunt Caroline for his birthday.  Just the other day it was a little breezy outside and he brought it to me saying..."Mom, if I put this on and we go outside in the wind, do you think I can fly??"  

 

Yes, buddy.  You can fly! :)