Ethan's Photo Collage

 

This is a collage that Ethan made. He used pictures that he took himself on his very own camera. He wanted to put it on his blog.

Ours is the Biggest

 
 James has my car since his is in the shop, so Ethan and I had a day at home. We could have relaxed. Instead, we did four loads of laundry, baked a loaf of bread and chocolate crackle cookies, made apple sauce, played pumpkin bingo and a computer game, painted watercolor leaves, trees, and "machines" all before lunch. Then after lunch and a nap, we went outside to rake leaves. Ethan declared ours the biggest leaf pile in the world. He might be right. We could have fit him and all his friends inside. We jumped in a few times, then we planted some tulip bulbs. We went back inside to bake some apple bread (Ethan requested we make that though we had to make up our own recipe as we couldn't find one), back outside to draw with sidewalk chalk, and back inside to make dinner and read some books. We also did a few fall activities, we counted pumpkin seeds onto a page of pumpkins that each have numbers on them and we rolled dice to make bingo dot apples on a tree that had numbers on it, and danced to music while baking. Now it's time for dinner, a little tv, and a bath- after all those leaves and searching for worms someone needs it.

Farm

 
What a great day. Family, extended family, good food and lots of fun. Too tired to say much more than that. I'll get some movies up when I have an hour to shrink them and upload.

The next food network star

Or, Flour Child (he's covered)!  I hope you can understand what he's saying, basically he's underdog making an instructional video showing how to make a pizza. You almost had a laugh track but I was able to contain myself. And here's the finished product:

Care Package

Tuesday Ethan and I made a care package to send my niece at college. I hope she liked the wrapping, it is apple week after all!

And more leaves

Leaves- already

It's hard to believe it's still technically summer since it feels like November around here. The heat has come on already. Today Ethan thought it would be fun to rake up some of the leaves that are already falling. It did not take long to get a big pile which entertained us for quite some time.

We're having a lazy weekend. Yesterday we (meaning me) cleaned out a closet in the basement to make room for all the new birthday toys. Now they are in the closet, which Ethan has dubbed his personal toy store. He does not need ANY more toys!!!! Now to find places to put all the things that came out of the closet, minus the 13 years of Martha Stewart Living that went to recycling.

Family Week

 
This week at school is "Family Week." Ethan made this on Monday. He told me left to right is him, James, and me. He also filled in the end of the sentence "I am special because" with "because I help my mom clean up." :)  And when he showed James he said, "Look, Daddy, I made you with a big head and swirly hair." Well, he got part of that right...

Bethlehem Fair

This morning was so nice that we decided to head to the Bethlehem Fair. Ethan liked the cows. We also watched the axe throwing contest for a while. We had some fair food and then ice cream and danced for a while to the band that was playing before navigating the mud pit parking lot and heading home for some relaxing.

Party Fun

 
As usual I didn't think to ask Ethan's buddies moms if they minded their kids pictures being online, so I just cropped out Ethan (and one with Elise) for the blog. I did get one of the cake after I finished it too.

Birthday Party Setup

 
We had a lot of games and activities set up for the kids. This was "Volcano Golf" which I'm saving to give to Metz for his putting green. It's a bunch of boxes taped together, papier mached over, and  painted. Ethan helped a lot with the painting. 
 
This was horseshoes with "dinosaur shoes" made from cereal boxes and craft foam, decorated with some glitter glue. Ethan tried these ahead of time. 
 
We also set up the kick-ball croquet with a few other sets of dinosaur shoes. 
 
This was the "dinosaur cave" which you may recognize from previous posts as Ethan's "fort."  James painted the tv box green, we decorated it with dinosaur posters and added the dinosaur mat I made and put in the dinosaur books Grandma and Pa got him with a little dino board game and all the toy dinosaurs.
 
At this table we had "roaring contest"winner ribbons, the kids roared (if they would) and we gave them ribbons for loudest roar, wackiest roar, etc. We also let them make paper plate dinosaur masks with paper and foam decorations, markers, pencils, etc. I had some pre-made masks as well for kids who weren't interested in making a craft. 


 
This guy was our bean bag toss game, bean bags recycled from last year's party. Thanks Grandma Jo Ann. 
 
Here we had salt dough in gray to make the volcano and as red as I could get it to make the lava. There were boxes to take them home in and markers and stickers to decorate with. 
 
The pinata was the centerpiece until it was opened. We also had a "pin the horn on the triceratops" game. 

What I didn't get pictures of- the dinosaur egg favors in the nest or the dinosaur tracks in the driveway but here they are from when I made them. Thanks again to Kate for her help with the papier mache! This time was a little less hectic with setup than last year- I finished the cake Friday night so we had a leisurely set up, oh and no power outage was a plus.