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We had a pretty exciting week around here…

I had my 30 week ultrasound and Banjo continues to be very cooperative and consistent. Everything is measuring right on for dates and looking just like it should. And we got an extra bonus when they offered to do a 3d picture for us! It was fun to see Banjo’s face and see that he or she looks quite a bit like the girls did when they were born.

I was “snack mom” at preschool, which is always exciting since that means that CareBear gets to be the special teacher’s helper for the day. She’d decided weeks ago that we’d be taking strawberry muffins and they turned out to be very tasty and popular. We got the sad news, though, that our teacher will be leaving us for greener pastures in Seattle so we’ll have to break in a whole new teacher next month (well, not “new” since she taught there years ago, but new to us!).

Our biggest excitement, though, happened over the weekend. Early Sunday morning, someone missed the turn at the end of our road and drove into our yard! They destroyed part of our fence and flattened our mailbox. They also made it way too far into the yard to have been traveling at a sane speed… they jumped the curb and the tire tracks stop just short of our very large camellia. After that, they apparently backed around onto our neighbors rock wall, taking it down a couple of feet, before speeding off back down the road. We filed a police report for the hit and run, though it’s unlikely that they’ll find them. They did leave behind a section of their front bumper and at least one headlight so we have a good idea of what kind and color of car it was! I’m very happy that our yard is well planted and slopes upward so they had no chance of actually running into the house.

This week will be busy! We have a fun preschool field trip to the Children’s Museum in Olympia, I’ll be having my first non-stress test with Banjo, and CareBear has a birthday party this weekend! All fun stuff.

We headed off to Spooner’s Farms in the valley last week with CareBear’s preschool class. It rained something awful the day before, but we lucked out with a sunny (if somewhat muddy) day!

Tractor ride to the pumpkin patch!

CareBear got a little splinter from the stem of her pumpkin.

LiliBee is very proud of her pick.

Ride ’em, LiliBee!

Into the patch!

Pumpkin heads.

We meet a big spider…

And play in the rope maze…

And do a bit of sliding.

A good and muddy time.

We’ve had a busy and productive week around here…

In remodel news, the new floor is done in two of the bedrooms and part of the hallway. The guys have spent the past several days scraping up linoleum and working on the living room floor. We decided to raise it up instead of leaving it sunk-in and that led to all kinds of extra work on beams and ducts under the house. We made a few unexpected discoveries but the decking is being put back on today so we can move on! My kitchen is practically unusable and all of our doorways are covered with plastic, but at least the end is in sight.

In fun news, CareBear had her first field trip! Her preschool class took a trip to Spooner’s farm and LiliBee and I were able to tag along. We learned how pumpkins and corn grow and what bees and bats do to help. We took a ride on a tractor around the corn maze and to the little pumpkin patch that they set aside for school kids. We visited with goats, chickens, turkey and rabbits and climbed on straw bales. After a quick snack, we headed out into the main pumpkin patch to run around, which was really muddy! The girls checked out the spiders and mud puddles and the rope maze before we headed home with our little pumpkins and mud up to our knees. The weather was actually pretty nice and all of the kids had a great time.

It was, of course, Halloween on Saturday. We decorated our pumpkins with stickers handily donated by one of my former co-workers. CareBear made a great face on hers while LiliBee went for a more abstract use of almost all of the eyeball stickers. CareBear could hardly wait for trick or treating this year. She started asking to put on her costume around noon. LiliBee was unsure of what the big fuss was, but she’s always willing to go along with her big sister’s enthusiasm. CareBear debated for a few weeks before deciding on a costume this year… and ended up with the same dragon costume as last year! It’s a little shorter on her, of course, but she was thrilled with it. LiliBee dressed up as Darth Vader and impressed everyone with her jedi mind tricks. They made a pretty good candy run going to the few houses around us and over at my folks’ house. CareBear loved helping Pas hand out candy to their numerous trick or treaters while LiliBee used my camera to take pictures of each of her pieces of candy, for some reason.

LiliBee and I went to a fun little candle party Saturday morning. She charmed everyone and even found a little boyfriend who couldn’t stop hugging her! Meanwhile, Chris took CareBear to gymnastics class… he tells me that the holiday sugar high created extra chaos in the class but at least everyone had fun.

In Banjo news, we went to our first big ultrasound last week. Since I’m considered “advanced maternal age”, we automatically do the level 2 ultrasound at the perinatology office. Banjo has all of the usual body parts in all of the usual places! We’ll be going back in a few weeks so that they can get a really good look at the heart and face (Banjo stopped cooperating toward the end), but everything looks good so far. And, before you all start wondering, we’re still going to be surprised about the gender. We did get a few ultrasound pictures but I haven’t had a chance to scan them so I won’t be able to share until next week.

Onward to November…

CareBear had started school. It’s a little weird for me to have her off on her own on a regular basis, but I suppose it’s a good thing since she loves it. Right?

She’s an independent kid. She has no problem with me leaving her there and hardly needs me to walk her in! She’s figured out the routine already and looks forward to all of the different parts of class. They start with songs and then have activity time (so far, painting and play dough are her favorites). Then there’s outside time, story time and snack time. After cleaning up, they have the always popular music time and then it’s time to go home. The two hours is pretty full and goes fast, I think.

She’s on her way. She’s growing up.

At least I have the little one to keep me company!

It’s September and, apparently, that means rain, thunder and tornados!  It’s been an interesting weather week around here and Lucy is not happy about that at all. Luckily, the worst of it hit east of us… I can’t imagine how panicked she’d be if a storm that bad went directly over us.

We had a fun week, otherwise. We had a great fun visit with Auntie T and Z with lots of good running around and tasty snacks. It was nice to finally meet their new dog, too. On the way home, CareBear asked if we could go back to play the next day.

LiliBee has learned that asking “why?” after any statement will result in more talking, so we hear that a lot these days. She’s also decided that “chase” is the best game and will randomly come up to me and shout “GET ME!” before taking off. It’s kind of hilarious.

Our weekend was spent running some errands. We borrowed a bunch of books from the library, mostly picture books though I look forward to the day when I get to actually read books with words again. We also picked out our new floors! Now if only we could decide whether to raise up our sunk-in living room floor or not. CareBear and LiliBee had a good time “helping” Chris measure the rooms, though.

This week will be a big one… CareBear is venturing into the big world of education! She’s been asking all summer to get to go to a “three year old school” so we signed her up for preschool. I think she’s going to have a great time. It’s a cooperative preschool, too, so I get to go with her sometimes!

The unfortunate (for you all) side to this is the beginning of fundraising… I spent all of those years supporting other people’s kids and then quit my job before I could get my turn! And anyone who knows me knows that I’m not really the “door to door rah rah rah” type of fundraiser… so I’ll be mentioning what we’re selling in my emails, briefly, just in case anyone is interested. Feel free to ignore it!

This month’s fundraiser is Entertainment books. They’re full of coupons to tons of different places and I can get them for any region in the country. $20 gets you the south puget sound version.

There. My work is done.

Anyway, the rest of our upcoming week will probably center around getting ready for the flooring delivery in a couple of weeks. We’ll have to stack boxes and boxes of flooring somewhere to acclimate for a month or so. I wonder how big the boxes are… Anyway, Chris has been spending his Labor day starting the organization of our bonus room. We figure we’ll all move in there while the floor gets done so that we’re not moving furniture from room to room just to get a place to sleep!