Sorry for recent lack of photos. Lots going on, but i’ve just been too sick to post. I’ll catch up soon, i promise. Damned flu….

I’m a little late posting these photos, but hopefully this is a case of better late than never.

Our favorite farm had an Autun Celebration a couple weeks back. It was wooooooonderful! In addition to all the regular farm fun stuff and piles upon piles of pumpkins, they had a scarecrow making workshop and it was the grand opening of their corn maze.

 

To prepare for making scarecrows, the farmers had gone to goodwill to get clothes for us to use. Most of them were just plain old old clothes but there were a few standouts. And much to our chagrin, The Dude fell in love with a totally crazy leopard-print hat. Not for the scarecrow – for himself. He would not take the hat off all day. It was cute, in a junior pimp kind of way.

The maze was awesome – it took us an hour and a half to get through! It was huge and so cleverly designed. At many of the cross-paths, there were little quizzes about farming and nature. If you answered right, it pointed you in the right direction. Otherwise, you were headed towards a dead end.

After a fabulous day at the farm, we headed out for even more excitement. Do you remember the group The Presidents of the United States of America? Well, the lead singer is from around here and he’s now in a kids’ band. And… they were playing our local library! It was a fantastic concert – the kids loved it, and it was the kind of music that the parents could appreciate too.

What a day!

A couple weeks ago, we had a sliding breakthough. Eager to find out if that was a fluke, we headed back to the same park to give it another go.

We had a hard time with this experiment – not because of sliding issues, but i didn’t realize that Issaquah was having their huge annual fesitval and the roads were all blocked off. I tried every back way we coud think of to get to the park, but it was just impossible. We almost turned around to go home, but then i decided to park several blocks away and walk.

We made our way through the crowds and reached the park. It had a totally different vibe than before – consession stands all around, crowds, music… not the sweet little park of the week before. But i’m happy to report that the slide was still fun. We didn’t stay as long this time. Many more kids meant a huge line for the slide. Instead, we walked around looking in booths and peoplewatching (and dragonwatching).

We got to the bandstand area just as a concert began and had a great old time. The Dude danced and played air guitar through the whole hour long show.

All in all, it was a great day. Yet another reminders that sometimes roadblocks are just detours to unexpected adventures.

Way back in February, when The Dude turned three, we bought a Big Wheel. I had fond memories of them from my own childhood and was really looking forward to seeing him on one. Plus, since he’d never liked bikes or trikes, i was hoping this would at least be something to get the little legs pedalling.

He was excited to see it, but alas… when we went outside to give it a spin, we found that his legs were waaaaaay too short. Even at the littlest little kid setting, it was ridiculously big. So we tucked it away in the garage and forgot about it.

I came across it again the other day and decided to try it out. The Dude is still too small to reach the pedals, but he’s discovered that you can just use your feet on the ground to make it go, a la Fred Flintstone.

Dada (Mr Electric Car) cringes when The Dude stops his big wheel, says he’s out of gas, and refuses to go any further until we pretend to put gas in the back of it (accompanied by a glug-glug sound). Dada has tried doing an electric conversion and giving him a recharge instead, but The Dude will have none of it. He wants gas. Dada even tried to talk him into installing a little nuclear power plant. Nope. That big wheel runs on gas. Hmmm… maybe we can compromise on biodiesel.

 

Often, while i’m knitting, The Dude will ask if he can knit too. I give him some needles and yarn, but of course three is way too young to actually knit, so he mostly just stabs the ball of yarn with the needles and rolls it around on the floor.

I was thinking about some way to allow him to actually use yarn to make something and came up with this. It’s an old linen dishtowel and a totally blunt fat darning needle. I put some yarn scraps on the needle and the towel in a hoop, and let him go wild.

He had fun (singing Doe A Dear while sewing) and now we have a lovely craft project on the wall, 100% done by my little sweetie.

Everything tastes better when it’s just picked! We’ve been going apple-picking pretty regularly this fall. At home, he only eats apples peeled and cut up, but in the orchard, he’ll chomp the whole thing until he gets right down to the seeds. He’s fascinated by the seeds.

I can’t wait until the new apple trees in our yard are mature enough to produce fruit for us. One more year (not next summer, but the one after).

I decided not to preserve them this year. I made applesauce last year and while it was yummy, a whole jar rarely got eaten fast enough. So this year i’ve just been baking and freezing apple crisps. And eating lots and lots fresh, of course.

The Dude has never liked slides. He’ll go down them tentatively if he’s on my lap, but even then he’s not wild about them. And by himself? Fuggetaboutit.

Which is why i was so thrilled when we went to a park this week and The Boy Who Won’t Slide  actually went down a slide! He went down and i held my breath. What would he do next…? cry? walk away and never return? Nope. He jumped up, grinned, yelled “again! again!” and ran to the stairs for another turn. I don’t know how long we were at that park, but he must have done fifty slides. Enough that he built up a crazy static charge from sliding down the plastic and his hair stuck out like he’s been electrocuted. Cracked me up.

Have we broken that barrier? Is he a slide-lovin’ boy now? I guess we’ll find out when we go back and find out if this is repeatable. I’ll do it this weekend and report back.

This is the Great Wolf Lodge bonus fun i referred to yesterday. Seriously… it was even more fun than the water park!

The hotel has all sorts of little hidden (and some not-so-hidden) animals and treasure chests and fairies and crystals and you-name-it scattered around the halls and stairways. You buy a magic wand, get a little book filled with quests and go wild.  The quests are in verse and are puzzles to solve, but are pretty easy to figure out - they’re targeted to kids. The things you’re supposed to find all animate (either move or light up or talk) when you wave your wand at them, and there is a system that keeps track of what you’ve done and awards you virtual ”runes” with each completed quest.

It was sweet to see all the little magis-in-training scurrying around the hallways with their noses burried in the Ancient  Book of Wisdom and waving their wands, hoping they found the right thing.

Our own little Magi Good Prince Daniel loved it. I didn’t know how much he’d get into it at first. It started out that he just wanted to make the animated racoon in the lobby talk (which you can do by waving your wand at him), but then he totally got into the quests.

I think Dada was excited to catch a glimpse of future roll-playing wizardry-type games with his little Dude.

Ever heard of Great Wolf Lodge? They’re scattered around the country – it’s a hotel with a waterpark inside it.  We spent this past Sunday and Monday at one just south of Olympia.

I’m soooo glad we splurged and got the upgraded “wolf den” room. Get this, there’s the main room that has a bed and loveseat, but then they have a little nook that is done up like a log cabin and has animal murals on the walls. It’s like theyare in a little wolf den, with a bunk bed inside. The Dude thought it was really cool and didn’t argue much at bed time at all.

The waterpark… it was great for older kids. Huge slides, big wave pool, lots of cool climby things. For The Dude… he stuck to the regular pool and the hot tub.  Don’t get me wrong, he had a blast in the pools, i’m just saying that we definitely didn’t take advantage of all they had to offer.

One big and super fun breakthrough we had was The Dude wanting to swim by himself (with a lifejacket on) It took a bit of time. At first he clung to us in the water. But it didn’t take long for him to discover his buoyancy and start getting independant. It amazed me that with no proper swimming technique at all, he could really get around.

There was another whole fun adventure in the lodge that was completely unexpected to us. I’ll write that up tomorrow after i have time to sort out those photos.

We had our first school field trip of the year – to the firestation.

They’ve been talking about fire safety at school, and i’m quite impressed at how much the little ones took in and remembered. We’re going to have our own little fire drill at home this week to make sure he knows where to go if something were to happen here.

The kids were really excited to see the equipment and the trucks. The little ones got to go in the engine and even spray water from the big hose. The fire fighters were really nice about letting them explore and ask questions.

A leading cause of child death in fires is that the little ones are afraid and hide in a closet or something. They wanted the kids to see them in their gear and be comfortable with them, so that they will come to them in the event of an emergency rather than run and hide.

Guess what The Dude’s favorite part of the tour was? The horns of course. He found the part of the fire engine where the horn blows and just had to play with it. Over and over again.