garden+garage+birthday girl

Nana and Papa came down to visit a few weekends ago. Dave happened to have the weekend days off, so he took advantage (of Kelvin :) ) and they got some long awaited work on the garage done! We have this cool old barn for a garage. It has a full size second floor loft for storing all kinds of good stuff. Well, for a while now, if you go up there, you feel a case of vertigo coming on. Scary. So, Dave and Kelvin spent most of Saturday and Saturday night putting up a huge beam across the middle, under the ceiling, jacked it up and put 3 steel posts spaced across the center. Hopefully now our big barn won't fall over on us! Seriously. Next spring we should be ready to put a new roof (on the house too) and siding eventually on the garage. Next step is to move everything that is being stored up in the loft to the sides, Dave put together the steel shelving and organize to our hearts desire. Which will make room to put stuff from downstairs to upstairs in the garage. The garden was built fairly late in the planting season, so we ended up just skipping this summer. Luke did get a hold of a bag of seeds and did some Hail Mary gardening himself. Unfortunately, he did this in about July, so while we got some squash the size of softballs, baseballs and golf balls, everything got the big freeze. Although, I think the goats out at The Farm will enjoy the remnants.

Papa brought some carrots from his own garden, tilled up ours and added our black dirt/organic soil mix. Now it's all ready for next spring!

Plus, we did a little (early) birthday celebration for our soon to be 8 year old!

park date

A few Thursdays ago, over MEA, Colleen came over and spent the day with Luke while the big girls when to the Y and did their "No School Day Event", which was a bus ride out to Camp Wenonah for some fall fun! They said they had a good time. We'll have to check into some more No School Day Y activities over the holiday breaks coming up. Here are just a few pictures from the park....

Llamas!

A friend of mine and her daughter (a formal Central pal of Em's) participated in a 4H activity last year called the Llamateer's. They invited us out a week or so ago to an open house at a llama farm in Minnesota City. I've always wanted to get Emily into something other than athletics....Girl Scouts, a music lesson, etc. So, after learning more about this group, I think we found our "other" thing! Emily had a lot of fun interacting with the llamas. Until spring, it sounds like the group meets once a month for an activity/craft llama related and next spring, the group goes out to a few different area llama farms and chooses a llama to work with for a few months with the intention to show it at the Winona County fair! Hopefully it will be a fun and educational experience for Emily. Here is Allie showing Em her llama that she worked with last year, Saber. They got to lead him up through the farm and back a few times.

Logan and his llama! Okay, giraffe.




Felting some soap with llama wool around it.

Emily attempting some of the basic tricks.

Pam helping Luke rinse the soap bars. The kids had a lot of fun and it's nice to see Emily looking forward to being a "Llamateer!"

October = Fire Prevention month

Here's Luke a day last week (I think?) all decked out for a special day at preschool! They were learning a lot about fire prevention and were expecting a visit with a fire engine and firemen. Funny thing is, he had 3 fire truck related shirts to pick from!

WSU...1st term....DONE!

The kids completed their first term of swim lessons at WSU a few weeks ago. The new one starts this week. I like lessons here because they are 4 weeks/2x a week. Goes fast! Emily passed out of 5, but she'll still be in the 5/6 combined class since there's no where else to go! Now it's just continuing to work on skills she's learned and endurance. WSU lessons seem to compliment WinFins swim team nicely for her. Luke is still working hard in level 1. He's been continually finishing with a fully submerged head, so things are looking good :)

Apple Orchard!

I guess I can blog a little bit! I finally downloaded some pictures from the little camera, my camera has full cards and we have a broken computer that won't download them :( Hopefully we'll rectify that situation soon. Here are the boys at Luke's preschool bus trip to Ferguson's Orchard! Luke loved feeding the big, curly sheep and promptly named him Wooly for the morning. Logan was very impressed with his first taste of whole apple!

We're here!

No picture updates as of now, our desktop is on the blink so I can only check on Dave's laptop every so often. We're all adjusting to Dave's new work schedule, Emily's back to school schedule and (soon to be) Luke's back to pre-school schedule next week. He'll be going M/W/F mornings and Tuesday afternoons for a (Kindergarten readiness) type class. The same schedule Emily did her final year of preschool. He's excited to go back! Hopefully Logan can sqeeze a good nap in everyday too! Poor thing might be weaned from 2 to 1 a day. He'll adjust! That just means I can put him to bed at 7pm, right? Emily had a non-traditional first day(s) of school. Winona public schools have an orientation on the Tuesday after Labor Day, not a full first day of school. We took her to orientation at WK Tuesday morning. Something didn't feel right. It didn't seem like it was the path that we wanted for her, so by Tuesday at Noon, she was enrolled at Bluffview Montessori. And guess what....she loves it! Lets hope it stays that way. I'm sure the 2 large frogs in the classroom helped :) So, it looks like she'll be spending her 2nd grade with that style of learning. Change is good and she seemed happy with it. Maybe we'll really love it and Luke will go to Kindergarten there next fall. They normally have a lottery to get in to preschool/Kindergarten, but since Emily's there, he's "grandfathered" in so to speak. So that's at least reassuring. Or maybe we'll end up putting the kids in the WACS (Winona Area Catholic Schools) system. We have a year to decide. I have a friend who has been saying we need to check it out since our girls were in preschool together. I really should go in and tour and get the projected costs of 3 kids time X years each....ouch! Winona has so many school options, but at the same time, a lack of "choices." I'm used to the simple times ....1 elementary, 1 middle school and 1 high school! We'll get it figured out, but in the meantime, I'm thankful that Bluffview had an opening. Emily had her first fall term gymnastics this week, she finally advanced to the Intermediate class! Which is great since I was about to throw in the towel. She now goes Tuesdays from 4-5:30 (30 min. longer than before) with girls who are a little more advanced and she's better challenged. I can already tell by her confidence Tuesday night that she'll start enjoying class more. She'll start swimming at the Y next week, M/W/F after school, well, 2:45 to 3:15 only, for swim team practice. She won't be able to ride the bus from school to the Y since she isn't in their after school care. So, we'll have to reevaluate how much of a pain that will be come winter time :/ But, it will help some that she can take the bus to school in the mornings now and home T/Th. I'll just have to play Nap Nazi with Logan those days we have to go get her, and those are also the days Luke has preschool in the mornings, so this back to school business will be hard on the little(st) man. The kids also start swim lessons again at WSU M/W evenings in a week or so. Emily will have double time in the pool, but hey, it's a pool! I don't think she'll mind. She'll be one tired girl come bedtime. Plus, more activities = less time mingling with the neighbor kids. A "win win" if you ask me. The boys and I had our first fall term ECFE class this morning. Lots of new faces, but Katie and Colleen are back, so that's good! This will be Luke's last year...no worries, Logan bought me 5 more! So there's our Back to School experience in a nutshell. Not how we thought things would happen for Miss Em, but we all feel better about it. Nothing is as in tune as Mama's instinct, right? Until Dave figures out the computer issues, I guess I'll go on a blogging hiatus!