Fall Break

With the new school schedule, the boys have a fall break, Thanksgiving break, Christmas break, Spring break, etc... I feel like we are barely into school and we already had our first break! Last week the boys had fall break and it was a great week to do some fun things with the boys. I am starting to have some of the typical mom feelings when adding a new child to the family....I feel like I am going to miss out on time with the boys because I will have a new little one occupying some of my time. So in dealing with these feelings, I really wanted to make the most of our week together and do some fun stuff. Well, the boys were not really feeling well most of the week so we couldn't really go out and do anything like I had originally planned. We ended up staying home most of the week, but we made the best of it anyways!! So.....some of the fun stuff we did.....

Although it was "fall break" it did not feel like fall at all!! The temperatures were still in the 90's! I figured although it was the end of September, it was still blazing hot outside so we pulled the slip and slide back out!! I didn't get any pictures, but we spent a couple of afternoons just enjoying the weather and playing in the water!! This is always a winner with the boys!

Next, I'm sure you are wondering what we did with all of those apples we picked at the orchard....well, we made applesauce!! I have never made applesauce, but I thought we would give it a try.

First, we peeled, cored and cut up all of our apples.

The boys squeezed a little lemon juice onto the apples...

then we added a little sugar, brown sugar and cinnamon sticks...

We then put the whole mixture into a pot to cook down and get the apples nice and soft.

After it was cooked, we mashed it all up and then

you have applesauce!!!

Then we had some fun with a cardboard box... For lunch one day we had dinosaur chicken nuggets. This led us to a discussion of dinosaurs and I thought it would be fun to try and make a dinosaur for the boys to wear out of a cardboard box. (Please note that I am not creative at all, but we made the best of it :) ) We cut and taped for an hour and this was our final product! The boys thought this was the greatest thing and had so much fun playing with it!

They spent the afternoon chasing each other around pretending like they were a big dinosaur!!

Lastly, the boys have been working on the colors blue and red at school. Although the boys have known their colors for a long time, I thought it would be fun to do an activity to incorporate what they are working on at school to something at home. So we did a "red" collage! This little activity actually incorporated a lot of the skills they are working on at school so it ended up being a good "project." I gave them each a magazine and a pair of scissors. They went through the magazine and cut out all of the red pictures they could find. (this was their first time using scissors so it was a learning process!!) After practicing with the scissors for a while, they just started tearing out red pictures. Then they took all their red pics and glued them to a red sheet of paper and that was our red collage!! They were so excited about our "craft"!!

(I just had to post this last picture because I thought it was funny...I tried to lean over the counter and take a pic of both their collages.....but a big ole' belly covered up half the picture!!!)

So, we had a great break and I'm glad I got to spend the week doing some fun stuff with the boys!! I just love hanging out with them!! :)

Mini Trip to the Mountains

Well, we finally got our mountain trip in we've been trying to plan for several months now... we just didn't have all the snow this time around!! Last February we had a trip planned to the mountains with our good friends the Jeffords. Some of you may remember, this trip was initially cancelled because we had a really bad snow storm that weekend and couldn't get to the cabin. (it all worked out for the good though, because that same weekend is when Cade was put in the hospital with pneumonia.) We made it all the way to Blue Ridge on icy roads, but couldn't make it up the back roads to the actual cabin. So we had to stay in a hotel for the night and hope the cabin rental place would let us get our money back. Well, they didn't give us our money back, but they said we could postpone our trip and come back without any additional charge within a year. Here we are several months later and we finally tried our mountain trip again. When you go to the mountains, you expect beautiful views and cool weather....well we definitely didn't have the cool weather!! We didn't want to get too close to the baby coming, so we had to go ahead and go and just enjoy the mountains in 80 degree weather. We made the best of it and it was a nice relaxing weekend!

The mornings were a little cool, so we put sweatshirts on the boys and turned the fireplace on....for about 10 minutes!

On Saturday morning we headed to Merciers Apple Orchard. We had a great time there picking apples...although no one in my family really likes apples except for Joe!! The experience was fun though!!

The ladies and their men!! (Although we were in the mountains, it was still a "Game Day" so we all had our best Tech attire on....a BIG yellow shirt is about the closest I come these days to Tech attire!! :)

The beautiful view at the orchard.

You can't pick apples without at least trying a few along the way. I never knew there were so many different kinds of apples!

After we rode on a tractor, picked apples and had homemade ice cream, we walked around their apple store. It was huge and had sooooo much good stuff!!!! We only bought some apple butter and 12 fried pies!! They had every kind of fried pie you can imagine and they were pretty delicious!

After the orchard we headed back to the cabin where Corrie was already trying to teach the boys how to play Poker.....or just work on recognizing numbers and colors on UNO cards!!! That is poker for 3 year olds! They thought they were big time "using" the chips and sitting at the table!

Nana read everyone some bed time stories and then it was off to bed!

I am glad we finally got our mountain trip in and we had a great time. We had good food, good company and a beautiful landscape!

Are You Ready for Some Football!!

We are, especially the boys around this house!!! They have been counting down the days until the first GT game and it finally came last Saturday. They were so excited to spend time with family and friends tailgating and especially excited to see Buzz!!! They were a little disappointed they didn't get to see Buzz up close and give him a high five, but they pretty much knew where he was at all times during the game!

Of course....playing football!!

You gotta click on this pic of Cade to see it close up.....Ross, one of our fellow tailgaters created his own GT shoes.....the boys thought they were sooooo cool!!!

I didn't get many pictures during the game because it was blazing hot!! We actually didn't make it through a lot of the game because I had 2 tired and hot boys and 1 tired and hot pregnant lady!! Thank God for Grandaddy and Mimi's RV with AC!!

The boys crack me up....it is amazing how the sports they are into change according to the sport that is in season. When the world cup was on they always wanted to play soccer. Then when baseball season started, they constantly asked to play baseball. Now that football is in season, they bombard daddy at the door when he comes home from working asking to go out and play football. I guess they are just pretty much into any sport there is!!! :)

Let's Go Jackets!!