mr. artist

the kids love entering the bookmark contest at the library,especially since someone won last year :)
this year the theme was "wild about books"and the kids had fun designing a "wild" themed bookmark.
and now we have a new winner in the family!

congrats mr. garrett!!

stop in the library
and be sure to pick up a really cool bookmark!

her favorite place to be

before

before it snows,
before it takes 30 minutes to get ready to leave the house,
before i decide that we should relocate to florida,
before our heating bill goes sky high,
before we go stir crazy inside,
we decided to take one last fall hike.

and before they could complain that the hike was too long,
i pulled out the suckers :)

goodbye fall hikes,
hopefully winter is short this year
and we can see you again before we know it!

after a bit of a break...

...she's back to writing.
check out what this girl has to say :)
and it just might make you laughand wish you were 8 again!

oink oink

to finish out a unit on local history,
olivia's class had their first field trip of the year...
they walked a whole 3 blocks to the Blanchard house.

the kids loved the house!
most had never been in this type of house before.
we had a great host who explained lots of history to the kids
and did a great job keeping their attention.

one of the kids favorite things was the purpose of a parlour.
in a parlour you host guests and just relax
BUT
they relaxed very differently back then.
the kids saw that the furniture wasn't comfy,
but rather required you to sit up very straight
and it was definitely not made for jumping on!
in addition, they kids learned that while sitting in the non-relaxing furniture
there was NO TV, NO IPODS, NO RADIO -
oh and they couldn't call their friends on the phone either.
the horror!
they also got to try out a sword chair.it's a chair with just at arm rest on only one side.why?well so your sword could hang down on the other side.obviously!

and now perhaps the coolest bit of history we learned...

when mr. blanchard wanted to marry his wife he went to ask her family's permission.
at the time, mr. blanchard was a poor farm hand.
his soon-to-be-wife's family thought pretty highly of themselves
as they were direct descendents of the mayflower bunch.
they were pretty upset at their daughter's choice of a husband,
and said he was so poor she'd end up living in a pig sty.

fast forward...
they get married and mr. blanchard becomes a successful businessman.
when they built this house, he handpicked the sandstone from his own quarry!
and to show his sense of humor,
he found 2 pieces of sandstone that {if you looked closely} had the outline of a pig on them. HA HA
if you look closely in picture below,
you'll see our host's husband with a long pole.
he was showing out group the "pig stones" :)

all in all, a very fun {and easy!} field trip.
the kids learned some cool stuff, and so did i :)
plus i got to show olivia where i once had a piano recital.
yup, back in my glory days of doing duets with my brother - good times!

i spy...

...one small problem in getting a good christmas card picture.
can you find it?

yes, it's pretty hard NOT to spy the problem!

i can work with awkward smiles, poor clothing choices & bad locations.

personalities, though, are proving a bit more difficult :)

a b a b

ryan has been learning patterns in school.

here are a few of the patterns he told me about in the car today...

red - blue - red - blue

joker - green lantern - joker - green lantern

wally west - clark kent - wally west - clark kent

person - girl - person - girl

i love my little 4 year old -

gender bias issues and all :)

***

do you know who wally west is?

what do you think?

do you think vogel family get-togethers are crazy?

do you think the cousins love being all together?

do you think we should form our own rockettes group?

do you think these kids are cute, or what?

if you answered yes to all these questions
{well maybe not the rockettes one}
then you'd be correct!

just a splash of color...

...makes crazy hair day at school just a little more fun!

rewind...

...and pretend i posted this when i should have!!

carving pumpkins this year was interesting.

we learned that 2 pumpkin knives were just not enough.
can you spot who was SO happy to finally get to use one?
everytime someone asked josie to use her's she yelled "JUST A MINUTE"
olivia & garrett decided that pumpkin carvingis best when you have a plan drawn out.
and ryan... well he just likes to be dramatic :)