Pumpkin Patch

Yep, got rid of the old template. It was ugly. I'll work on a cleaner design sooner or later. In the mean time it'll just be a template.

We made our annual trek to Appleworks. Here are some pictures.

Ethan is 3!!!

I cannot believe my baby is 3. Mr Ethan is one feisty and fearless little dude. We joke that he'll be a cliff jumping nudist. Ethan loves to climb and jump off anything and well he does love being naked too. He recently conquered the tricycle. His little legs finally grew long enough to really be able to pedal.

Lately Ethan has been all about dragons. Mostly from the movie How To Train Your Dragon. So of course he found several dragon toys in his presents.

We had a little party for him on sunday with our families.

  Had to throw in a picture of Coop. Look at those eyes!!

 Belle and Ethan with all their cousins.

He got a dragon costume. In this picture he is pretending that he is blowing fire. =)

co-op fun

We are part of a homeschool co-op this year. It's been a lot of fun and I think it's really nice for Belle to get out and be part of a "class".

During Science they'll watch Magic Schoolbus on my laptop.

Then they'll go back to class and do an experiment. In this case they were learning about germs and had used a special lotion and then washed their hands to show how important good hand washing is.

Ethan just chills in the nursery with the other toddlers.

Then once a semester we have a "Lit Day" where every family reads the same book and then one co-op class is devoted to some sort of activity about the book. This time it was the book "Gifted Hands, the Ben Carson Story. " And since Ben was a brain surgeon our class was devoted to the brain. We didn't actually read the book, although I tried. Belle just wasn't having it. We did however watch the movie together.

In one room the kids did Brain teasers, or in this case, played with Geo boards

The kids even got their own Dr name badges.

Here they made play doh brains.

And got to explore medical equipment. At first I couldn't understand Belle's reaction in this picture. Then I saw what was in Mary Jo's hands, a needle. Yep, that'll freak Belle out any day. Oh and how funny, the other kindergartener in the co-op is also named Belle. So in this picture we have Belle x2.

Here they learned about the parts of the brain and got a coloring
book.

These are not in order, but the kids started off learning about nutrition, food allergies and diabetes. A family in our co-op has some pretty severe food allergies along with diabetes. The kids got to eat a few snacks and learn about how our friend deals with her diabetes. Belle ate A carrot (one that I forced her to eat), an apple and a delicious banana muffin. Oh and drank some Crystal Light, thus leaving all the kids with red mustaches the rest of the day as you can see in the above pictures.

What did Ethan do? He played with his friends in the nursery. Here he is with Sammy. They are DOUBLE TROUBLE!!! One is as equally rotten as the next. We joke that they'll get married and be carefree spirits off having fun. Probably backpacking through Europe or something. =)