Pumpkin Patch, Pumpkin Pirate Patch

Last week Mika and I got to go on a field trip with Ramona's preschool class to a pumpkin patch in Greeley. Just a few minutes after we arrived, Mika fell face first into the mud and started bawling. I took her back to the car to wipe off the mud clumps from her hands and forehead, then brushed off the rest of the mud from her clothes with some paper towels. I tried to keep her contained in a wagon after that.

 She asked me to pick out a pumpkin for her to put in her basket.

 Ramona spent most of the time at the patch running around with her friend Ella.

 

 Eventually, she picked out a pumpkin for her basket, too.

Ramona with her teacher, Miss Jamie

 

 Towards the end, the whole class performed the poem "Five Little Pumpkins" for all of the parents.

 Then they cheesed for a few class pictures.

 

Ramona sharing stickers with her sister

 

I tried to do a mini-photo shoot of both my girls in a rustic wagon with their pumpkins, but one of them was not in a very cooperative mood.

 

 

 

Taking a two-year-old to the pumpkin patch ended up being a lot more work than I thought. I was more than ready to go home when that field trip was over, but at least we had two little pumpkins and some autumn-y photographs to bring back from our adventure.

Over the weekend, it was time to decorate those little pumpkins, as well as a couple of others we had acquired. We used a felt decorating kit we got in the mail from Grandma and Great-Grandma Rosanne that included the goods for a pirate pumpkin, spider pumpkin, a bat pumpkin, and a cat pumpkin.

 

 

 

 

I attempted another little photo shoot to capture the colors of some pretty red leaves, a bright orange pumpkin, and the faces of my daughters (which I could never get to look at the camera simultaneously).

 

 

 

 

At one point I gave up trying to get both of them to look at me and told them to just start throwing some leaves around. I didn't have to ask them twice.

 

 

 

 

Then they each took turns hugging the pumpkin.

 

Happy Autumn!

Ten Years Time

Zip, Zip, Zoom . . . that is my description of how fast the ten years have passed since high school graduation. Although--so much has happened in that time, and I feel like I have changed so much, maybe there are moments I think it has been even longer than just ten years.

Zip, Zip, Zoom . . . that is also my description of how quickly our family road-tripped to Illinois and back this past weekend to attend my high school reunion. After Forest came home from work on Friday afternoon, at 3:30 we hit the long road to our destination. It was the first time our little family tried driving through the night, and despite apprehensions that the girls would refuse to sleep, our experiment was surprisingly successful. The children slept about 9 hours of the trip, I slept about 2 then dozed another 2, and Forest at least pretended to sleep during my 3-hour driving shift. We all arrived safely in my parents' driveway around 6:30am, unloaded the girls, then Forest and I collected 3 more hours of shut-eye on the guest bed (thanks to Jii and Baachan entertaining our wide-eyed daughters).

Noon was lunch time--out at Avanti's for me and some high school besties, out at Noodles and Co. for Forest, Ramona, Mika, and Paca.

Our Avanti's crew (Denise, me, Aubrey, Britt, and Ashley) sat in that booth and caught up most of the afternoon. It was a lovely gathering that I think made us all feel "young" again.

Forest and Paca dropped by toward the end so Ramona and Mika could say hi and show how tall they'd grown.

 

The girls spent the remainder of that afternoon scattering toys and crayons all over Jii and Baachan's living room . . .

 . . . and eating pumpkin-shaped cookies baked by Baachan.

 

After I convinced Forest to secure another 2 hours of sleep at my parents' house, we headed over to downtown Bloomington for my NCHS Class of '03 reunion. Brittany was our senior class president back in the day, and had long been designated the principal party planner for this reunion.

She and the rest of the committee did a great job organizing the event. I of course wish I could have skipped some of the small talk that evening and traded it in for more "big talk" with Britt, but everyone seemed to be having a wonderful time chatting with old classmates.

Sunday was the car ride home to Colorado--this time during the day. Also, surprisingly successful. Ramona and Mika have become quite the seasoned travelers, drastically reducing their number of whining episodes in the car. Now if I could just figure out how to decrease their level of filthiness by the end of a trip . . .

My Little Preschooler

Ramona has been attending a neighborhood preschool called The Ranch Preschool with Miss Jamie for about a month now. She of course loves the social aspect of school best, but I can tell she is learning a lot, too.

 

 

Having preschool just a couple of blocks from our house means we get to commute by foot, bike, or stroller most days. One day I packed the girls a lunch and we walked to the park afterward. Ramona buzzed her letter B bee all the way there.

The next day was the Teddy Bear Picnic at school, where the kids got to take their favorite stuffed bear and a lunch packed with letter "B" foods.

 

A few days later, Ramona had yet another picnic after school. This one was on our front porch with her classmate Kieran, who is our neighbor and one of Ramona's bike buddies.

 

All of the classroom photos are courtesy of Miss Jamie, who is wonderful about documenting and sharing what goes on at preschool.

 

 

This past Thursday was hat day in honor of the letter H. On the same day, Ramona was also in charge of "the Guessing Bag." This meant she got to choose an item whose name starts with the designated letter of the week, include 3 clues, and let classmates try to guess the item. When she was trying to decide which object to take, I suggested a handkerchief, a plastic hot dog, or a headband--and of course she chose the shiny pink headband.

What a diva.

Another great thing about this preschool is that I get to teach a little music class there once a week (in exchange for a tuition discount, hooray!)

This has been an exciting opportunity for me, as I get to develop a preschool music curriculum from scratch AND spy on my child in the classroom on a regular basis. As an added bonus, I get to bring Mika along just for the duration of music time, so she gets a little taste of preschool as well.

In addition to the standard singing and finger plays, I have been experimenting with teaching musical notation. At this point, we have just distinguished between quarter notes and half notes and talked about how notes can move "upstairs" or "downstairs." In one class period, I let the kids glue note heads onto a staff to "compose" their own song, then played each composition in the next class. Some of the songs required more interpretation than others, but each was wonderfully unique and interesting to me.

School year: So far, so good.

A Climb in the Nick of Time

Last year, Colorado made headlines for its raging mountain fires. This year, it made national news for devastating floods. I have never seen the front range as wet as it was during the month of September, and have observed more flood damage in my vicinity than I ever witnessed during all my years in the Midwest. We are grateful that none of this damage reached us directly, and that our home has stayed safe and dry.

The week before the floods, Forest and several of his colleagues from work set out for Rocky Mountain National Park (now extremely difficult to get to because of collapsed roads) and made it to the top of Long's Peak. I'm glad they had a victorious summit . . . and that they didn't choose to hike the following weekend, when the water/snow would have stranded them or swept them away for sure.