Ardenwood Fall Fest

We continued our fall festivities by going to the Ardenwood Harvest Festival! We typically go ever year to get our free Indian corn and pop corn...in addition to all the cool harvest activities they offer.  We met up with our fiends, the Hirzels, and were off and running back in time to the historic farm.  Starting at the blacksmith barn, we watch a iron snail being made.

The kids discovered a new sweet treat...honey sticks!  We learned about bees making honey that was finished off by sucking on amazing fresh honey sticks.

Checking out all the other period activities...along with these, we watched corn get ground to cornmeal, old time fire hose pumping, baking in a coal oven and hand churned ice cream.

We finally made it to my favorite part...picking the corn.  We got a quick lesson on how to pick and shuck, were handed our sack and gloves and off we went.  It's very addictive!  You search and search for the pretty corn and even though you've found at least 10 beautiful ears, you just have to keep looking for an even better one!

Luckily all the corn needed to be picked and most you could give back to the farm, so we weren't doing any harm in picking more than we would take.

Fun in the corn fields!  Timo was a boy on a mission!  He probably picked the most corn out of all of us...he loved it.

Coming out of the field, our sack was full and heavy.  We found a hay bail, found our friends and started shucking it all.

The farm asked 1/3 of your loot to be given back to the farm for their use, so we carefully picked out what we wanted to keep and wanted to donate.  It all was so pretty, it was hard to choose.  But Timo loaded up and dropped off our donations.

Corn husk doll making and apple press finished off our farm visit.  I love how Timo always finds sticks to carry around....

After lunch we headed over to the pumpkin patch for a little fun.  Timo  and Matthew found the perfect pumpkin for us and was determined to take it home.  But at $30, we decided to visit our local grocery store for a little bit cheaper one!

It was a fun, hot day on the farm!  We had depleted all our snack and water by the end of the day, were dirty and dusty so we stopped in at a McDonalds to get a refreshing beverage and wash up.  Oh how we love hand dryers.  A fun, long had was had by all!

School Life--Early Fall

I'm getting behind on my school life pictures.  Here's a quick post of our daily life in school.  New shoes!! It's unbelievable how quickly my kids go through shoes...I feel like they drag their toes across the pavement and the shoes get ripped to shreds. The last pair I actually invested in good quality (read expensive) shoes in hopes that they would last longer than 3 months...no difference.  I'm back to Target shoes and they love them!

National Ride Your Bike to School Day!  Or scooter. Each child who rode a bike or scooter was met with a sticker, pencil and got to participate in the parade of wheel in the play yard.

A little school art.  I love Timo's witch using egg crates as the eyes.  And Cameron's class is studying the sight word "see".  They had to draw pictures of things they hope to see "see" one day.

Picture day!  I volunteered to help out with picture day and it was so much fun seeing all the students all dressed up.  It was especially nice to see my two good looking kiddos...and fun to see the action behind the scene.

Cameron's class has this really cool activity for all the kids to get to know each other better...it's called the "ME BAG."  Each week a different child takes the Me Bag home and fills it with all their favorite things, books, pictures...anything about themselves.  Last week was Cameron's turn and she had a really hard time narrowing things down to fit in the bag, which after talking to a few other moms, is a common problem. Good thing Mrs. Marcia made it a small bag.  A few of the things she included were her T-Rex from the Natural History Museum in NC (suggested souvenir) Wowsy-her dog that sings "Jesus Loves Me", a Switch & Go dino (her fav toy), the Elephant and Piggy book b/c she can read it all by herself, her Iron Man book and a few other little items.  It was funny, when she pulled out a family photo the class started shouting "that's Timo!"  Lot's of her classmates didn't know Timo was her brother so she proudly explained they were twins and had the same birthday but that he was older.

One thing our school does that I love is work with local business for fundraising.  Each month we have a different "Argonne Family Night" at a local business and a percent of that evening sales goes back to Argonne.  This was one night at Green Apple Books and Toy Boat desserts.  Can you guess who's book belongs to who??

Just a little taste of school life so far...October has been a busy month so stay tuned for lot's more...

Apple Picking--Twin Hill Farms

We kicked off the fall season by going apple picking in Petaluma.  We got a little late start (our Saturdays have become very lazy these days) so we drove straight up for lunch first.  We found a great little Italian place in the downtown area that was so yummy!  And the $5 glass of wine didn't hurt either...

The kids LOVE doing "CHEERS" after we say the blessing...not sure where that little tradition started but I think it's here to stay.

We got to the farm in the afternoon and it was easily 95 degrees outside.  So hot.  But once we got picking we barely noticed the heat.  The apples were so yummy and so many varities!  The best part was picking them right off the tree and crunching into the juiciness.

Timo got distracted foraging through the chestnuts.  He collected quite a few for us to eat when we got home.  It's pretty impressive considering the chestnuts are hidden inside these very prickly outer shell. Looking at all the worms inside the apples was a special treat too!

We had one hiccup...Timo was reaching high to pick the biggest apple he had ever seen.  He pulled so hard that when it popped off the limb Timo lost his grip and the apple hit him right in the eye!  Poor fella...it looked like it hurt so bad.

He searched all over the ground for his apple that fell to make sure he got it and took it home.  It's hard to see in this picture but the apple was huge!

We could have easily picked way more but stopped at 25 pounds.  We ended up making apple sauce, apple pie, stewed apples and eating apple slices everyday for the next two weeks....25lbs is a LOT of apples

We were so hot once we finished,it only seemed logical to get some ice cream!  Timo loves how his tongue turns green from the lime sorbet...such a boy!

Pretty good sign that we had a great day apple picking!

A sampling of our apple treats...stewed apples the southern way and apple blackberry pie!  We still have a few small ones left that I think we're gonna make caramel apples this weekend.  Might need to go back and pick 25lb more....mmmmm

Heading Home--NC Trip

Because our tickets were very last minute and purchased with miles, we had very limited options for available flights coming home.  Our flight left at 6am...meaning we had to be at the airport at about 4:45, meaning we had to leave my parents house at 4am, meaning we had to wake up at 3am!!  Yes, it was very hard getting the littles out of bed at that hour.

But we got to see on of the most beautiful sunsets on our layover in Washington DC...

Unlike our flight there, our flight home didn't have any entertainment what-so-ever.  No TVs, no movies and no music.  They had headphones in the seatbacks but nothing use them for...expect entertainment.  Needless to say, it was long 5 1/2 hour flight home.  We played, ate snacks, took naps and looked at every page in the Skymall magazine.  I wasn't as prepared this flight to keep the kids entertained but we made it through.

It was only 11am when we landed in SF.  Our time clocks were completely thrown off but once we got home sweet home we forgot how tired we were and were excited to see Daddy!