Last Week

jumping at gymnastics

Hannah talks about " 'nastics" almost every day.

window washers

Stay at Home

The kids and I had a lovely stay-at-home-day this morning.  Micah and Jackson opted to stay in jammies for most of the day and kept themselves busy.  Hannah sometimes joined in their adventures; sometimes did her own thing.  Most importantly, they played together and stayed out of trouble so well that I was able to both play with them AND get some cleaning done!

Here are the super heroes with their blanket-capes taking a break to color.

And then coloring turned into seeing how many markers they could stack together.

And here they are as dinosaurs and a butterfly that roars like a dinosaur.

Do you like my new hat?

Daddy bought Hannah a new hat.  She might love it.  She may have worn it to bed one night.  It's possible that she just saw these pictures and said, "That's me!  That's Hannah!  Where's my cake-hat?", and now she's wearing it with her pajamas.

Baby #3

Thanksgiving

Micah had a Thanksgiving Feast at school where we had brunch and the kids performed a couple of songs.

Wednesday afternoon we drove to Indiana to meet up with the Gurley side of the family.  With six kids under the age of five, it was a fun, noisy time.  Nana and Grandpapa had some remodeling done, and their new master bath includes a large swimming pool soaker tub.  The four older cousins had a great time in there together.  Micah also took another bath by himself on a later night because he "couldn't swim with all the girls in there."

lots and lots of reading

snack time

making airplanes with Papa

Papa and Uncle Mike instigated a pillow fight.

Camera Clean-up

It's been over a week since I've posted, so let's just download pictures from the camera and see what we find!

Micah's fall party at preschool

Our ABF fall party - a Notre Dame player and the leprechaun

I took other pictures, too, but my camera and I were having trouble  with fuzziness.  Here are the Olivers as a pumpkin, pie, and cool whip.  :)

Hannah has picked up on Micah's habit of sleeping between the wall and the bed.  Why do we bother buying beds for them??

And, finally, a horse cake I made for Sydney's birthday.

Oh, and a very happy birthday today to Poppa!  I'd tell you how old he is, but I can't count that high...

Gymnastics

I signed Hannah and Jackson up for a free-play gymnastics time at a local YMCA.  Jackson was home sick today, so he'll join us next time.  It took Hannah a few minutes to warm up, but then she was in her element.  Most of the pictures are a little blurry, but I had to post them all so you could see the common theme - the tongue sticking out in concentration.  My mom used to tease me for doing the very same thing.  :)  Oh, and we just happened to have a hand-me-down leotard, so brace yourself for cuteness.

Her tongue isn't out in this one b/c she's saying "help me, Mommy".

This one is my favorite.

You can't see her tongue, but I like the bouncy pony tails, too.

even while sitting down!

2-year pictures

Halloween

Sunday was a very cold, windy, and rainy afternoon, but this dinosaur and butterfly went trick-or-treating anyway!  Gramme and Poppa were here for a visit.  They helped keep the dinosaur in line and put the butterfly to bed when she got tired.

Apples and Applesauce

On Tuesday, the kids and I went apple-picking.  There weren't a ton of apples low enough for them to pick, but that did not hamper the outing.  The kids were content to explore the trees and help me taste-test which ones to pick.

Yeah, he's wearing a crown.  They learned about King David on Sunday, and he's been wearing it everywhere.

Today we set up a little assembly line to turn some of our apples into applesauce.  As we were working, Micah kept saying, "It's like an orchard in here!"  Then as he was telling Scott about it tonight, he said, "There were lots of at-tivities we could do!"  All the kids took turns using the peeler.  Hannah's favorite was washing the apples.  And Jackson was pretty passionate about cutting the apple slices into chunks.

Her clothes got wet washing apples, so she stripped, of course.

Should I not have given a two-year-old a knife?

And for a bonus, here are some pictures of playing in the leaves.

Micah almost always neglects to take his helmet off after riding his bike.  It drives Scott crazy.

Oh, yeah, funny story about the band-aid on her chin.  A week and a half ago Hannah fell down the stairs and got a big gash on her chin.  It was borderline for needing stitches, and we decided she would be okay without them.  Then Tuesday night, she slipped while climbing into her highchair and caught her chin on the edge of the table, opening it back up again.  It was pretty wide, so I called the nurse's hotline and explained the situation.  She asked me a bunch of questions and strongly recommended we take her to the doctor that night.  Scott took her to the ER at Akron Children's Hospital.  They couldn't put stitches in because it had already started to heal from the original injury, but they cleaned it out and gave us some medicine to put on it.  So...our first trip taking a kid to the ER was for a scrape and a band-aid.  Nice.  :)

[Seriously, though, I'm really glad we took her to have the opinion of a suture specialist and to have professionals hold her down to clean it so we don't have to worry about infection.]