Corn Maze Fun

One of Sara's favorite places is the corn maze at Thanksgiving pt.  Brennan is slowly coming to love it too.  He liked all the pumpkins and tractors.

The first thing they wanted to do when we got there was paint their faces.   Sara chose a unicorn and we chose a wolf for B.  Sara really like hers especially the sparkly jewel they put on the top of her nose.

We thought B's looked particularly cool!

Catching some air on the jump pillow

Trick or treating in the corn maze

After 5 hours at the corn maze we were totally exhausted.  We had the most fun possible and I'm sure the kids will be talking about it for a while. 

We are never bored here

We work hard and we play hard.  Sara has a lot of things going on right now.  She has school in the afternoons, swimming Tuesday and Thursday mornings, piano on Tuesday, and ice skating on Thursday.  It's a lot and I think we are at our maximum.  I actually think we might drop out of ice skating and pick up creative dancing again, but I haven't totally decided yet. 

Sara's swim lessons are going amazingly well.  No other kids signed up for this particular class, so she has the teacher all to herself.  It's very awesome and I think she's progressing twice as fast because of it.

  She is learning stroke development, so right now that's the forward crawl, which involves turning her head to the side as she swings her arm around and for a five year old it takes a lot of concentration and coordination.  Also, she's learning the breast stroke kick. She has to watch videos like this on youtube and do the same practices in our chairs and on the piano bench that this girl in the video does. We also watch videos on the forward crawl and kicks.  Her swim teacher thinks Sara is a very visual learner and we have noticed a dramatic improvement in her abilities since she has been watching these videos a few times a week. 

Her teacher has also said that Sara has amazing breath holding abilities and control, better than some of her older students.  She will dive all the way to the bottom at the deep end to retrieve objects and her teacher says that some of her older students either won't do that or struggle to have enough air.  With the way Sara is progressing and with some of her apparently natural abilities, I believe her teacher has her on track and is grooming her to swim on her swim team.  I'm excited to see where it goes.  Even if she does not swim on a team, I'm excited that hopefully Sara will develop a life long love of swimming that will help keep her active.

Her piano is going really well too, our biggest challenge so far is finding out what to do with Brennan when the babysitter cancels.  Dan has been helping take Sara to piano lesson which is great, she loves it and she gets to go back to work with him after her lesson and play with his very cool magnetic toys at his desk.  Sara has made huge progress in piano and now she's even started to play for fun.  Today she flipped through her book and was playing songs the teacher hasn't covered in class yet and that she hasn't seen before.  She was able to play them mostly correctly. 

Also, Granny KP has resumed Sara's flute lessons and we are now tossing that into the mix.  She is practicing holding the flute with her left hand on the keys and playing various notes.  She also loves seeing Granny KP, so it's works great for several reasons.

I'm actually thinking of dropping her out of ice skating and doing creative dance instead.  She has complained about going to ice skating lessons and has said she would rather do dance, so we are checking into that.  Sara is a very tolerant kid to go to so many activities and to practice as willingly as she does.  We haven't had to push her to practice or go to lessons or maybe she just does not realize she has a choice yet :)

Sara seems to be doing a little better with school.  She tells me that she likes her teacher a lot and that she does like school.  I was hoping she'd find some good friends but so far she hasn't mentioned anyone in particular.  We are supposed to have our first parent/teacher conference this week and I'm excited to see how it goes.

Sara has really improved on her writing and reading, she has been reading books to Brennan at home.

She works hard but she also likes to play hard.  Her very favorite things are doing arts and crafts and having friends over to play. 

We recently had a friend from our old neighborhood over.  They played brides and had to take turns with Brennan as the groom.  Brennan would have rather been a bride too, so it wasn't really working well for everyone.

Sara and Brennan also like to build blanket forts in the living room.  This fort they decorated with decorative squashes.

Sara begs to do arts and crafts every day and most days we do.  We either bead bracelets, color, mash play dough, or make things.   The last thing we made were these puffball critters.  Brennan did the one with a ton of eyeballs on it, Sara had fun adding the spots to the caterpillar. 

Just recently we've discovered some "how-to" drawing books by Ed Emberley.  We ordered a couple of them to try them out and Sara loves them.  Basically if you can make simple shapes, letters, and lines and dots, you can create more complex drawings.  So each drawing builds on another. 

Here was our first try and Sara likes that it's something that we do together.   We still need lots of practice :

Lastly, we've tried to be more creative with our food, it's been really fun for everyone.  Sara eats the same thing every day and it can get boring a repetitive for everyone.  For her main course, she always eats a carb with cheese on it, so either tortilla and cheese, bread and cheese, pasta and cheese, or chips and cheese.  I make her pick out a veggie to eat with every meal and a fruit and then we have a spinach and blueberry shake once a day. 

I make Sara faces or designs and I do them for Brennan too.   I tell her that she has to eat the whole face and when it's gone then she can have a treat.  It helps her have a goal for what she needs to finish eating.

This one has black olive eyes, avocado nose, carrot fangs, and apple eye brows :)

This is a bagel mandala I made for Brennan, Sara does not eat cream cheese. 

His and hers faces

This one I made for Sara tonight, I told her that it was a lion.  She informed me that it was in fact a tiger because lions don't have whiskers, good to know.

 Sara is a fun kid and she deserves to play as hard or harder than she works.  I hope I can keep coming up with fun things for us to do.  I feel like it's easy to let your mind just zone out when you're a Mom, it can kind of be a very monotonous job, same ole every day.  I think it helps me to challenge myself to come up with new ideas and crafts and activities for the kids, it gives me something to do and I think it enriches their lives to.  It also has been helpful to get a lot of inspiration from various kid and mom web sites and also our friend Camilla is a huge inspiration to us for creativity.  She is an artist and she does so many creative things with her kids that give us some good ideas and inspiration every time we go visit.  I'm sure there are many more things I could be doing and that we won't ever have time to get to.  But right now, we are just having fun with it.

Planning a surprise party

Sara's Daddy has been in Germany for a week and the kids have been really pining for him.  Sara could hardly contain herself that Daddy was coming home and she had been talking about giving him a surprise party.

The day he was coming home we got some helium balloons and streamer stuff and we decided to make caramel apples, something that we've never done before.

I was amazed how much of the party Sara put together.  She coordinated the colors and put up the streamers everywhere and all up the banister by herself.  Also, she helped me make the caramel, put sticks in the apples, and then dip the apples and coat them in toppings.

She had a blast and kept saying it was the best day ever.  Brennan had fun running under all the streamers and he was desperate to get his hands on the candied apples and the balloons.

We had everything all set out and ready.  Then we watched out the window for Daddy to drive up and we all ran down the basement stairs to get ready to jump out and yell surprise.  Brennan thought it was hilarious to wait and then jump out and surprise Dad.  

Daddy was very surprised and after lots of hugs and kisses we sat down to eat caramel apples.

Actually it was more like the kids just licked the candy off and didn't eat the apple but I guess what do you expect :(

Next we all sat on the floor at Sara's request and played games.  She really wanted to play duck duck goose, so we did.  Brennan saying duck duck goose was so cute and we actually all had lots of fun chasing each other around until Dan totally wiped out on the kitchen floor, game over.

Then they all smashed Daddy on the bean bag, the look of pain and perhaps sheer joy on Dan's face.

Sara was glad to have her Daddy back, she has always been a Daddy's girl. I can only imagine that everything must be right in her world now.  Especially since Daddy has promised to take her to Kangaroo Zoo tomorrow, her favorite place.