A Fall Day at the Zoo

Bats

We absolutely love bats in our family! Samantha and my dad are members of the International Bat Conservancy and Samantha is going as a bat for Halloween this year.
We love to visit the bats at the zoo! Aren't they amazing...

Pigeon roost

Every year we can't wait to go to Pigeon Roost... It is a wonderful family farm that has pumpkins, a corn maze, chickens, goats, a play area, a tree house, swings and a camel!

John went with us and played photographer... this airplane swing thing was new this year... you are never too old to play on swings!

We had a wonderful time and had a picnic at Pickerington Ponds on the way home while we watched the sun set... It was so nice to spend quality family time together...

Apple Butter Day

After John got home from work and while Samantha was still at her play date at Ann's house John and I went to Apple Butter Day in Groveport. The weather was perfect, sunny and warm and we really enjoyed seeing all the changing colors of fall. There is nothing like a small town festival in Fall!
And, it was nice to spend time with just John. We hardly ever do anything without Samantha because we don't want to, we just really enjoy being with her... but... every now and then it is sort of nice just to be by ourselves. I told John about how Samantha had incessantly chattered all day and how it had about driven me batty... but... no matter how annoying she is I am always thankful for having her there with me. I make an effort to never take her for granted and to never let my feelings of annoyance outweigh my feelings of gratefulness at being blessed with such a perfect gift.
Oh... and there were antique tractors and bean soup at the senior center...

Cute thing Samantha did in school:

I am home alone and I don't like being home all by myself. Although I should be happy to be by myself after the day I spent with Samantha... First there was this morning... We sleep in on Saturdays when John is working but today Samantha woke me up early to tell me about the tooth she had just lost... and she did not stop talking until it was time for book club.
John said that she had woken him up at 4am when she lost her tooth to tell him all about it. So, she tells me all about her tooth... how it was hanging there and how she had to yank it out and how it had gushed blood and how she had used my wash cloth to make the gushing blood stop and how she had then put the wash cloth in the laundry and then how the tooth still had blood on it... and how she couldn't get back to sleep so she turned on the TV and watched "Total Drama Island" and how it was an episode she hadn't seen... (What followed was an in depth detailing of the entire episode that was longer than the actual episode itself...) Then she went on to tell me how she'd fallen back to sleep and had a bad dream... and how Marissa the cat was in the dream and she was really fat... and I was in the dream... and John was in the dream but she can't really remember what the dream was about other than the fact that it was scary and therefore bad... Then finally it was time to leave for book club but Samantha's chatter didn't stop there... In the car I heard about how she has 4 Littlest Pet Shop butterflies and one is green with pink wings and the other one is blue and so on and so forth... and what set they came with... and where she got each set...
Finally we got to the library where this month's book club was being held. I led the discussion about, "Bunnicula: A Rabbit Tale of Mystery" by Deborah and James Howe. We talked about what a mystery is and the difference between reality and fantasy. Then I had the girls: Samantha, Tara and Ann, write a short story. It had to be a mystery and it had to have an element of fantasy: talking pets. While they worked on their stories I talked to Ann's mom, Sally and we found tons of books to check out. Libraries are very dangerous places for me! Then there was a bit of a tantrum (thrown by Samantha) over when everyone would go to the rest room to wash their hands and when they would read their stories. But all's well that ends well and Samantha decided to loose her bad attitude and behave like a ten year old. After book club Samantha and Tara were invited over to Ann's house for a play date which brings us to why I am home all alone...
I showed Sally my burnt thumb. Sally's a physical therapist as well as the mom we all go to for medical advice for the kids... When she saw it she said she wanted to clean it with some sort of scrub brush and medicine... yeah, right... um, NO THANK YOU!

OMG!!!

I know it's a bad picture but I was taking it with one hand... and I was in pain. You know those frozen vegetables that you steam in the bag in the microwave... well, they are hot! Very hot! That shiny spot in the picture is a burn about the size of a quarter on my thumb. It oozed all night and is really gross.

Three Little Old Ladies

Samantha had Tara over on Monday and I taught her how to crochet. John took this picture of the three of us sitting on the couch working on our projects... he said we looked like we were in an old folks home.

Our yard decorated for Halloween

Last Sunday I went to a Pampered Chef party that Gretchen had and when I came home John and Samantha had decorated... I love it, they did such a nice job. I especially like the graves where our trees used to be!

Allergies...

Samantha's allergies have been acting up this fall and she really doesn't like the medicine she has to take. I wish she would learn to swallow pills, it would be so much easier. My friend Sally said she taught her kids to swallow pills using tiny M&Ms. I thought it was a great idea but Samantha did not... she said she knew why I wanted her to learn to swallow M&Ms and that she knew it would lead to swallowing pills and NO THANK YOU... I told her that was fine, that she would stick to icky medicine instead of an easy pill... and she drew this picture... called the medicine cycle... first she cries, then takes the icky medicine and it goes into her tummy and next it comes out of her tummy and into the toilet.

25 years!

John's sister, Linda just celebrated her 25th wedding anniversary. Her husband planned the most beautiful vow renewal ceremony as a surprise for her. Here we all are at the church.

Our house without the trees!

Apple Picking

It is finally fall! The weather is perfect: cool in the mornings and warmer in the afternoons... and the air has that wonderful smell of leaves, apples and burning wood.



This past weekend we tackled a huge tree removal project. John and I have been contemplating removing the 2 pear trees in our front yard. One of them has some sort of funk and is slowly dying and they completely block the front of the house. We hate to cut down trees but we finally decided it would be for the best and we will plant another one in the back yard to make up for it.



John bought a cute little chain saw:14" chain and it's electric... so, Friday afternoon we cut the trees down! John used the chain saw to cut down the big branches and then I used the clippers to cut the branches up and stuff them into a zillion lawn & leaf bags... hey, we live in the suburbs... we use little play chain saws and stuff whole trees into lawn & leaf bags! John cut up the larger branches and the trunks to use next summer in our fire pit in the back yard. I think those 2 trees supplied us with enough wood to have fires until we are 112.



For the larger branches John tied a rope around the branch which I pulled on while he climbed the ladder with the chain saw being careful not to trip himself on the chain saw's cord. It went well except for one branch where the chain saw got stuck, the branch began to fall the wrong way toward our neighbor's house and I couldn't hold the rope. Samantha had to run across the street to get our neighbor, Skip.

Boy were we sore on Saturday morning! We thought we could get the stumps out ourselves but um... no, we couldn't... the roots were huge! So we called our neighbor, John, the professional tree guy. He laughed at us! He laughed at our tiny little chain saw and out wimpy rope and all out lawn & leaf bags. Then he really laughed at the trench we dug around the trees and the axe we used to try and cut out the roots. He used this big machine that chopped the roots up into oblivion, it was really neat and quite fast. He is a life saver!

It looks really odd to not see those trees out there in the front yard but wow, you can see our house! It looks really nice. We do still have one tree up by the house in the front yard so we do feel good about that. I will post the pictures soon... they are still on my camera.