The Most Horrible Time...of the Year

Yep, first month back to school and all three kids have been sick for way to long!  Timothy started it, throwing up for 6 straight days and then taking a week off and throwing up again.  Charlotte ran a fever and was super fussy.  Caroline has had diarrhea off and on for three days now.  I am so over this, it's driving me crazy.  I just want everyone to be normal and healthy and happy again!!  So far October has just been a stinky month (literally and figuratively)! 

So I figured while I'm sitting here on a Sunday morning watching Caroline play and praying she doesn't poop again while waiting for Timothy to wake up to see if he's going to keep puking today, I probably have some time to write a little update about what we've been doing the past month. 

We had a nice visit with Brandon's parents in mid-September.  We celebrated Charlotte's birthday again and went to the fair.  PTA has been keeping me super busy with the fall fundraiser that will finally be over by Halloween!!  `I love working at the school though, I love getting to see my big kids every day that I'm there.  I love meeting all the staff and getting to know their teachers better.  Brandon had a very busy September as usual at work.  Timothy started playing indoor soccer.  Charlotte and Grammy and I went to eat breakfast with all the princesses.  We kicked off another year of KidMin activities at church and so far it's going great.  We have had beautiful weather so the kids have enjoyed playing outside almost every day.  I started keeping my neighbor's daughter before and after school and it's been quite an adjustment for all of us.  We celebrated Timothy's half birthday.  Between my own kids and my sister, I've been at the hospital 4 times in three weeks. 

That's about it.  We have also been doing some Halloween stuff as well, we went to the pumpkin patch yesterday and carved our pumpkins.  We're getting ready for Trunk or Treats next week.  We found some good U-Cut Christmas tree farms. 

Besides being sick, the kids have been doing fine.  Timothy is in the top of his class for reading and math, he loves first grade!  He has developed quite a passion for tether ball and plays every chance he gets (even if there's no actual pole or opponent, he jumps around pretending that he's playing).  Charlotte has been really loving school this year.  She has the same teacher and some of the same kids , so that's definitely helped out a lot.  Caroline has been growing so much.  She talked non-stop and loves to sing.  She got her first hair cut.  She's definitely not a baby anymore, but that's OK.  I can say without any hesitation that we are done having kids!  I love my three, I wouldn't change a thing!

Anyway, that's about it.  I will try to not go another month without some kind of update.  I think this month I have an excuse though, right?  Enjoy the pictures and I'll get some Halloween ones up soon!

First Day of School

The kids started school a couple of days after Labor Day.  Timothy was a little nervous about first grade and being at school all day, but he did great.  Charlotte was so ready to be back, she has changed so much since school started. 

Two funny stories about the first day - I had to be up at the school all day to work with the PTA so I snuck into the cafeteria at Timothy's lunch time to say hi and see how his day was going.  He looked so overwhelmed, not at all his usual bubbly happy social little self.  When we were walking Charlotte down to her class we saw him again and said hi and he acted the same way.  I almost cried, I was so worried about him.  I think the whole being there all day thing was a lot to take in on the first day but he loves it now!  We walked Charlotte down to her classroom and she put away her supplies and started playing so we got her paperwork and I had to get back down to the lobby to help with PTA stuff and Brandon left to take Caroline home for a nap and after about 10 minutes one of her teachers came down and asked if she was supposed to take Charlotte home.  Turns out she didn't actually have class that day, it was just an open house and neither of us had realized it...so she ended up staying up at the school with me until it was time to get Timothy and come home. 

It was a crazy first day, but we love being Edgerton Wolves! 

Another Milestone

We hit another milestone in our house this past Saturday night, it just didn't happen quite like I had pictured it!

Timothy was down the street playing with some of his friends.  I talked to a couple of the moms that were there and they said all the boys were playing "dog house" and one of them was being really rough (and he just happens to be like 13 and a pretty big boy).  Somehow, in the middle of all of it, Timothy got kicked in the mouth and his tooth was knocked out. 

They said he cried pretty bad for a while (not sure why no one came to get one of us) and then he calmed down and one of the moms walked him back home and explained everything.  She said she works for a dentist and looked at it and everything seemed to be OK.  You can even see his big tooth poking through, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't loose before then. 

He was so excited, despite the circumstances.  He found his tooth box and asked if he could put it on the table by his bed instead of under his pillow.  The tooth fairy came and left him $2 (double the usual rate since the tooth was lost under traumatic circumstances), she also left a tiny little note that she typed on her teeny tiny computer and a trail a pink pixie dust.  He was so happy, it was pretty cute!

I'm hoping that maybe losing one and getting a new one will help loosen up the others, his teeth are so tight already, I'm dreading to see what the new ones come in like!  But, in the end, we have a happy little boy that finally got to go to school with a hole in his gums :)

Giant S'mores Cookies

Brandon had seen an idea on Pinterest (it cracks me up that he likes to look around on Pinterest) to make s'mores inside of a chocolate chip cookie.  I wasn't so sure it would work and tried to talk him into making it more like cookie bars, but he insisted so I looked it up and found another blog that had an idea close to what he had in his mind.

We had already made some chocolate chip cookie dough earlier that day (I use the Ghiradelli semi-sweet chips since they're all natural, so we use the recipe on the bag for those), so there was plenty left.  Timothy thought it was the coolest thing ever, I'm not so sure the girls cared what was happening, but they did fuss and cry a lot when they saw the ingredients and found out they had to wait to eat a cookie till it was all baked and done.

So we started with a ball of cookie dough and flattened it out on the cookie sheet.  Next we added a smaller version of a s'more (like a quarter of a large graham cracker, 3 small squares of chocolate, and half a marshmellow)

Then we added another scoop of cookie dough on top and molded it all around the s'more

We put them in the oven and I think they baked for 15-20 minutes, they turned out quite large!

Everyone seemed to love them (as you can tell from the chocolate on the faces)!!

Summer Time

Woohoo!  VBS is over!!  Not that I didn't enjoy it or look forward to it or anything, but it's a relief to have it over and done with and we had so much help, it all turned out great!!

I meant to blog about a new park that we went to last month.  We had a nice Saturday with not too much to do and I had read about a park about half an hour away that sounded pretty neat so we loaded up the kids and the backpack and lunches and swim suits and headed out to Enumclaw.

The park was really nice, they had three different playgrounds and one was for young children, so Caroline could actually climb up and slide down by herself, she loved that!  They had a big open field to run around in and a lot of nice picnic and grilling areas.  The best part for the kids was the splash pool.  It wasn't really large, but it was hot outside and the water was FREEZING cold, so it was nice to cool off.  I'm pretty sure it was glacier water, it was so cold! 

The best part for me was the view!  It was so high up in the mountains and so beautiful, it made me want to sell our house and buy a farm in the mountains!  And, as a side note, I seriously want to do that, to just scrap it all and buy a farmhouse and have cows and chickens and grow all our own food...I would love to do that!  But anyway, they had a short hiking trail but it was steep, so Brandon wore Caroline in the backpack and I made sure to hold Charlotte's hand and we braved the trek down to the view site for the dam and back up again.  Timothy spent the hike looking for Bigfoot and Charlotte looked for fairy houses.  Caroline almost fell asleep.

It was such a fun place, I wish it was a little closer, but not too bad for a day trip.  The kids loved hiking, so we're hoping to do more of it while the weather is nice.  I've been checking out other places to go, I'm excited to take them!  Anyway, hopefully now that my crazy month is over, I can do more normal blogging and updating on here!

Maybe I'll Find Time Later

That has been my theme for the past three months...I'll find time later, but it's not really happening.  Sorry, a lot has been going on over here, but finding time to sit down and type it all out with pictures has been hard!  So...what have we done since early May?

Brandon was gone for two weeks in May and two weeks in June, so the kids and I pretty much just hung out at home and at the Y and school and didn't do too much.  We had a lot going on at the end of the school year with programs and Kindergarten graduation stuff so that kept the kids busy and I was busy with end of year PTA (for some reason, that I can't remember now, I agreed to chair fundraising next year and a lot had to get done before school was out).  The kids finished out the year great, Charlotte made so much progress in just two months, I couldn't believe it!  Timothy finished top of his class in reading and did great, that boy LOVES to read!

So right after school got out, Brandon left for a class for two weeks at the end of June and when he came back, he and Timothy left for a few days to go to church camp, I still can't believe Timothy was old enough for camp, but he had such a great time, he still keeps asking me when he will get to go back.  Thanks again to everyone that emailed him a campergram, he was so excited!  They came back from camp on the 4th of July and we had a cookout and bike parade at church that night.  Brandon had taken the camera with him to camp and the battery died, so I didn't get any pictures at the parade, but the kids loved it and Charlotte even won a prize! 

This past week we enjoyed getting to see my nephews from TX.  My parents took all the boys and myself and Heather to Great Wolf Lodge for a night last week, that was the coolest place ever.  Timothy had so much fun, he keeps begging us to go back (like tomorrow!) so we promised him we'd go back sometime this winter. 

Since then, we have been busy little bees getting everything ready for VBS, which started last night.  The first night went so well, We had about 75 kids and probably twice as many adults, I don't know if anyone counted that, but there were a LOT of people there!!  We got till Wednesday night so hopefully by Thursday I can spend an entire day at home doing absolutely nothing!! 

So the kids...Timothy has really become a reader, he loves to read pretty much anything, especially Dr. Seuss books and he loves for us to read to him, his favorites right now for us to read are old Hardy Boys books. 

Charlotte went to Princess Camp earlier this month and had so much fun learning about her favorite princesses.  She still loves to "read" as well and will usually sit and pull all the books off our bookshelf and look through them all. 

They have both enjoyed playing out in the yard this summer, the weather has been so nice!  Timothy has made a lot of friends in the neighborhood so he's usually out riding bikes with the boys and Charlotte and the girl next door play together a lot too. 

Caroline has become such a talker, she repeats EVERYTHING you say to her!  Her Bible class teachers told me she has such a cute personality.  She also loves to dance and will stop playing and just twirl, she loves it.  She loves playing with baby dolls and she is also becoming a climber.  I caught her the other day with one leg over the side of her crib so I'm hoping she won't figure out how to climb out of there any time soon!!  She has an obsession right now with opening and closing doors too.

And I think that catches us up to now.  We don't have any plans that I know of for the rest of the summer so I'm hoping we can get some work done around the house before school starts in September!