The Five Week Puzzle

Nothing much to say other than it should NOT take five weeks to put together a puzzle.  Even if the puzzle itself is different than the one pictured on the box.  

This one was a doozy!

Two Hour Delay

We're all a little confused this year- snow before Halloween, and before Thanksgiving, must surely mean Christmas is here early!  The kids spent their first two hour delay of the year creating a batch of Elf Yourself silliness.  

 Yes, that is a Laney Elf dancing on the subway with the kids.  Dreams come true at Christmastime!

Adam and Emma spent the bulk of their snow time "snurfing" (snowboarding plus surfing) down the little slope and over the four foot rock retaining wall in our yard.

We drank a worthy amount of hot chocolate, snuggled up by the fire, and overall are just starting to settle in to our long winter's nap, which feels like it might to be especially long this year.  

Thankful for a Dog

Laney is the Number One thing the kids are most grateful for this Thanksgiving season. 

And it's a good thing they love her because boy every season and stage and week we are learning new things about being dog owners.  But this is just a cuteness post.

Overheard in the car this morning- 

A- If I could choose between an unlimited lifetime pass to Legoland and Laney, I would choose Laney. 

E- If I could choose between the chance to meet a real fairy and shrink down to the size of a fairy and Laney, I would choose Laney.

 Leah needed to practice putting diapers on something squirmy and impatient...

 Good grief she was a furry mess!

 And now we have a brand new pup.  Cute, but a different kind of cute. 

 And a freshly shorn pup needs a sweater!

 Oh, the whimpering when the kids leave for school. 

 And the joy when they come back!

She also got a new jacket... just in time for the third snow of the season! 

 Tiny dogs aren't allowed to be outside much when it's negative temps outside, and she doesn't like that one bit.

Anywhere the kids go, she wants to be there too!

A Musical Salute

 Last Sunday the kids and I headed down to DSM for a Star Spangled Salute- a patriotic concert by the Iowa Military Veterans Band.  

It was a very red, white, and blue event!

We got to celebrate and cheer for a 94-year-old World War 2 veteran, a POW survivor, a Gold Star family, and a Purple Heart recipient, and we stood up and cheered for Grandpa Mark and Uncle Bubba when they played The Army Goes Rolling Along.  

There were a LOT of old people there, and it warmed my patriotic heart to share a piece of my happy childhood memories- both military band music and recognition of soldiers- and to watch my kids experience a military concert.  One day I would like to take them to an active duty soldiers concert.  Not that they didn't fully appreciate Moon River and the Glen Miller tribute, but I think they would enjoy the music of a younger band even more.  

On the way home from the concert the kids had lots of questions about soldiers, war, and military life, so we called up our favorite soldier of all- Grandpa Mark.  

He answered their questions about Pearl Harbor, life in war, chemical warfare and national defense in a very age-appropriate way, and showed them some of the treasures he's collected over the years from his military service, including helmets, a rifle with a bayonet, medals, memories of jumping out of airplanes, and pictures and stories of my brother and cousins, his brothers, his dad, and his grandpa, all who have served our country.  It was a HUGE part of my childhood (four elementary schools, two middle schools and two high schools all because he was serving in the Army) and I'm grateful that we took an afternoon to spend time with and think about the soldiers we love most.  We're so proud to be part of a family that serves this country!

On Telling the Truth

 When I was a little girl in third grade we lived in Rhode Island for just nine months, just long enough for all of us kids to attend one year of school and my dad to attend the Naval War College.  

We lived in military housing there, in a duplex of sorts where two three bedroom houses shared a wall and the street was filled with young families like ours.  We all walked to school and my teacher's name was Mrs. Paranzino.  She taught us how to stick cloves in oranges to make a delicious smelling Christmas decoration and she instilled in me a love of reading and writing.  When I was in third grade I was awarded the Rhode Island Young Authors award for my brilliant story The Key That Opened Any Door.  My mom and my dad attended a celebration and ceremony with me and I remember feeling pretty special about that. 

My best friend on that street full of kids was Jennifer Williams.  She was an only child and she thought it was pretty amazing that I had a sister AND two brothers to play with all the time (Auntie Allison wasn't born yet).  I thought it was amazing that she had a quiet house with no brothers and no sisters to bug her all the time.  We got along pretty great!

And since we were nine years old my mom thought we were responsible enough to go to the grocery store across the street behind our neighborhood to get her a block of cream cheese one day.  By my memory, the story went something like this. 

My mom gave me a five dollar bill and me and Jennifer were so excited to get to walk over to the grocery store all by ourselves!  This was long before the time of cell phones or GPS tracker watches or even the good old family 1-800 number.  It was just me and my friend and what felt like all the money in the world.  

My mom told us to go straight into the store, buy the cream cheese and come straight home.  And we did go straight into the store and we did get the cream cheese, which was probably about 80 cents.   But then we saw some of those delicious Hostess cupcakes that are filled with cream and we knew we would have enough money for both, so we bought the cream cheese and the cupcakes and then we left the store.  Just me and her and what still looked like a whole lot of money, plus some crumbs on our lips. 

Next door to the grocery store was an arcade, and with all that money in our pocket we thought it would be okay if we slipped in and just played one or two of our favorite games.  Ski ball has always been my favorite arcade game, and it was such a treat to get to play a few rounds of it with my belly full of cupcake and my pockets now empty of any sort of change for my mom.  But we had the cream cheese so eventually we decided to head home to deliver it to her. 

I don't know how long we were actually gone, or how worried my mom really was (I don't recall Newport, Rhode Island being an overwhelmingly busy city) but I do know that she wasn't very happy when we finally strolled in, warm cream cheese in hand, crumbs on our lips and not nearly as much money leftover as we should have had.  

And of course, when she asked us where we had been and what on earth took us so long to get home, I don't think that the whole truth came out.  It might have taken a few days of not getting to play with my best friend Jennifer to decide that I was going to tell the whole story. 

Lately we've been talking a lot in our family about what to do when we make poor choices.  Not IF, when.  Because the whole point of this earthly experience is to make choices, good and bad, and learn from the consequences, good and bad.  And to understand the role of the Atonement and forgiveness and God's mercy in all of it.  And hopefully come away from each experience a little wiser than we were before.  I'm pretty sure that my kids are making their own 'when I was a little girl' stories to share with their kids, but in the meantime, lucky for them, I've always got a plenty long queue of naughty little mommy stories that I am always happy to share!

Treasures

Emma has quite a beautiful nature collection.  

Not shown, because it fell into the carpet and disappeared immediately, Laney's first lost puppy tooth. 

A Teddy Bear

Laney is pretty much the cutest stuffed animal we've ever owned.

First Snow

This is the first year that it has snowed before Halloween since we've lived here, 

and it sure was a pretty one!

 Laney, of course, had no idea what to think of it.

 

 The boys had just cut the grass the day before, so she ended up a combination of green and white!

 So cute to see her pathway through the snow!

It has snowed one more time since then, but thankfully neither time has been long-lived.  We're still enjoying all of the beautiful greens and reds and oranges that we can get!

Finishing Up Fall... and the FFFF

For as much as we love to/have to hibernate in the winter time, we try really hard to soak up all of the sunlight and fresh air that we can in the month of October.  And all of the beautiful colors!

Emma and Noah were determined to make a leaf pile worth jumping in, and they did a pretty great job!

 We headed back out to Saylorville Lake to see if the water had gone down enough over the summer to get onto the beach...

and it had! 

 Laney had a great time getting soggy up to her armpits.

Leah did not have a great time holding her.

It was windy and cloudy... a pretty typical day in Iowa, but still perfect for skipping rocks (a skill Adam has inherited from Jason). 

Another night we all loaded the bikes up into both cars and headed north for one more epic bike ride over the High Trestle Trail bridge.

 Noah was in charge of snuggling the pup, once she stopped pulling me on my bike up and down the dirt path that we started out on. I could not stop laughing at my tiny little sled dog.

And we timed it just right for a beautiful sunset 

and a spectacular light display.

 And we were just in time to watch a marriage proposal (from quite a distance)- she said yes, Emma said how romantic, and Leah said how embarrassing!  Typical all around. 

  Laney's first time on the bridge!  She's an official Iowan now!

And thanks to some kind older bikers, we had a few extra lights to help guide us home.  Iowa is really big on biking, and it was fun to get in one last ride this fall! 

And of course, no fall is complete without our annual Final Family Fall Fling!

We've officially lost count of how many 'F's are in the Fantastic Final Family Fall Fun Fling, but one thing is for sure- this year's big night arrived waaaay earlier than I wanted it to.  Once the temps are officially stuck in the 30s and 40s we put it on the calendar, and this year that meant Friday, October 25th.

And it was awesome.  It was such a beautiful walk in the woods, even though Noah kept telling me that this was not where we do the fling every year.  He forgot there are two stages to the event- first the hike, then the fire.

And this year was the puppy edition!

  The leaves on the trees at our home still can't compare with the piles we rake up while the fire is being built.

It was getting dark quickly- not much time for pictures of this part!

 And we were SO glad that Daddy could join us.  He is always super super busy in October, and we have to do a lot of things without him.  But not the FFF!

And it was a good thing too, because we really needed that fire!  It was chilly and dark and the perfect setting for telling stories and talking about all of the things that made this year great (so far!) and the reasons that we are so glad to be a family.   

And Daddy told us lots of stories about his mission- a hot topic of conversation in our family because Cousin Ethan just got his mission call to Spokane Washington.  Daddy told us about his companions and why he wanted to serve a mission and some of the things that he learned while he was serving in Bolivia for two years.

And then it got too cold and too dark and too late to stay out any longer, so we packed everything up and searched everywhere for Emma's missing hat, which we realized had been left over at the hiking area of the park.  So we drove back over while Daddy headed back to work and Noah fell fast asleep and we took a minute to look up at the millions of stars that we can't see from our backyard... and we called it a perfect way to say good-bye to fall for good.