9th Birthday-Sammy

Happy 9th Birthday to Sammy! His love of Legos continues and Heroica was by far his favorite present. He's growing up fast and is constantly thinking of something... He loves to write and his new goal is to become a writer or maybe open a restaurant that he wants to call Rocks on Fire... :)

Gingerbread Houses

A bitter cold week this week brought illnesses to each kid and a very long week. The temp was -18 on Saturday... Sammy had a ruptured ear drum, Alex strep throat and Katie is struggling with croup. So to help with the cabin fever, we did Gingerbread Houses just a little earlier this year.
This is the CandyMan's House. He had a different face on each roof. I should have taken a sideways picture...
Alex did a candy train :)

Fall @ the Pumpkin Patch

We headed over to the Butte and the Reindeer Farm for their Pumpkin festival. The kids loved feeding the reindeers. It was combat feeding though as those monsters were starving!


Katie and Alex loved riding the horses...

We took a hay ride to the maze. The Hay Maze was the highlight of the boys. It was tough! They ran after the tootsie roll bandit (if you caught him you got a tootsie roll). Katie like the lollipop fairy, who gave out lollipops and helped those in trouble.
Pretty morning in the Butte, around 30 degrees and sunny and clear... Beautiful location with lots of great views. The kids liked how they opened up a field and "planted" lots of pumpkins for kids to choose from...

October Happenings

Alex-School is going well this year. He's showing a new maturity, a large part of which is due to sports. We have a rule that he has to act like a 9 year old to do the sports and he's doing a good job of stepping up to that role and getting his homework and chores done. Cross Country finished in September and the new sport is Basketball. He goes to practice 2 mornings a week and has 1 game a week after school.

Sammy-For the first time there are activities for 3rd graders this year so Sammy is busy 2 afternoons a week. He's more into academics than sports. He's doing Lego Robotics and Battle of the Books. He's really turned into a reader and his report card is great in all areas!

Katie-Kindergarten is moving along, we've picked up a few bad habits from the kiddos in the class, but we're also moving along on our learning and the alphabet and numbers are coming right along. I think it was the right move to put her in so young. Her weakness is her writing skills but she'll get there as she gets older...

Alex-Cross Country

In September we finished up cross country at the big (and I mean) big district meet. Lots of kids!! Alex ran in the 4th grade 1.5 mile race and finished 8th overall and 1st in his school. I was impressed that he could truly run the whole race at that speed. Shocked me watching him dash over the hills like they were nothing. All those mileage club runs from his K-2 school recess days really have built him some muscles!
After the meet, we celebrated at Red Robin :)

School-moving along

We are up to our necks in Fall in Alaska. The temp this morning was 36 degrees and while it was a beautiful sunny day, the leaves are halfway down and the flowers have died. We're also moving right along in school with no issues so far... Here's the recap...

Alex-is so excited to have sports after school. He's into cross country running right now and runs 2 miles every day rain or shine outside. He loves to run and is very competitive. He's getting praise from the coach for listening to the coach's comments on style and technique. The big meet comes up in 2 weeks and he's very excited about it! He's definitely tired at night and getting homework done is a chore, but so far he's managing. He really wants to do sports...

Sammy-is more academic and volunteered to be a Conflict Manager at recess. If you know Sammy well you'd be laughing at this one. But he studied and took all the tests and received his badge and key and is one of just a few third graders that volunteered. He loves having power to let kids into the building to go bathroom and loves to walk them through problems. He claims it's a little boring as not enough kids get in trouble to need his help :)

Katie-in Kindergarten they are all about filling buckets (being nice to others). So she's constantly filling buckets of others. It really fits her personality because she loves telling people I like your shirt, can I help... She's well known by many kids and staff in the school because of her adorable personality...

Back to School

Summer flew by fast and we've been back at school for a week or so. Alex is now a 4th grader, wow I remember his first day of Kindergarten! His favorite things are still football, birds, and airplanes. He's become quite an artist and loves to draw pictures of birds that he sees. He is developing his responsibility and maturity. Sammy is entering 3rd grade. He has a male teacher that he really likes. His favorite things are reading, legos, legos and drawing lego batman characters. Sammy is a sponge for information and is always asking "what does this mean" and it's usually a word I have to think about or look up! Katie just turned 5, (birthday pics soon!) and was very eager for Kindergarten roll in today. She's very social, happy and eager to have friends. She is excited to ride the bus to school and stay there all day. I'm still at the high school and it's a break working with a different age group of kids. Maybe I'll have all the secrets by the time my own kids become teenagers, yep that age will scare me for sure!

Disneyland Vacation

Thanks to a great last minute deal from Alaska Airlines, we just got back from a week at Disneyland... We took the boys down about 4 years ago, and they are still of an age where it was exciting to go. I didn't tell them what was going on, until I woke them up in the middle of the night to catch the plane. The day prior to the trip, I gave them a writing assignment to see if they could guess a big surprise, as a reward for filling their reading logs. Alex actually guessed an airplane trip to California. Sammy guessed a Lego toy day, where he could buy all the legos they wanted...

Our last trip was in April, where fireworks were weekly and characters few and far between. Wow! In August there are 2 parades a day, many shows at night, and characters at every turn...

Katie loves Princess Tianna and Minnie Mouse was her favorite.

Alex is a big Donald Duck fan..The boys are now tall enough to ride any ride, and they each had their favorites. Sammy loved the Haunted Mansion and Fantasia, one of the nightly water shows... Alex was roller coasters all the way....

It's a buggy life....

We did one character breakfast at Goofy's Kitchen and it was well worth the money as we had characters at our table the entire meal... Katie was treated like a princess and had a dance with Aladdin.

The kids were a great age to truly enjoy all the park had to offer. Truly glad we had the chance to go before the boys got too old to not think it was cool...

Days of Summer

We're in week 3 of swimming lessons, the kids love being in the pool. It's complicated with 2 of them with ear tubes but we do the best we can to make it work. The boys are in the same class together so that makes it easier. Above is Sammy getting ready to enter his class and below is Alex on the diving board in the 9 foot section. Hard pics to see as the lighting in the pool area doesn't help me take pics!

Katie jumping into the 3.5 foot section, she has no fear this year. Last year she screamed and wouldn't go near the water. All the difference in the world, with a different teacher this year.

Katie listening to the safety speech...

We usually have female moose and babies around our house. This is the first bull moose that's been hanging around for about 3 weeks. He comes by everyday and he's a bit agressive so we're more watchful. My dad was working on our block wall towards the back of our yard and the moose fake charged at him, so we watch for him carefully. I'm not sure why he's hanging around here this time of year. He's young and needs to learn a few things!Lego Madness. We had a stop, drop and build day (i.e. rain!). The boys spent hours perfecting their perfect lego from scratch. Alex built a truck and bobcat.

Sammy is all about Batman this summer so of course he made a batmobile.

Brotherly love. Sammy stops riding his bike for a quick hug from his favorite sister.

Alaska Railroad

While we live in Alaska, the kids have never been on a train ride. First the railroad is not the cheapest thing and second, it's faster to drive so we visit places but just drive to them! So when Alaska Railroad announced it was allowing kids to ride free during the month of June, I grabbed Nana and we loaded the kids up for the 4 hour train ride to Seward Alaska. We had to be at the train depot in Anchorage by 5:45, so our day started at 4:30 so we could make the drive in. Needless to say the adults, were tired but the kids--nope they were excited!! The train left Anchorage and headed South along the Seward Highway. Beautiful scenery, animals, and the sun shine made for a great day.

Katie chatted with everyone and had the conductor wrapped around her finger! The boys have even decided that riding a train is better than flying and I think I agree, especially if you could get the train to go faster! The employees are much nicer, the seats are larger and you have leg room, and you can move about the train and experience the doom car, caboose, dining car, etc. And Sammy says the bathroom are first class :) There was not enough time for the kids to be bored and we didn't take any toys!

In Seward, we walked from the train depot, along the ocean, until we got to the Alaska Sealife center. It was great to revisit a place that they boys haven't been to since they were Katie's age. Then we hit a few playgrounds and walked back to the train depot. Great ocean side walk with sunshine! We left Seward heading for Anchorage and got home around 11:30 pm to 3 sleeping kids in the car!

Here's Nana and Katie, in the one time we could get Nana to head up to the upstairs for the dome car!Our dining experience on the train, Sammy thought this was the highlight of his trip. Anything that involves food!
The sea otters at the Sealife center. I have shots of the boys when they were little being enthralled by these guys too!

Train pic from Seward.
Hot chocolate in the dining car!
Riding along the




Breakfast on the train....

Pennsylvania Vacation

We spent a week back in PA earlier this month, catching up on the extended family. It's always a mad rush seeing everyone. The kids love to go back east as it's a lot of play time, no chores or homework :) Here are some shots from the visit.

Here's Sammy in the "mean" tree as they call it. He's loved this tree since he was little and used to talk to it all the time. Yep that's Sammy, he prefers talking to trees than people!
We took a small hike in Kings Gap with my brother and his dog (who drove up from Texas). Katie wanted her picture taken by this tree for some reason.
Three goofy faces up at the top of King Gap, overlooking the Cumberland Valley.Katie hanging out with the tree man.
Photo shoot with Uncle Wes and Earl...
Alex in the tree, note the Steelers Hat, he was in Steeler's country and played football constantly back there!

Test

I've been having some computer glitches lately, the new version of Internet Explorer is not publishing my web posts. So I've switched over to firefox to get posts back on the blog. I'm going to work on recreating the posts and posting them. If they appear twice just ignore it as maybe that means IE finally figured itself out!

Summertime Work

We've been out of school for a little over a week and have slipped into our summertime routine. Everyone does "homework" for about 2 hours in the morning, then it's playtime or chore time until after lunch. We have some reading time and then head outside for more play time. Have to love summer! I've added onto the boys' chore lists by having them take turns making lunch. They think they are big stuff making the meals for everyone. I think it's great as I no longer have to do it :)

We're still knee-deep in yard work. We've gone through 5 dump truck loads of dirt and 1 load of gravel. We need about 4 more loads before we are done.. We're adding about a 1/2 acre of grass and building a nice landscape block wall the whole way around. It's great having older kids as they pitch in and help do the work. Sometimes I add a little bribery. Today we were moving the load of gravel...
They could earn $1 for each wheel barrow load moved. Sammy claimed that quickly and racked up $9 before he had to take a break... The little dump truck load was worth a penny, but for some reason Alex really wanted to move it that way. He probably worked harder with lots of loads back and forth but he earned $4.54. That's 454 trips with that little truck!

Katie's dump truck was worth a dime a load, but she didn't care she just wanted to play in the dirt!

I'll try to post more now that there is downtime in life again! Heading to the East coast next week, hoping the humidity, heat and tornados are gone by then!