The last 30 days!

 Last month we went on a little fun filled family camping trip! I'm not usually one for sleeping outdoors, but with school rearing its ugly head, it made me want to zip the 5 of us in our tiny tent and live in the woods together forever, far away from jobs and phones and teachers who want joint custody of my children.

 

We rented a row boat and Daddy paddled us around the lake. We tried fishing, and we were pretty sure we saw a giant fish making waves...turned out we were casting into a scuba diver, oops. 

 

We ended up giving up on fishing all together because the kids were devastated every time we put the worm on the hook. 

 

They kept the worms as pets instea and made them race on paper plates. 

It was so much nice just watching them explore outside, teaching them how to play "pickle in the middle" and spending time together on the peaceful lake in the beautiful weather!

I was a happy camper!

 

We tried to squeeze in lots of things that last week before school started, one more craft, which actually turned out (and also left blow dryed wax all over our walls, oops. Where was that warning Pinterest?)

 

Daddy cruised the neighborhood with his biker gang. His biker name is Curly. 

 

We one last spontaneous middle of the day play date with friends at the lake before school and the cold weather put an end to it. 

 

And we just hung out in our jammies and did whatever we wanted, like eat our breakfast blindfolded and guess what food each bite was. 

 

We saved some for Daddy when he got home from work. Even though his ham and cheese omlette was 2 hours cold, he still guessed right. 

 

Then it was back to school eve, and the kids hunted for their Schlueters, German paper cones filled with goodies to prepare kids for the first day of school. They also licked the ABC's made of honey to symbolize the sweetness of learning. It's a Hebrew tradition that I think is THE COOLEST!

 

First day of school. That's all I can say right now, or I'll start crying for the millionth time about them being away from me all day. The wound is still fresh.

 

When they went inside, I tried to rock Winston like a baby to comfort myself. He refused to let me and screamed, "No, Me is a big boy." It totally cheered me up. I love his funny personality!

  

A few days later Daddy got us free tickets to the circus, so we said forget it to bed time and school nights and partied til ten pm, which we like to call "kid midnight."

We all got to try walking on a low version of the tightrope. Noelle was steady, but I attempted a trick and almost fell to my death, just kidding, to like 4 feet below me. I probably would've landed on my feet like a cat.

 

We all got clown noses, bonus!

Stanton and I loved the motorcycles inside the giant hamster ball the best. Noelle and Winston's favorite part was when the clowns used snow blowers to shower us with toilet paper, until Robert told them the toilet paper was used, but then he told them he was kidding and it was their favorite part again.

School may be cramping our style but we've still got time for our own little wonders, like entering a tomato beauty pageant.

I saw a flyer for it, so I rushed the kids home for school, presented them with tomatoes ready for decorating, and we raced over to the Farmer's Market to enter our prize winning beauties!
However, when we got there, we just saw plain old plump, red, juicy looking normal tomatoes. There was one tomato with a face made out of other vegetables, but that was it. Feeling a little confused we entered ours and...

WINSTON WON!!! He won 1st place and got his choice of gourmet farmer's market cookies! We were proud, and so was he! He kept saying, "Me win. Me is a winner!"

Daddy got more awesome tickets to the Spokane county Fair this time!

Stanton went mutton bustin!

 

He rode a giant sheep! He stayed on for 3.6 seconds and got 4th place. 

  

He was so brave! We were really proud of him!

 

Despite the cold, we grabbed our raft for one more lake day, and were we ever glad we did! Those oars saw a lot of miles that day.

 I started a little learning group for Winston. His little 3 year old buddies come to our house every week for a little lesson, craft, snack and playtime! This week was the letter "A" and the color green. We did all sorts of fun stuff, like painted with Apples and Winston and I made homemade alligator hats for party favors. So far he's loving it and having fun with his friends.

Just wait until we're on letter' P." I think I'm going to rent a pony. 

Robert got fake arrested and went to fake jail for Muscular Dystrophy. While he was there he earned the nickname Mr. Big (fitting) and ate sandwiches. Luckily he raised his bail, donated it and got to get out of the slammer. He's cute!

We went with our friends to Krispy Kremes dressed as pirates and earned a dozen free donuts each.

 

Winston doesn't share my passion for dressing in costumes to get free food.

 We went back to the farm and brought some of our little friends this time to help us pick, corn, cucumbers, carrots, squash, beets, apples and blackberries. Carrots are still our unanimous favorite to pick. It's like you're looking at a weed, and then you yank on it and voila, you're holding a beautiful orange vegetable!

This was just some of our haul form eleven acres farm, but then we headed over to Walters Farm to pick my Honeycrisp apples, my favorite fruit ever! And at the end of the day we all decided that we could totally be farmers, and then we went to Red Robin.