Dave’s parents came to visit over Columbus Day Weekend. We were able to cram a lot into the time they were here.

Adam had a very chilly soccer game on Saturday morning. That afternoon, we took the kids to the zoo to go trick-or-treating. We got a lot of comments on their costumes (more on those later) and they had a great time. On the way to the zoo, we stopped to check out a sailboat that Grandpa Kurt had been wanting to see in person. Adam thought it was really cool too.

Sunday, we visited a local pumpkin patch and went on a hayride. Adam and Grandma Cathy took their job of finding the perfect pumpkin very seriously, and they found a great one.

We kept Grandpa Kurt busy with all sorts of projects (he’s going to stop “vacationing” with us if we’re not careful). He and Dave built an amazing new bookshelf for Maggie.

It turned out great and I just need to get it painted.

They also built a very heavy, very sturdy, very awesome picnic table.

It was a fun, and productive, visit.

This girl is just a ball of fire.

One of my favorite things she does right now, is when she sneezes, she immediately says, “Bless you, me” afterwards.

For some reason, Adam refers to these as his “Elvis Pants”. I don’t know where he came up with that name or what he thinks it means, but it cracks me up. Adam dresses up for school one day a week. I normally have him do it on Wednesdays, since he has church school and doesn’t have gym or art. So “Elvis Pants” are becoming his Wednesday favorite.

Luke, on the other hand, has a style all his own. One day last week he told me that he wants to wear his “shirt with the dots”. I was confused, because he doesn’t have any polka-dot shirts. I asked him if maybe he meant the striped shirt, and he pointed to a button down plaid shirt. Then he asked me if I would help him “to do the dots” – that’s when I realized he was calling buttons “dots”.

I also love how he asks each morning if he should wear shorts or “pants with sleeves”.

I am less enamored with how he is fighting me on cutting his fingernails because, “kitties have long claws”.

These are the little things I want to remember – like how Adam always used to say “to why” instead of because. Eventually I will get around to baby books for them all – maybe before they graduate high school. If not, at least I’m capturing some of it here.

I snapped a picture of Maggie during her gymnastics class.

Dave helped coach Luke’s soccer team. One of the regular coaches was out of town, and as you can see, Dave took his responsibilities very seriously.

Luke’s team spent some time practicing and then scrimmaged against some of the other teams.

Luke participated for almost the entire practice.

Almost.

I’m not sure I’ve mentioned it here, but the organization the kids play soccer in is huge. There are 110 kids that play in the 4-year-old age division. There are 12 teams in Adam’s division (1st grade co-ed) and there are another 6 girls only 1st grade teams. If there are 11 kids on each team, that’s almost 200 first graders.

Hopefully Luke will decide he wants to play in the spring, and not just meow on the sidelines.

Earlier when I was taking photos off of my camera and phone, I came across this video of Adam playing soccer. I didn’t catch him making a goal, but you can see him throwing the ball in and then giving it a good kick.

We had Luke and Adam put their soccer uniforms on tonight, so I could try to get some pictures of them. I only bought the team photos from the professional photographer. Luke was feeling particularly uncooperative, but I did get a couple of good ones.

Some observations:

1. Adam looks really old

2. 4 year olds, especially ones that would rather pretend to be a cat named Fluffy, are really hard to pose

We’ll try for better pictures when the spring season starts up.

A couple of weeks ago we took the kids to a dinosaur expo.

They had animatronic dinosaurs that the kids could ride on.

They also had a bunch of bounce houses for them to jump in. I am not sure how they tied in to dinosaurs, but the kids liked them.

There was also a giant hamster ball thing that they could spin around in. Adam and Luke loved it.

It was a fun way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

On Saturday, Adam and I had a “Mommy & Adam Day”. One of the things we did was get his first grade photos done. Here are the ones that Adam and I didn’t pick:

And here are the three we decided on:

The one of him kneeling is Adam’s favorite of the bunch. He did a great job of listening to the photographer and following her directions. He was pretty happy that I let him wear his sweatshirt in some of them too. That’s his current favorite article of clothing – it helps that it is super soft and, perhaps more importantly, glows in the dark.

Adam’s class took a field trip to a farm on Monday. The kids each got to bring a pumpkin home with them.

Yesterday and today at school they worked on a booklet about their visit.

Adam’s book mostly focused on cows and cow poop.

Apparently he learned that cow poop has “vidms” (vitamins). I think that’s actually a pretty decent drawing showing how it can act as fertilizer.

The things you learn in first grade.

Last weekend Adam and I made a display case for some of his Lego figures.

While the glue was drying, he tackled the downstairs playroom.

It was pretty bad.

He did a great job though.

Then it was time to arrange the Lego guys.

He was very happy with the results.

I love that this kid is still crazy about Legos.

One of the smartest things I’ve done recently is set up a homework kit for Adam. It’s just a box that contains everything he normally needs for his school work – scissors, an eraser, a pencil (and sharpener), crayons, a glue stick, a highlighter, and markers.

It’s not rocket science by any stretch of the imagination, but having everything he needs in one place (and safe from his little siblings) has already made things a lot easier for us both.

And in case you’re wondering just what sort of homework a first grader gets, here’s what Adam does each week:

– He reads at least two books each night and most nights comes home with a short reading worksheet to do as well.

– He’s given a four page packet of math work on Monday that is due back on Friday. I suggested doing a page a night, but he likes to knock it all out at once. It really doesn’t take long and we do it on a non-soccer night.

– He is also given his spelling words for the week on Monday and then is tested on them on Friday. On Monday night I have him spell the words out loud, so I can see if there are any that are going to be a problem (then I can randomly ask him to spell them throughout the week). Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday I try to give him a written test.

– He also has a little bit of church school homework each week. This week it was memorizing a short bible verse (“Let the children come to me.” Mark 10:14). I printed out the verse and taped it to the door leading outside. Each time he goes out, and a lot of the time when he just passes it, he will stop and read it. That system seems to work well for him and he memorized this and last week’s verse (“God looked at everything he had made, and he found it very good.” Genesis 1:31-1) pretty easily.

So that’s a normal week’s worth of work for Adam. He is doing a great job with all of it.