Apple Orchard

I seem to be a week behind in postings. Last weekend we went to Detering Orchard in Harrisburg. We love to go there. They have fun activities for the kids, free apple pie, ice cream, and the most amazing apple cider.

The kids love the maze.

We brought along the kids best buddy (otherwise known as their other brother).

Baby Huck loved the apple pie and ice cream. He cried when we ran out.

The farm lets the kids pick out a baby pumpkin to take home.

They also give a tractor ride through the orchard.

We had to get some photos of baby Huck by the pumpkins.

When we got back Ken took the older kids running. They found these big sticks at the park. When they got back Ken made the kids bows and arrows. The kids have had a blast launching arrows. They actually can shot them pretty far. Ken tried shooting it and launched an arrow over our back fence, past the creek and nearly into the yard of the homes opposite of us.

Mama never said there'd be days like this

Ken and my mom said I need to document this moment. Personally I would like to just forget it and never think about it again. At the same time I know there is an important lesson to be learned by the whole experience. On Monday I was rushing to get the kids to school. In the rush I didn't properly buckle baby Huck into the stroller. As we were walking without my realizing it he was slipping. One second I was walking along talking to the kids and the next second I heard a terrible sound and the stroller stopped. It took me a moment to realize that he had slipped under his tray and had banged his face on the pavement. When I picked him up his mouth was full of blood (later we realized he had simply cut his lip) but mouth cuts bleed so much. Luckily it had happened right next to a friend's house. I scared her to death when I banged on her back door, but she was able to help me with Huck and I was able to send Midge and Leo on to school.

In the end he is fine, although he has fear issues with strollers now. This entire experience was a wake up call for me that I need to slow down more. I felt so bad that Huck had to be the one who got hurt in teaching me this lesson. The fact is that often I look at my daily life as one big to do list. I race through the events of the day looking at each task as something to accomplish. In the process I am forgetting the moments to be lived in the process. I am learning I need to realign my priorities. I feel like I have had several experiences recently that have shown me I need to do this, hopefully I can just learn this lesson without any more visible reminders. Rather than rushing through the day I need to enjoy the most important things. Of course certain things need to get done and there are times schedules have to be followed, but not at the expense of myself and my family.

I am grateful that Huck had minor injuries, despite what happened to him. As proof that Huck is fine here are some of his latest photos.

He is so close to crawling. He gets frustrated because he can't move exactly how he wants to. Frequently he will find himself going backwards when he wants to be going forward. He also loves chewing on his toes.

I think he is going to be needing a new haircut soon.

Our next little reader.

Preschool Happenings

This week preschool was at our house. It makes the schedule a little crazy at times, but we had so much fun. Little Miss was so excited to have her friends come to her house for preschool. I wasn't sure how she would do, but she was a great help.

This week we were talking about following directions so we decided to take a "trip" to the bakery. We pretended that we got on a bus and drove to the bakery. The kids loved pretending and they humored me with a photo. It was so cute to see them sitting in their seats. They even pretended to buckle up. They helped me drive, pointed out animals to watch out for, helped me look both ways, and honk the horn.

When we arrived at the bakery we talked about how in order to make bread we have to follow directions or the recipe won't work. The kids had so much fun making their bread loaves.

We then baked the bread and had a yummy snack.

Staying Busy

This past weekend Midge was able to go with Ken to visit his mom in Sunriver. They were able to fish at East Lake and help out his mom winterize his house. While they were gone I took the kids up to my parent's house for General Conference. While there we helped out in the garden. Saturday was a beautiful weather day and we were able to harvest a lot of produce.

Leo is such a great worker. Little Miss is a great delegator. She kept pointing out what she wanted the rest of us to pick. Notice that she is actually wearing pants. This is the first time in weeks she agreed to wear pants. Of course it only lasted for a few hours and she was back in a dress.

Those are potatoes in that wheelbarrow. Some of them were huge.

The kids had so much fun with Papa's oak leaves. They kept trying to find the "eggs".

Baby Huck is getting so big. I love kissing his sweet cheeks.

Every time I get the camera out now he tries to grab it. Makes picture taking so much fun.

He is in the first stages of crawling. He will get up in this position and rock back and forth.

He tries this position a lot as well.

Last FHE we went to Sweety's. It is a really cute yogurt shop downtown. The kids love it because you can build your own ice cream dessert.

Huck loved it and was so mad when we ran out. You can see that he grabbed the spoon and tried to savor every drop.