Girl Scouts

Amelie's girl scout troop hasn't been super active (which is fine by me - she's involved in a lot of stuff!) but we did go to an activity put on by another girl scout troop who was fundraising for The Humane Society a little bit ago. The girls made bandannas and cat toys and dog treats and played an animal game and listened to one of the dog trainers, who brought a real live (very, very well behaved dog). We donated some supplies as well. Leah was with me in the ring sling, but she's not pictured :)

Amelie's good friend Hattie is pictured, however!

Decorating a bandanna. Amelie's says "Adopt me!"

Decorating cat toys:

Decorating cookies (there was lots of decorating): 

Then there were animal races: 

 

See the high-five?

The other troop (of middle schoolers, I think) had set the whole thing up, divided the girls into groups, and made the various stations. 

Eye Doctor

James had his first trip to the eye doctor. He was very impressed with all of the gadgets.

There was just a mild amount of cheating where James wanted to uncover his eye and peek out.
Amelie had been before. I keep thinking that they're going to say she needs glasses (I got mine in 2nd grade, and she's in 2nd grade now), but he said it was still not necessary. The doc did say that she's slightly nearsighted in one eye and slightly farsighted in the other, but neither are serious enough at this point to need correction (and they somewhat cancel each other out).

Leah came with me in the sling (not pictured). Until next year!

The Nutcracker

Holly and I took the big kids to see The Nutcracker Suite at Jesse Hall on Monday. I'd taken Amelie when she was 5 and it was magical, and they both have an inordinate love of expressive dance, so I thought James would have a good time, too.

My first clue that he might not was that he didn't want to wear fancy clothes or have his picture made.

Waiting on the show to start:

In retrospect, James was getting sick and the show was too long and late for an under-the-weather kiddo. I'm afraid he spoiled some of Holly's good time, too, and of course we were trapped in the middle of the row. When I took Amelie, I was very careful to get an aisle seat in case we had to leave, but she had no problem and I didn't think either of them would need to make an early exit. Of course, when we got home and were talking about it later, he said he liked the show and wanted to go again next year (NOPE).

I tried to wake this one up -- I thought she might be mad about missing parts! -- but she slept soundly through the  last 20 minutes, thunderous applause, and the house lights coming up. We didn't get home until 10:00pm. Scandalous!

Sick Baby

I downloaded the Blogspot app so that I can upload and post straight from my phone without getting on the computer, so hopefully I can update the blog in a little bit more of a timely manner. 

Anyway, this is a test to see how that all turns out.

Also, Leah is sick(ish) and probably will stay home with Sam tomorrow. Nana Jana says the kids make the cutest faces when they’re sad, and it’s terrible, but I agree! 

School pictures

Hey! The kids had school pictures made ... a month ago! Actually, Amelie's came in and then we had to wait on the ones from preschool.

Amelie had Opinions this year about what to wear and how to do her hair for pictures. I'd suggested braiding it or putting it in a ponytail, since she plays so rough & I didn't know when in the day they'd do the photos, but she wanted it like this:

 Leah was 6.5 months at the time of the pictures, wearing a sailor suit from my friend Caitlin.

And there's James at 5 years old and in pre-K.

Corn Maze

We did Shyrock's Corn Maze on an unseasonably warm day (hence the t-shirts and shorts).

I was going to say that we only walked around in circles in the lower right quadrant, but I do remember going along the bottom of Missouri and ending up in the tiger.

Here's that open space for the tiger:

Sam diligently punching the questions at the check-points. They were really hard this year! (All related to Mizzou sports, and I don't know if we got any right of the 4 checkpoints we managed to find.)

There was mud:

and of course the kids found it:

James may or may not have fallen in. At least he was wearing appropriate shoes.

Me and Leah in the "activity barn."

One of the activities was the big corn pit (which seems like it would be very uncomfortable to me!)

There were also several rope swings and a big, two-story slide.

I got some cute pictures of Leah in her overalls in the pumpkin patch.

These two were not nearly as willing to pose for a photo opportunity:

Halloween!

Well, the Buffaloes have had a fun-filled Halloween. James ended up going as Mario:

And I impressed all of the teachers and none of the kids in the preschool class by bringing this treat for the party (I signed up for fruit/vegetable).

James had maintained for weeks and weeks that he wanted to be the video game character Ness, however - a costume that looks a whole lot like just a kid:

And Amelie wanted to be Thea, a pokemon trainer in Nina Village in Pokemon, who as best as I could figure looks something like this:

So we spent a lot of time Sunday night putting together costumes of basically just clothes and I was convinced that everyone would think they were just trick-or-treating without costumes.

James did wear the Ness costume to school one day (they had two days of parties for the kids who go Mon/Wed/Fri and the kids who go Tues/Thurs, believe it or not).

Leah wore the same pumpkin onesie that Amelie wore her 1st Halloween.

And the orange skirt my friend Liz made for us! By the way, look who's pulling up on the couch! Get out!

We carved pumpkins. The kids were pretty much in charge of their own pumpkins. I cut the tops off, then they did 90% of the cleaning out and 100% of the drawing of the design on with a marker. Sam let them cut as much as they could cut with the little cutter tool. Maybe we'll brave a real knife next year. Amelie's is on the left and is a vampire cat, inspired by the Bunnicula book she just had to read for school, and James's is on the right. I'm especially impressed with the cat scratch on one side - creative!

Here's Amelie! The other major part of her costume was her pokemon belt which held her pokeball, but you can't really see it in this picture. She says Thea would use a staff and mask during battles - I have no idea about anything related to Pokemon, so I'm just taking her word for it.

Leah looks just thrilled to be a part of this bunch, huh? 

Since our neighborhood is super-awesome for trick-or-treating, we had some friends come over to check it out. They were Thor and Valkyrie, and they walked around the loop with Sam and the big kids while I stayed home with Leah and passed out candy. 

I didn't get many pictures of Amelie, but I did take a blurry, low-light video of her describing Halloween for me, since I stayed home: 

And finally, not exactly Halloween, but we went out to grown-up dinner and dessert on Sunday for my 35th birthday. Thanks to the Buffaloes for kiddo- and baby-wrangling!