Not Exactly the Weekend I Had Planned...

My weekend did not go exactly how I had planned.  I spent most of it looking like this and having to cancel all of my Saturday plans...

...thanks to a scratched cornea as a result of a darth vader helmet mishap at the end of our trick-or-treating fun Halloween night.  It was my brush with the dark side... and I don't recommend it.  I had no idea how painful scratching your eye can be and I'm considering wearing protective goggles on all future Halloweens as a result...kidding...kind of.  2 1/2 days of incredible pain, blurry vision, lots of ibuprofen, lots of tissues, antibiotic eye drops, and lots of darkness later and things are finally looking up. I'm hoping the blurry vision continues to improve and am anxious to follow up with my eye dr. to make sure things are healing properly.  I only get one set of eyes and I truly appreciate the work that they do for me.  The boys were troopers accompanying me to urgent care since Mickey was at drill.  They praised me for my bravery.  It was cute!

Despite the watery, painful eyes, the boys and I did manage to get to the weekend's air show they'd been anticipating for at least a month.  I enjoyed it with one eye open while hovering in any shade I could find.  Thankfully we had access to the VIP tent which helped with that.  

The boys make some cute VIPs... 

...and we had fun checking things out for a couple of hours before calling it good (thank you very, very loud jets for making it easier to convince my kiddos it was time to go :-) ...

The boys were very happy to finally be able to touch some planes... 

...and even thought hiding out in the tent every so often was pretty fun too... 

Thanks to a generous kiddo who had some extra tickets, the boys were able to ride the roller coaster they'd been eyeing all day...

...brave kiddos that they are even chose front row seats... 

...and I'm quite certain that one little ride cured them of wanting to visit the midway again for a good year or so... 

...that, my friends, it the face of a kid who realized halfway into the ride it was a bad decision.  I know that feeling well roller-coaster hater that I am.  Live and learn, right???

We also had another fun day of soccer.  The boys are finally participating a bit more... 

...along with some pretty regular distractions, such as the bouncy netting on the goal...

...they did actually get in on some of the action on the field (they're numbers 2 and 3) ...

...Colton even got to dribble a bit... 

The boys were the winners of the sportsmanship award this week for being good buddies/teammates... 

...they were pretty darn excited...

They also earned patched for having a good attitude last week and being brave this week... 

...I love i9 sports focus on building character along with teaching a sport.  

We celebrated with frozen yogurt... 

...and soft pretzels... 

The boys get very focused with their treats :-)  

We spent some time this weekend changing up our decorations... 

...sitting fireside...

...and enjoying some gorgeous fall weather...

...which obviously required a trip to the shady bouncy bridge park...

...in shorts nonetheless.  Once again, live and learn, right??  Colton told me "my teeth are moving, mom."  So cute!  We learned how exercise can warm us up.  So do snuggles...

 

...these days one cute picture leads to many silly ones...

Despite my painful, busted eye, we managed to have lots of smiles and enjoy our change of plans to accommodate my healing.  Be careful with your eyes, people!!  A scratched cornea is no fun!!

"d" week

This week at "Planker Academy," we're focusing on lowercase d.  It's been a fun week.  Take a look...

We made lower each lower case d with dots (Mason's had a dozen and Colton's got a little dirty)...

...the d had a door.  AND inside the door was a dragon...

...Colton's had a dog inside too :-).  

We've been having lots of fun with dominos...

...sometime we can stick with finding matches and other times we count the dots but to be honest, they spent more time this week just building and playing with them and I'm totally fine with that too.  Colton's really good at putting them away neatly :-).  

We also spent some time decorating pumpkins for the coloring contest at the Fresh Market...

...cutting was the biggest hit of this project.  I wasn't surprised.  

Speaking of decorating, the boys also decorated the house for Halloween a bit more...

...cute, huh?  Thanks Grandpa Teddy and Mimsy for all the goodies.

We had some sensory fun with a doughy dinosaur dig...

...thanks to the measured mom for the idea.  She's got tons of great ones over there.  You can find the recipe for the dough there too.  Cornstarch, old sunscreen, and green food coloring went into ours.

After we got bored with the dinosaurs, the boys decided to make some footprints.  Fun times...

With soccer season under way, we've also been working on our dribbling...

...and passing...

We also made some fun Pinterest-inspired donkeys...

...which ended up looking a bit more like pigs, especially with the legs that the boys insisted were necessary :-).  They sure do love anything that involves paint and didn't they do a lovely job with the smiles?  Fine motor skill development at work here for sure!

Probably the most fun thing the boys did all week was another "dig" for dinosaurs activity...

...we simply froze little dinosaur toys in water inside a pan and they had fun trying to get them free from the ice.  We seriously had to repeat this activity at least 5 times.  Who would have thought??

Other letter d activities included lots of books about dinosaurs, ducks, dragons, dogs, even doughnuts.  Oh, and we also had lots of play dough fun.  It was a great week!

A Wish Come True...Temporarily :-)

My wish for cooler weather came true temporarily for the weekend and beginning of the week and we've been taking full advantage of the cooler weather by spending as much time as possible outside.  It's already heating up again but we know that little tease means more should be on the way in the near future.  We're excited!!

Saturday morning was still quite toasty and we were all awake WAY too early so we had a very lazy morning at home before we headed off to spend the morning doing what we do best on Saturday mornings--building....

 

The boys had fun making their ambulances and I got them to pose for about a second together on the pumpkins.  This is as good as it got...

Our next stop was Michaels for the most disappointing activity the boys have ever attended in their lives.  They had hoped to make the spider and frankenstein (cool, right??) ...

...but the teacher only provided them with rocks, paint and googley eyes that were enormous for the very small rocks these kids with developing motor skills were supposed to paint... 

...she was incredibly unhelpful and we left with these lovely painted rocks that I very unhappily forked over $4 for.  

How can places like Lowe's and Home Depot have such fantastic, free projects for kids but Michaels charges you for pathetic ones like this??  Aren't they supposed to be known for their crafting supplies??  Get us hooked on some cool ones we might want to buy more of to use at home.  LAME!!!!

Anyways... after a quick stop at Target (it's a requirement when you're in the neighborhood, right?:-)), we headed home for lunch.  We almost made it home before the boys passed out in the car so instead of heading inside for lunch, I transferred them into the stroller (transferring them into their beds NEVER works) and hit the road for a run while they napped.  It was starting to cool off a bit and the run actually felt glorious.  We covered 7 miles before calling it quits and giving lunch another shot.  Success!!

We spent the rest of the day playing in the backyard which felt like just a little bit of heaven.

Sunday morning's weather looked something like this...

...hello perfection!!  Needless to say we spent the ENTIRE day outside starting with some yardwork before everyone was even dressed for the day....

...we ate breakfast outside and then headed out for a bike ride to the green market and made a pit stop for some coffees too.  

Before we knew it, it was time for the boys first soccer practice and game.  How cute are they??

They were pretty reserved for their first day but had a good time as long as we stayed close by.  Good thing they allow parents on the field at first... 

...it was a beautiful day to kick off the season and seems like it will be alot of fun for the boys once they get comfortable.  

We followed up the soccer match with some lunch before heading home to load the boys in the stroller again for a very late naptime. Another trip downtown was in order.  We walked around for an hour or so before parking ourselves at the Pelican cafe for some beverages and outdoor fun on the beautiful day...

 

...it was the perfect ending to a perfect weekend.  

Monday morning was still gorgeous so we took advantage of it and headed off for a run that ended up at the park first thing in the morning...

...the boys and I love beating everyone else there.  We had the place to ourselves.  While we were there, we noticed that it looks like they've got some remodeling in the works.  How exciting...

The boys decided they wanted to walk all the way home and they ended up stepping up to the challenge beautifully...

...they walked the entire mile and a half without a single complaint.  They took a fantastic nap too :-)

Today's starting to warm back up again but we still had a nice morning walk to story time and much nicer weather than it has been while we read, sang, and danced.  Today's features were...

Zoe Hall does a great job of educating and entertaining with these fall-themed books.  

We spent the rest of our morning playing and exploring at the park.  Once again, the boys decided they'd just walk home...I'll have to start planning in extra time for those little feet to walk the mile + home.  It's nice to just enjoy the journey once in a while though.  They're good at reminding me of that when I'm patient enough to embrace it and I see lots of walks in our near future to help me do just that.