The cabin! The cabin! The cabin!

We went back to the cabin for a long weekend the past four days -- the first time the kids have been there since Labor Day. Needless to say, they were so excited! We've been talking about it for a couple months and even had a calendar on the wall, marking off the days. When we drove onto the road going up to the cabin, the two of them started yelling at the top of their lungs -- in pure joy -- "the cabin! the cabin! the cabin!"

The first thing they really wanted to do was ride their Barbie Jeep Power Wheels, but I told a little fib and said we needed to charge the battery since we arrived just at lunch time and nap time was coming up fast. But when naptime was over, they were back out there!

Here's a video:


Then they "helped" us rake the leaves (or more accurately "blow" with the leaf blower). Ben absolutely loved standing in the spray of leaves. Maddie wasn't quite so sure.

From 2011-10-28

From 2011-10-28

From 2011-10-28

From 2011-10-28

From 2011-10-28

From 2011-10-28

On Sunday, the weather was pretty crappy so we were inside most of the time. After nap (while Ben was still sleeping) Maddie watched a "Sid the Science Kid" episode where they built a cave and explored the concept of darkness using flashlights. Maddie wanted to build her own cave -- so we did! Of course, we had to have flashlights, too. By then, Ben was awake. They especially loved Jamey's headlamp, which has red and green lights, in addition to the white one.

From 2011-10-28

From 2011-10-28

Then we checked out the cool things you could do by shining the flashlight up at the white ceiling!!

From 2011-10-28

From 2011-10-28

A couple other random pics from the weekend:

From 2011-10-28

From 2011-10-28

Pretend play

Ben & Maddie have been doing a lot more pretend play lately (which is fabulous!). On Sunday Ben asked me to take out the closet (where I hide the extra toys), the "pizza set." Somehow he had remembered the Melissa & Doug wooden pizza set that they haven't played with in months and months! So I took it out, along with the other wooden play food. The two of them went crazy, "cooking" and then setting up their little table with food, plates and tea and then sitting down together to eat. It was one of the most civilized things I've seen them do in awhile!

This morning they wanted to do that even before TV, which is unheard of! So I got a few pictures...

From 2011-10-25

From 2011-10-25

From 2011-10-25

The latest words....

Ben and Maddie are talking up a storm these days and the funny things that come out are endless. Unfortunately, I'm not doing such a good job documenting them. But I'm going to try harder!

The latest comes from Maddie. When one of us tells her that she can't do something, she goes running to the other parent (who might be just a couple feet away and within earshot of the original "no") and she puts on this whiny voice and says, "Mommy says...." and repeats whatever the first parent said.

So for example, the other day I was home from work and I thought it would be fun to take them to a drop-in ECFE class that we've been wanting to try. So I was telling them that we were going to go to school, and they were both so excited. Then I remembered that it was MEA week and thought I better check the schedule -- and of course, all classes were cancelled this week. So I had to tell Maddie, "school is closed. we can't go."

Jamey was sitting right there and Maddie turned to him and said, "Mommy says school is closed. We can't go," with her full pout face on and the saddest eyes ever!

It's pretty dang hard to not laugh when she does this. It's just too cute!

Pumpkin muffins

These are the most delicious (and easy!) muffins. I tweaked by adding brown sugar and cinnamon on the top before baking.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/easy-pumpkin-muffins/detail.aspx

Goodbye to Lindsey

Today we went to Hastings to join the Beissel family say another goodbye to Lindsey, who is heading to Dubai to teach English.

The kids had fun, including playing in the leaves with Lindsey:

From 2011-10-08

From 2011-10-08

From 2011-10-08

From 2011-10-08

From 2011-10-08

From 2011-10-08

Before we left I took a couple pictures of Ben, including this one where he was hugging his lovey:

From 2011-10-08

From 2011-10-08

Girls and kids weekend

Jamey was at the cabin this past weekend for his semi-annual "man weekend" -- this time to take out the dock and boat. This might be the last year of taking out this particular dock, though. The wooden structure, built by my father, is hitting the end of its life. It either needs a major remodeling or a replacement. We're leaning toward replacing it with an aluminum roll-in dock that would require much, much less maintenance. The trick is coming up with the money to buy it!

I stayed home with the kids and our friend Sonya and her daughter Clara came and stayed with us all day Saturday, Saturday night and half of Sunday. The highlight was going to Aamodt's Apple Farm in Stillwater on Sunday morning. It was a gorgeous, sunny day and there were so many things to do.

They have a tractor/trike area (John Deere trikes and ride-on "tractors") for little kids. Then there was the "train" like ride behind a tractor. They have little "cars" made out of metal barrels that are all hooked together and pulled behind a tractor. Then there was a hay ride behind an even bigger tractor. And the hay maze (a very simple one) designed for kids. I think the three kids ran around in there 8 or 9 times. They lost Ben one time, though, and I had to go hunting for him. Luckily he wasn't upset!

We bought apples and had a picnic lunch, and by noon the kids were pretty much wiped out. Ben and Maddie were so wound up, though, that they had a hard time falling asleep for nap!

Sorry no pictures. I didn't feel like hauling the big camera around and it was all I could manage to keep my two kids in my sights.