Fall is here!

Fall is here and a chill is in the air.  William has been helping us clip and clean up the perennials.  We all have our own clippers for the job and William hands them all out before the job can start.  He looks pretty cute in his "garden" boots, actually rain or gum boots, but we use them for gardening.

Hadn't taken a bath picture in a while, here is that smile that I love so much.  William can take off all his clothes at this point, and can almost dress himself if there is a lot of time and motherly patience available.

 

The "big park by the lake" has become a favorite destination both imaginary (pretend driving in the car) or in real life.  He likes playing on the big kid playgrounds and does a really good job climbing anything he can reach.

William taking pictures of Adam and I, this was the best one, too bad Adam's face is a little cut off.  I have my every three month dilemma of what to do with my hair, go shorter, just get a trim or let it grow.  Adam usually likes it cut shorter, but surprised me when he said I should keep pulling it back (started out of frustration at the mop that is now my hair).  I actually got a complement without asking (pretty unheard of around here). He said it made me look younger, and I think I am at the age where that starts to sound good.  Any hair cut suggestions would be welcome :)

And now more pictures of William...

On the way to and back from the park Adam and I got an education, it went something like this....

"The garbage truck sleeps at that house."
"I don't know where all the bunnies are.  They must be in their caves."
"Flowers turn into plants."

You never know what wisdom William will share.  Have a great week.

Cupcake

Updates from the week:

So last weekend while I was sitting watching TV I kept hearing this scratching noise inside our walls next to the vent in the downstairs bedroom.  I thought it might be a mouse getting into the walls some how so I bought mouse traps and put them outside where I thought it might be getting in.  Nothing set it off and finally after a couple nights I didn't hear the noise any more.  So I thought we were good, well then things started to smell bad down stairs.  Adam opened up the vent to find a dead mouse, thank goodness I didn't open it when I heard the scratching.  So he cleaned that up, I sprayed Fa-breeze all around the area and opened up the windows and cleared out the smell.  Then yesterday I found a mouse in the garage acting funny, maybe our neighbor has poison out or something, she doesn't like natures creatures.  I am okay with them as long as they stay out of my house!

William had a busy week at daycare, one day was bike day so we brought in his big boy bike, he can just reach the peddles and seems to prefer it over the tricycle now.  Then Friday was his leader day, he wanted to bring crackers (he personally picked them out at the grocery store) and cheese for snack and picked out two books to share.

I am now allowed to go down the stairs next to William because as he says "We are friends, so you can go down next to me."  Not sure what changed, but there's one less battle in the mornings.  Though he has added more coffee making responsibility to his list, like getting the coffee out of the cupboard, which causes me to have to lift him up onto the counter.  So out with one battle and in with the new.

I finally placed a call to a local carpet cleaning company and they are coming this upcoming week. I can't wait to not see the stains on the taupe carpet we have in our big upstairs room!  We stuffed a lot of the toys back in the bedrooms and Adam and I were commenting how nice the room looks and more open it feels with them out of there.  Maybe all of them won't make it back after the carpet is dry :)

William has been telling us that he is a baby a lot lately.  It usually works to our advantage as if you say "Baby please lay down to get your diaper changed", or "Baby William, please climb up into your bed" and you get better cooperation.  Frankly I am not completely ready for my baby to be as grown up as he is, so I don't mind a little extra cuddling with my "baby".

Adam taught Will an interesting phrase the other day in the car.  Adam loudly said "Get out of the way cupcake", to which William replied, "Daddy that isn't a cupcake, its a Daddy cupcake" and giggling his and Adam's head off by saying "All cupcakes out of the way", and "Out of the way cupcakes".  Adam's defense was "At least I didn't say something worse!".

And now onto the pictures.  William and I had mini photo shoot at home today, which meant that I got to take some pictures then it was William's turn.  He took some pretty good ones of me and Murphy, but since I didn't have makeup on I won't scare you all with any of them containing me.    My favorite is the last one.  Have a great week!

Gotta love diggers!

 We have been spending a lot of time at the parks and outside while the weather lasts. 

William looks so much like Adam as a little boy in this picture (I think its the cheeks)!

 We ventured to Quarry Quest today and had a ton of fun sifting for gems and gold (pyrite) in the sand, making a jewel necklace, making a rock pet and the best part, helping the construction guy run the excavator!  William's eyes were taking it all in and you could see him trying to figure out what button did what.

We waited in line for a good 30 min and I wasn't sure if he was going to go with the guy or not, but he went right with him and got down to digging.

What a big scoop of dirt, makes a Momma proud :)

Found the horn button!

Have a great weekend, get out an enjoy this beautiful weather, we don't know how long it might last!

More cabin pics

More pictures from last week at the cabin, courtesy of my Mom's camera...

 Playing at the beach, the dry sand had to go in the water and the wet sand had to come out onto the dry sand.  Sounds logical to me :)

Adam's almost smiling in this family shot!  Wading an searching down at Sandy Point.

William adores his stuffed animal friends and they often have to come with us to various places.  This evening it was "car puppy" who got to come on a boat ride.

The reason my parents ended up buying land and building a cabin on Long Lake was because my Mother was a camp counselor in the Summers at Camp Danworthy which was on the South end of the lake.  So the lake has some historical and sentimental pull for my Mom.  This picture below shows the main lodge.  She got an opportunity to tour the main lodge, and showed me some of the buildings that are still there and where those that were torn down used to be.  Very neat place and location; it will be going up for sale soon and I hope who every can afford the land and buildings takes care of it and keeps it's charm intact.  

Okay what else can I update you on...

William has been sleeping in a little boy bed since early August.  After our trip to the Twin Cities and him sleeping in a toddler bed so good, we converted his crib so that he can climb in and out by himself.  Quite the back saver as he is up to about 35 pounds these days.  He has only fallen out once, I heard the thunk followed by crying and went up to find him huddled in the corner of the room saying he fell out.  I think he was still half asleep, so I guided him back into the bed and he went right back to sleep.

I might be jinxing myself right now, but he has voluntarily stayed in bed every night and every nap so far.  When it is time to get up I go in and he is waiting for me to come into the room so he can get up.  I don't remember telling him he has to do this, but on the other hand I am not going to tell him he can get up on his own, as I like the current arrangement.

Will has started with the "Why" questions, the most frequent and one I don't know how to answer is "Why is the night happy?".  It sounds like a riddle or joke to me that maybe he heard, but I am not sure how to answer, I usually say "I don't know, why is the night happy?" and so far I haven't gotten a response.  Another fun one is "Why do I have to go to sleep?", this being said as he is jumping up and down in bed and I answer "Because we need to rest to get more energy for playing tomorrow".  Like this kid needs more energy!

He moved up to a new room this week with all the older kids at daycare going to school.  He seems to like the new room and the bigger kid toys he plays with.  This week he got a congratulations in his folder for pooping on the toilet at daycare, it was this funny little brown piece of paper cut out to look like a poop with arms and legs.  Too funny.  His teacher said that she think it surprised him.  So we now have our second official toilet poop, the day can't come too soon that this is a regular occurrence!

Adam is transitioning back to a night schedule again and keeping up with his running.  We take turns in the evening going and I have to say I much enjoy running when it is cooler!  We are working on getting our passports renewed and getting William a passport as we plan to travel to Austria next summer with him and G&G Mc.  Might be a bit crazy with a 3.5year old, but we will take it as it comes.

William and I are headed to a Bacon Party this afternoon/evening, one of my coworkers smokes and cooks up 300lbs of bacon for delicious BLT's and has a fun annual get together at his house.  The early crowd is kid friendly, so that's when we have gone the last couple years.  Should be fun!  Have a great weekend and week!

Catching up!

So its been a few weeks since my last blog, and we have kept busy.  William and I had tons of fun visiting Menomonie Park two weeks ago.  They have a great wooden play park and a little zoo.  William had fun scooping, swinging, riding and climbing.

 
Grandma and Grandpa S came out for a visit and we took Grandma S out to Mulberry Lane Farm.  William had fun checking everything out, he liked trying to catch the chickens (Mom caught him a few so he could hold them).  He had fun feeding and petting the goats but wanted nothing to do with the sheep.  The kitties were fun, and the door to the kitty area was fun to go in and out of, my silly boy.  Will also liked digging in the corn crib.  Definitely worth a visit again this fall.

And we just got back yesterday from a wonderful week long visit to my parents cabin.  Adam and I took full advantage of the nice flat trail, cool mornings and shade to run every other day.  We got out on Grandpa's boat a bunch of times and headed for Sandy Point, an area where the sand bar extends far out into the lake.  Good spot to look for frogs, stones, drift wood and shells, and we sure found them in abundance!  Murphy even braved the water for some short swims.

We had great weather and nice campfires in the evenings.  I couldn't have asked for a better time!  Thanks Grandma and Grandpa for a wonderful week!