It's Begining to Look Like Christmas

We disrespected the Turkey and for the first time ever my tree was up the weekend before Thanksgiving. In my defense we were out of town in Chicago and Kenosha for all of our Thanksgiving time off and the Turkey was on the latest possible day that it could be, meaning we had one less weekend before Christmas this year.

Then this week we got a couple inches of snow which always makes you feel like Christmas should be coming. Friday was St. Nicolas's Day and the boys got a little candy and banana's in their shoes in the morning.

We started opening and reading Christmas books on December 1st and the collection of books under the tree is growing fast! Every night we unwrap two or three Christmas themed books to read that night. It's my version of an advent calendar.

The boys got to see Santa twice in two days, once at daycare and at our works Children's Christmas party. Adam sat on Santa's lap and told him what he would like. Eli would not and I didn't even get a screaming mad/scared picture like years in the past.

The first weekend in December I went to Christmas Tea with my Aunts and one cousin. I have been going to tea five years and it is so nice to get away with the girls and eat fun tea foods. Every table is decorated differently by the host and they are all so beautiful. Below are pictures of some of my favorites. It gets you in the festive Holiday spirit for sure and then for an hour we get to listen to entertainment and I realize that I don't get to sit with my thoughts very often.

And Then I Turned 30

Saturday August 17th was my birthday and I turned 30. I remember my sorority joked that your 22nd birthday is when you became "old and crusty". I guess in the eyes of a college student 22 is pretty old, but 30 is a lot older!

We were on our way to Milwaukee and had spent Friday night in a random hotel off the freeway in Tomah. I woke up to a birthday balloon and banner decorating the room- which is kind of a family tradition. We ate hotel breakfast, which happens to be Adam's favorite kind of breakfast and then did a swim in the pool.  Adam is tall enough to stand by himself in the shallow end of the pool. Then I found a trail and decided to go for a long 7 mile run. Dave brought the boys to a park along the trail and they played in soft white sand under the playground.

Then we got on the road and decided to pick up McDonalds for lunch while Eli napped in the van. We drove to the Dells and we went for a family Duck ride. It was loud and more time was spent in the woods then the river- next time we do the Wisconsin River via canoe or kayak or floating on a tube or anything besides the Ducks.

We got to Milwaukee and handed the boys over to my mother and father inlaw in the hotel and we went to tail gate before the brewers game with several of our college friends. Dave's Best Man Adam had a baby and this was a post baby shower extravaganza weekend.

It was fun to let loose and have fun with our friends and have the whole stadium sing Happy Birthday to me (okay it was Bernie the Brewers Mascot's birthday, too)

Hutch Park Tour 2013 Completed

The #hutchparktour2013 is complete. Last weekend we knocked off two parks and then yesterday we went to our last park in the cold extremely windy last hour of daylight.

South Park's play structure is just two swings and a strange rock formation. My bet is on some kind of ritual rock circle, Dave thought it was a cemetary. No one I've talked to seems to know. We had the most fun playing in the leaves. We threw leaves, made leave piles and burried the boys. Some great fall fun!

The next day I took the boys to the VFW park. It had the first triple slide, so of course I went for a slide with the boys. Digging in the dirt, swinging and running the bases in the baseball field kept us busy after the playground got old.

A week later we finished the tour. We went to play at the West Elementary playground. It has a tall dinasour stairs and two triple slides! Despite the wind and chill in the air the boys didn't want to leave. So happy we finished the tour!

1.Shady Ridge
2.Women's Club
3.Rotary- "Hard Park" close to our house and we go all the time
4.Oddfellows
5.Roberts
6.Masonic/West River
7.Riverside Jaycee
8.Kiwanis
9.Fireman's
10.Kimberly
11.North Woods
12.Lions Park East
13.Tartan Park- We call it the "Pirate Park" it's always a huge hit with the boys
14.North/Community Playground
15.South
16.VFW
17.Elks
18.Lions Park West
19.Rolling Meadows- Kids call it the "Easy Park" and it has no slide
20.Driftriders
21.West Elementary
22.Junior Community Women
23.St. A's

Hutch Park Tour Update- 3 left

This week I went on a three hour Historic Hutchinson Tour. I had no idea that there was so much to learn about my small community and that it would be so entertaining. One thing I learned is that Hutchinson has the second oldest plotted park in the country. And this historic old park is where the boys played a few weeks ago. The park is called North Community Playground, but it's behind Park Elementary (which is also on the city park land). It has two large play structures and the boys love it.

This week we stopped at Kimberly Park and got to play on Hutch's best big bump slide! And poor Eli got his cast back on this week. We had three leg accidents the first week  after the boot came off and Eli wouldn't stop limping and refused to wear the boot any longer. Bright green cast it is and for three weeks this time.

Three Hutch Parks left!!!

Golden Anniversary

Is there such a thing as a golden anniversary? Well even if there isn't I have to wish a happy seven years of married bliss to my husband! We had a great family evening with dinner and a walk where no one pushed a stroller. Our babies are growing up and biked the whole way around the pond. And then we looked through the photo albums and watched our wedding video with the boys. Adam thought it was cool, Eli pretended I was a jungle gym and used a screw driver as a sword while running around the living room. I'm so glad we get to share family nights together and extra special weekends away alone every once in a while!

Take Time to Smell the Roses

David worked afternoon shift all week long and into the weekend- 7 days straight. So come Sunday I knew we needed to get out of the house after dad left for work. I convinced my parentals to meet us at the Landscape Arboretum, which I've always wanted to visit. For a year straight I drove right by it every day on my commute to work, but yet never went. We started our journey by pulling over in Biscay a little town south of Hutchinson to play in there park. The boys got some energy out and Eli promptly fell asleep in the car for his nap when we started driving again.

We drove straight to the learning center and waited for my parents in the preschool/toddler play yard. There were little toy cabins filled with all kinds of play things, but Eli's favorite was a brush and a bowl full of water. He painted and painted and painted until that water was all gone or spilled, which ever happened first.

We love playgrounds, but I really enjoyed watching the boys play here more. They used their imaginations and really got to role play in each little play area set up. A downed tree allowed Adam to walk on it like a balance beam and then when he was tired he layed across a branch and announced, "hey mom, I'm laying like a monkey!" There was a little library full of outdoor themed books nestled in the trees. And a stage to dance, sing and pretend to play the guitar on. Several stumps to sit on and one a little taller with a wheel were arranged in a way to become a bus with seats, "everybody on the bus!" Eli proclaimed.

Plus it was just a really beautiful place be when you took a step back and looked around.

We did finally convince the boys to go for a walk through several of the gardens and my favorite by far was the rose garden.

And then when you weren't stuck with your face in a lens you could stop looking at the beauty of the roses and take a moment to shut your eyes and enjoy the wonderful aroma of the rose.

We will go back to the Arboretum again and explore more, because it is a great place to just wander and explore nature.

We finished the night off with dinner in Victoria at a little restaurant called the Victoria House and it was wonderful! Happy Sunday for sure. My boys were so confused as to what day it was on the car ride home, because we had such a long fun-filled day.

 "Mom, was today a school day?" 

"No Adam it was a church day"

"We went to church today?"

4 Year Old Check Up

Adam turned four in June, but I forgot to schedule his check up until July. So August 16th we took our little man to the clinic to meet with Doctor Erin. His weight was 34 pounds 8 ounces which is in the 34 percentile and his height was 40.5 inches which was in the 44th percentile. He's finally catching up to his friends in the height department compared to last year. Adam's ability to reason and communicate is amazing.

At four years old Adam is old enough to start sport activities this fall. I asked him if he wanted to do basketball, gymnastics or ice skating. Adam looked at me and said, "you mean hockey." So it's no question to me what his favorite sport is and which activity he will be enrolling in.

Yesterday Dave took him to his kindergarten screening and he passed all the tests and is ready for kindergarten. I met up with Dave and Adam at Taco Bell. Dave and I were involved in a conversation and Adam had been people watching. The next thing I knew Adam climbed up in my lap and whispered, "mom, I have something to tell you." So I said what and Adam responded, "There isn't any chocolate milk here, so I had to get white milk."

Hutch Park Tour 2013 - 5 Parks Left

Parks with Playgrounds (crossed out are parks we've been to and the bold parks are reviewed in this post):

1. Shady Ridge
2. Women's Club
3. Rotary- "Hard Park" close to our house and we go all the time 
4. Oddfellows 
5. Roberts
6. Masonic/West River 
7. Riverside Jaycee 
8. Kiwanis 
9. Fireman's
10. Kimberly
11. North Woods
12. Lions Park East
13. Tartan Park- We call it the "Pirate Park" it's always a huge hit with the boys 
14. North/Community Playground 
15. South
16. VFW
17. Elks
18. Lions Park West
19. Rolling Meadows- Kids call it the "Easy Park" and it has no slide 
20. Driftriders
21. West Elementary
22. Junior Community Women
23. St. A's

We made a lot progress on my goal to visit all of the playground parks this summer. We still have five parks to visit in fall, but there is still time in 2013.

We went to Riverside Jaycee Park with our friends for a picnic. It's a really good park with a lot of great equipment, plus as the name implies it's right along the river and the Luce Line Bike trail that goes through our little town. The boys favorite thing seems to be the slide made of rolly bars.

Shady Ridge Park is a cute little park tucked away in the middle of a neighborhood. You kind of feel like you are intruding on the neighborhood. Adam actually thought we were playing on private property. It's pretty much a climb up, slide down and repeat kind of park. I did enjoy the massive amount of shade from the trees the hot night we played there.

Down the street from Shady Ridge is the Women's Club Park. This park is awesome. Two play structures lots of slides and lots of literal bells and not literal whistles. Adam loved making music with the bell piano thing and singing along. 

Masonic/West River Park is where I made the mistake of posting the following picture on instagram and facebook with the caption,"My little climber. Bets have been made that he will be the first cousin to break a bone." Never ever joke about a child hurting themselves, because you will feel like it is your fault if it comes true. This is a great park with a great view of the river and of course we love that it is part of the Riversong festival grounds. Beware that the purple dinosaur does bite.

Tartan Park- or the Pirate Park as we call it. It's the perfect park for toddlers, low to the ground with lots of walls to prevent falling. Adam is getting to be almost to old, but I think the fact that it is shaped like a Pirate Ship keeps him interested. It was the perfect park to bring Peg Leg Eli with his bright green cast and then make him walk the plank.

Junior Community Women's Park is a little park near the high school. Any park with a motorcycle gets Eli's vote and all of the equipment was low to the ground, so again it was a great park to bring a two year old with a broken leg. I didn't realize when I started the Hutch Park Tour that it was going to end up having a broken leg safety score factored in. 

Lion's Park East is just down the street, but a little out of the way of the boys daycare facility. The lion was a motorcycle, the swings were to small for a mom to sit on and I didn't like how close it was to highway 7. Not much else to review, but the boys didn't want to leave anyway.

Lion's Park West is over by Sara's house that we share a CSA (community supported agricultural- we share a box of veggies every week). It has a little bit more equipment than it's East counterpart, but not much more. We each ate a fresh carrot while we played!

According to my list I have 5 parks left for the boys to play on and me to instagram. I know what I'll be doing this weekend!