Conner Prairie

Dallin had some doctor appointments in Indianapolis in September, which required him being out of school for the day. I figured that rather than drive all the way down and straight back (like I normally do), we'd do something fun and turn a missed school day into something educational. We met my friend Deidra and her 2 kids at Conner Prairie. It's an interactive history park. There's a small indoor museum, but most of the attractions are outside.

There were farm animals that we got to pet in the barn.

 Actors are dressed up in period clothing and they teach you about life in Indiana in the 19th century as you explore the "town."

The kids sat listening to this blacksmith talk about his job for like 10 minutes. I was amazed at their attention span.

The kids got to dress up and do chores.

 Connor in the apron/skirt is cracking me up. (It was his choice to wear it.)

I love these 3 cuties.

We got to play some games that kids played back then, like hoop rolling and walking on stilts.

Connor thought it was a hockey stick and kept trying to take slap shots.

They told me they were on their way to Florida.

 After a beautiful, warm afternoon spent running and playing, we stopped at the apple store (not the kind that sells iPods) on the prairie for some chocolate dipped pretzel sticks and apple cider slushies. 

Our kids sure are a silly bunch of apples.

We love having good friends to do fun things with; friends who talk me into buying an apple cider slushy. That extra cold, sugar rush kept me awake on the hour long drive home.

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Also in September, Mckay's parents came to visit. I didn't take many pictures when they were here, but I did get a few cute ones of the boys when we went to Fair Oaks Farm with them to see the pigs.

Dallin getting an up close look at a newborn piglet (kept behind glass, of course).

There are veterinarian coats and stethoscopes for the kids to wear as they learn about pigs. Connor kept his on for along time.

Looking at all the little piglets.

We love going to Fair Oaks Farms.

County Fair

We finally made it to the county fair this summer! It's been on our summer list for a few years, and the fairgrounds are only 5 minutes from our house, but we somehow have never managed to make it there, until this year. Unfortunately, we went on the last day so all the animals and livestock had already packed up and left, but the rides were still up. And a perk to waiting until the last day is that ride tickets were discounted.

Dallin looks a little scared in this picture, but I promise he did have fun. And yes, I did go on several of the rides even with my pregnant belly. None of the ride restraints but any kind of pressure on my belly, and I only went on rides the kids could go on too, so none of them were unsafe for me and baby.

Waiting in line for the next ride.

Connor was just barely tall enough for most of the rides (with an adult).

Several times when we measured him, he stood on his toes to look taller. Smart boy...

This was the only ride the boys were tall enough to go on by themselves. It was a very simple ride, but they enjoyed it. Mostly, I think they liked feeling grown up.

Next we went on the Ferris wheel together and got a good view of the whole fair.

Paying $8 for a junk food carnival dinner didn't sound that great, so we walked across the street to the Wendy's and got dinner from the value menu. Much tastier! Connor took forever to finish his burger, so we let him carry it to finish eating as we walked back to the fair.

He carried it around with him the whole time, taking little bites here are there. It was really entertaining to watch, though I'm not sure why.

We all had a lot of fun that night. And we made it back to our car and home right before a huge rain storm hit. Perfect timing!

Summer pictures

Now that summer is practically over, it's been fun to look back at all the things we've done. Here are some pictures that haven't made it onto the blog yet.

 We made a lot of Thai food using the Thai peppers and Thai basil growing in our garden. Dallin isn't a big fan of rice, so we tried to form his rice into fun shapes to get him to eat it.

We made him "Lego" rice using a mega block as a mold. I don't think he actually ate the rice any better than normal this way, but he was happier about it being on his plate.

Connor loves rice so there was no need to coerce him.

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We had a water balloon fight one Saturday. 

Dallin and Connor really got into it.

(Do you notice the water spot on the picture that wasn't on the previous one? A casualty of taking pictures during a water balloon fight. Luckily, the lens dried up eventually.)

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Yellow jackets built a nest in our propane grill. That made grilling out very difficult for the first half of the summer. Mckay managed to remove the nest into a jar. Then later that day a yellow jacket "hatched" from the nest.

 Good thing we had a lid on the jar! The next day there were two of them. Eventually we had three yellow jackets in the jar before I got tried of this science experiment sitting on my counter and giving me the heebie jeebies, so I disposed of them.

Later in the summer, we found another nest inside the swing set.

The picture is blurry, but you could see about 20 yellow jackets just hanging out on the chain for the swing. Mckay discovered a nest inside the hollow pipe running across the top of the swings... And then discovered another yellow jacket nest on one of the fence posts... And then he found another nest! We've battled four yellow jacket nests and gone through several cans of Raid, but luckily none of us were harmed by any of them.

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Dallin looking sophisticated.

I made these photo booth props for the Walk for William Syndrome in May (that I somehow never got a picture of!). The kids will occasionally find them and play around. 

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Connor wears his super hero cape and mask a lot, even at meal times.

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We took the car seats out of the car to  be able to transport something large, and Connor wanted to be buckled into his seat so he could pretend to be a turtle.

Sorry for the shaking and sniggering while I recorded him. I couldn't keep myself from laughing!

Baby #3

Way back in July, we had an ultrasound for baby #3 at 20 weeks. It was during the same time as my parents' visit to Indiana, so my mom got to come with us to the ultrasound. We brought Dallin and Connor along as well. They have been really excited and asking lots of questions about the new baby, so I thought it would be really fun for them to "see" the baby. Plus, with Dallin routinely getting 4+ ultrasounds a year, I thought he might like to see someone else getting one for a change. The boys both did really well sitting quietly, putting stickers on everything they could reach to keep occupied.

The baby was all bunched up and hiding. The technician never got the "classic" ultrasound shot of a face in profile, so this was the best face shot.

But you could see the baby sucking a thumb and opening and closing the mouth. Very cute!

Here's a good foot shot.

It took a while for the technician to get a good view to reveal the baby's gender. Finally, she got a shot and said with a disappointed, almost apologetic voice. "Oh, there it is. It's a boy."  We had said nothing to her about hoping for a specific gender, one way or the other. I'm sure she just assumed, seeing that we already had two boys, that we wanted a girl. Then she said, "Well, I hope you at least have a girl dog at home." I had to assure her that we were happy and thrilled to be having another boy.

Here's a belly picture at 26 weeks.

Connor wanted to get in a picture too.  

He's trying to jump up and kiss my belly. Connor loves to see other people's babies and he's been very excited to have a baby in our own house. He asks lots of questions about the baby ("Is the baby drinking milk inside your belly?") and likes to imagine what the baby is doing. When we see a picture of a newborn baby posted on Facebook, he'll ask, "Is that our baby?" Connor is ready to be a big brother. 

Everything is going well with the pregnancy so far. Baby boy is growing well, I'm feeling all the baby movements, aches, and braxton-hicks contractions sooner than with the last two pregnancies. Dallin and Connor have come with me to several of my appointments and the midwives have been really great, letting Dallin hold the doppler wand on my belly to hear the heartbeat or letting Connor help with the measuring tape when they measure fundal height. We're starting to get really excited for baby boy to come, but we still have 11 weeks and lots to do to prepare for his arrival.

Kindergarten

Dallin started school in August. I still find it hard to believe that he is old enough for Kindergarten. He loves school so far and was very excited for it to start. For a solid month before, he asked every day if it was school time yet, and then would get mad at me when I said no, like it was my fault that there is no school during the summer. Making a paper chain to count down the days helped somewhat so he could at least visually see that we were getting closer to a school day.

On the first day of school, he was up and ready so quickly.

Watching for the bus and sporting the R2D2 backpack he picked out himself. (You know, to match the Star Wars lunch box he got for his birthday.)

 Notice the lovely bruise/mark on his left cheek?

Connor bit him... on the cheek... the day before school started!! You could see it on his cheek for a whole week. Connor got in BIIIIIIGGGG trouble for that one.

First day of school shoes.

Connor's aren't new, he just wanted to be in the picture.

 Still waiting for the bus.

It turns out there was a "mix-up" with the bus and with Transportation not having Dallin's information (their fault, not ours). We knew there was a problem but went out that morning hoping it had been resolved. Nope. So we got to take Dallin to school ourselves and see him off into the classroom. And I got to pick him up from school. When I picked him up at the end of the day, he started crying at the sight of me. I thought he missed me and it made me start to get all emotional and worry that he wasn't ready for full day school everyday. Then he said through his tears, "I want to ride the bus!" He didn't miss me after all, he was actually sad at the sight of me because it meant he didn't get to ride the bus with his friends. Thanks for the love, kid. We did eventually get his bus situation figured out and now he is happily riding the bus to and from school. I keep waiting for him to get tired of going to school every day, but it hasn't happened yet.

He is in a regular Kindergarten classroom with his typical peers and is pulled out daily for math, reading and writing with the Special Education teacher. It seems like a good mix for him. He is still pretty far behind his peers in some areas, but he is learning quickly and I love seeing his progress. Today, he brought home a picture that he drew of our family.

Drawing people is a very new skill for him. I love so many things about this picture: the hair, Mckay's cone head, the circle ears. The best part is the baby in my tummy. His teachers don't know that I'm pregnant, so that had to have been his own, unprompted addition to the drawing. I never thought I would get so excited about a silly little drawing, but I seriously love this picture. I can't wait to see what he draws next.

Grandma and Grandpa visit

My parents came to Indiana to visit us for a week. My dad had a conference to attend at Purdue for work, so both mom and dad came out to stay with us.

Dallin and Connor were so excited for Grandma and Grandpa to come visit. They loved all the extra attention and story times.

We went blueberry picking one day. I love having so many local farms just outside of town, only a 10 minute drive from us.

Connor was a pretty good helper. Dallin kept insisting we were done and asked for lunch several times.

The boys carried the 6 pounds of blueberries for us.

We made a lot of delicious food while my parents were here, including blueberry pie, blueberry syrup and peach cobbler.

Mckay treated us to a selection of thai dishes.

Of course, we had to eat in traditional thai style by sitting on the floor.

He made two different main dishes (basil chicken and a spicy coconut curry), thai fried eggs, and rice.

and a delicious mango sorbet for dessert.

Hmmm, we had a lot of really good fruit desserts...

We went to Fair Oaks Farms, the best agro-tourism destination in central Indiana. We got to tour a dairy farm and a pig farm.

The pig farm specializes in breeding and birthing and you get to see newborn little piglets.

Dallin was really good at this exhibit: using ultrasound to see how many piglets the mom is carrying. We had the ultrasound for our baby #3 the day before, so Dallin knew exactly what to do. (Oh, I guess I should do a separate post about the baby's ultrasound...)

Part of the dairy farm experience is seeing the live birth of a cow.

We had delicious grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch from the cafe, and then enjoyed a few of the outdoor toys, like the train ride.

On the last day of their visit with us, we took grandma and grandpa to our local, free zoo.

Dallin played in the water for a bit.

And Connor slept.

We saw the monkeys.

There are several chickens who walk around free at the zoo and Dallin chased them.

Connor woke up just in time to see his favorite animals at the zoo: the goats.

He gets a little too friendly and we have to remind him not to pick up the goats.

We fed the goats some little food pellets and tried not to get pushed over by the wave of hungry goats that hit us when they saw food.

Connor loves getting as close as possible to the goats.

Dallin prefers a little space sometimes.

We rode on the zoo train.

I feel I hardly need to mention how much Connor loves riding the train.

After the train ride, we had my dad take a few pictures of our family.

The sun was working against us, so we didn't get many great shots.

Dallin in this one makes me laugh so hard everytime I see it.

Ahhhh, this way was so much easier for the eyes.

We had such a wonderful time with my mom and dad. We loved being able to spend time with them and we're really happy they could come out for a visit.