Handcrafted Artisan: October 2008

Field trip #3

Ema, Jael and their friend Lydia.

One day I will catch up with all that is going on with us. At the begining of October we went on another field trip to a local nature center, Mill Creek Marsh. It was the week of our staff conference so our friends Dave and Marti were up with the kids for the conference so Marti and her kids joined my friend Karlyn and our kids to take a tour of the Marsh. It was a very pretty fall day. We had lunch prior and then with the help of several guides we hiked the board walk through the marsh.

We actually got to see a Preying mantis close up which was really cool.

This was Ema's favorite part. The staff gave the kids binoculars at the bird lookout building and they could look through and try and spot different animals.

Here is the creek flowing under us. Along the way the kids stuck plant findings to a piece of tape on their wrist and at the end made a bookmark out of it. Jael took to one of the staff people and was carried around by her most of the time.

Here we are getting taught about what we would see and what we can and can't do.
It was a great day to be out and with friends.

http://www.whattoexpect.com/pregnancy/week-by-week/landing.aspx?xid=ticker_pregnancy_weeks">pregnancy calendar from WhatToExpect.com

Amber's Birthday

Joani and Judy at the shower

I had a very eventful birthday. A few days before my birthday Jeff took me out to my favorite restaurant La Bella in Bellefonte. Then the day before we went out to breakfast as a family to the Waffle Shop of course, then we took the girls to the Insect Fair on campus which they loved...Ema got to go inside this tent with all these butterflies and moths landing on her. They held all kinds of crazy bugs too. Ema got her face painted, unfortunatly I forgot the camera oh well. Then Jeff made me dinner that night, stuffed peppers, hmmmm....
On my birthday being that it was Sunday we had church, where I have been helping teach Ema's sunday school class here and there. Then after church I went to my friend Megan's bridal shower, the last of three that I attended this fall. It was quite unique as we all got to pick which state we were and had a mini Miss USA contest. Then that night we had Bible study where we had ice cream cake and cookie bars to celebrate mine and our friends son's birthday as we share one...so that was fun to share it with our Bible study, made up of some of our dearest friends. Busy but all in all a good birthday.

Courtney (another bride to be), Megan the lady of the day, and Beth and Brenna at the shower.

The girls and I with the pretty trees behind us...

My ice cream cake Jeff and Ema made.

The only picture from the insect fair, Ema's face painting of her butterfly.

still catching up on being behind in my blog...Field trip # 2

The gangs all here.

Our second field trip this year was with a bunch of our homeschooling friends to the Alpha Fire station in downtown State College. This was a lot of fun. Ema is still talking about it. Especially about pushing the button on our own smoke detectors to test them to make sure they are working which we did last night.

The kids had the pleasure of seeing the fireman get all decked out and to climb through a firetruck as well.

Afterwards we got to take home some goodies to remember our trip.

New furniture

Several weeks ago Jeff's dad and brother came up for the day to deliever the rest of a new piece of furniture for us, the hutch you see above. This used to be Jeff's parents until they got new furniture. Since we have a bigger home now it is nice we can use this piece to display some of our dishes.

We of course had shrimp scampi and something apple oriented, which is what we normally have when Poppa Ish comes to visit...

Rich enjoyed reading to his neice. It was nice to have him up since we don't get to see him very often. All in all it was a nice afternoon as they helped me out a lot by moving furniture and boxes and such and all I had to do was direct....

Ema and Paige at Faith fair

Ema face painting

Ema spent the day with Charis and Paige over the summer and had a great time. The went to a fair at Faith church.

Geo caching and our favorite park.

One of our favorite things to do is go geocaching. Well we found out that there was one in our favorite park near our new house. Spring Creek Park. So one saturday we had a picnic next to the creek and then went on the hunt for the cache...

here we go....

here is a field in the park and if you look behind and above all the trees you will see Mt Nittany so we are really close to home. As you can see this was last month and the leaves have not changed yet...

We found it...It was called anger management which was a really cute name for what followed inside the cache but I won't give any spoilers on that for you cachers.

There is this sweet covered bridge at the park and right next to it are these plants that if you squeeze the seed pockets they pop and sort of whirl our neighbor introduced us to this, the girls love doing it ....

around and about the house

There was a song growing up that we had on tape called Daddy does the dishes...I think of it when I see this picture of Jeff....

WE ARE!!! PENN STATE

Outside of our new house ...

Every morning we have a ritual of waving goodbye to Daddy when he goes to work. It is one of the highlights. They also love this big window to watch the recycling truck and trash truck. Each week the recycling guys honk and wave it is quite fun. Big windows are great like this too as it looks out to where the sun sets, boy is it pretty since now we live high enough above some of the hills and mountains we can see it.

Girls will be Girls playing Dress up!!!

One thing about living on the side of a mountain with woods behind you and a huge field of our neighbors is we get tons of deer and a pesky skunk to boot, often in the morning we can spot them. I think there has been a count up to eleven deer at one time.... The one day they were so close, maybe only 100 ft it was crazy....

The girls watching the deer!!!

Jael is really into baby dolls, I caught her the one morning reading a catalog to one of them...too cute....

Ema and I do "school pages" together, here was one of her first cut and paste pages she was doing....She absolutly loves coloring and such now...it is fun.

One of the things the girls love to do is climb into the boxes that we keep their toys in, or laundry baskets, or just plain old boxes, or anything they can climb into...
love this one with the sun behind them.

Field Trip #1

This fall some of my friends here in town have been organizing field trips for our kids. We all plan on homeschooling, most of them have started but it is nice for us to join in on the fun. Our first trip this fall was to a children's museum in a nearby town called Altoona.
It is this quaint old house where from basement to attic has been converted into a place for children to interact with all kinds of aspects of life.
In the basement it has been turned into a large sand box. The girls, and their friends loved this.

Here is Jael riding in one of the toy cars on a road painted on the floor of the basement.

Playing in the sand

It was a perfect day to go to the museum because it turned out to be rainy and yucky all day, so we all crowded on the porch for a picnic lunch.

One of Jael's favorite rooms was the super market room. She loved taking items off the shelf and putting them into a cart.

Ema enjoyed the pet hospital. She had a lot of fun putting the stuffed pets in and out of the cages.

There was also a dress up room and an art room and a room with this fort type building the girls had a grand time playing in.
It was nice for me to get to spend time with some of my friends as well.

Butterflies boy am I behind...

Hi hope that this finds you all well. It has been sometime. Sorry about that. These photos are from the beginning of September. We are expecting our third child and I have not been feeling well these last several weeks. I have been doing the bare minimum...
So last month we had the joy of watching monarch caterpillars turn into chrysalis and then into butterflies. which the girls thoroughly enjoyed.

Ema holding our second butterfly.