What's Been Going On

I've kind of been dreading this blog post because I have so many pictures to put on here and I feel like so much has been going on since I last posted anything. I'm not very good at keeping these things short and sweet, but I'm going to give it my best shot. I've also been writing the post in backwards order since that's how I have to upload the pictures to have them in the correct order, so if it doesn't seem like it flows very well, that's why. As usual, I got started too late on this thing and now I don't feel like proofreading it or anything, so it will just have to be published as is.

Here are the boys trying out their costumes last week. We were lucky enough to borrow these costumes from some friends of ours, and the boys were very excited to try them on. I wasn't sure how Drew would do with the Yoda head, and though he resisted at first, as soon as he saw Zach put on the Darth Vader mask, Drew had to have Yoda's ears on him.

This was the best fighting stance I could get out of them. I was hoping for something a little more theatrical, but oh well.

Moving right along...

Zach got new snow pants, and Drew tried on Zach's old snow pants. This prompted some great imaginative play. Here are the boys as firefighters, wearing safety goggles and their fireman suits. Zach's backpack is also serving as his oxygen pack. I love how their minds work!

The boys helped me make banana bread to send to Aunt Katherine up at college. Zach helped just a little and then disappeared to play in the basement with Mike, but Drew wanted to help for the whole thing. I love their faces in these pictures.

Zach's class did a little Halloween play last week, based on the book The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything by Linda Williams. Zach was proud to play the role of the pumpkin and delivered his line of "Boo! Boo!" with great conviction.

After the play was done, the kids sang us some songs and recited some poems they'd been working on.

Then they invited parents/guests up to do the chicken dance. I decided to let Mike take this one. He always was a better dancer than me...

Thursday night Sandy, Will, and Anders arrived from the Twin Cities. Friday morning I left Drew with Sandy, Will, and Anders and I went to help out with Zach's Halloween party at school. I wasn't sure if Drew would be good or not, but it seemed like there weren't any problems. It's nice that he's getting more comfortable with other people and that he was better about sharing his stuff with Anders. Zach's party seemed a little unorganized, but it went well. At least it's relatively easy to entertain a bunch of five and six year-olds, and I think the kids had fun. Once the games and craft were done, we filled some time by singing some songs from their program the day before and doing some more chicken dancing.

In preschool, Zach had 2 buddies that were really his best friends. I think these two boys in this picture with Zach are kind of the new best buddies for kindergarten. Drake is the Transformer, and Kade is the fireman. They are the two boys Zach talks about playing with the most, and the three of them seemed to sort of gravitate towards each other at the party.

Here is Zach's whole class after their party. Zach is on the far left in the back row.

Friday morning Will left for Iowa City, so Friday night Sandy, Mike, and I took the boys to the family Halloween event at the Living History Farms. We got this great photo of the three boys as we first got there.

Basically we walked around and the boys trick-or-treated at the various sponsors' stations. Then we got into an incredibly long line to ride on the horse-drawn wagon. Anders, Drew, Zach, and I took a little break from the massive line to sit and eat some popcorn.

This picture cracks me up. Definitely one for graduations/weddings when these two boys are older.

Once we got off the wagon, we made a quick stop to roast some marshmallows, and then we headed out. It was a nice night to be outside and the boys all had a fun time. We decided to make a quick stop at the bathroom for Anders and Drew before heading home. That's where the fun ended, at least for Drew and Mike. Sandy and Anders went into the women's bathroom and Mike took Drew into the men's while Zach and I waited in the hallway. Pretty soon, Zach and I could hear Drew just bawling. Mike and Zach were in there for a long time, and each time a new guy would go into the bathroom, he'd come out with a little smirk on his face, surely thinking something like, "Been there, done that!" or "Sucks to be that guy!" Finally they made their way out of the bathroom, and Drew immediately tattled on how Mike made him sit differently on the toilet (he's still too little to stand at most toilets) and how it wasn't very nice and how it made him so mad. Mike said that while in there, Drew kept saying, "This NOT how Mom does it!" which probably explains some of the smirks. Anyway, it was pretty clear at that point that Drew was wiped out, and the "fun" just continued at home, with Drew having a terrible time following directions and going to bed very upset. We were all exhausted by that point!

Saturday morning we got up at a decent time and got the boys all ready to head to the pumpkin patch. It was a beautiful day- a bit chilly, but sunny and not windy, so that's good in my book. I wasn't sure if the place would be packed, what with it being nice weather and the day before Halloween, or if it would be dead, since it was already the day before Halloween. We got there a few minutes before they officially opened, and much to my pleasure, the place remained relatively quiet the whole time we were there. I guess everybody else went to the pumpkin patch weeks ago. As we were paying our entrance fees, the boys were admiring the tractor and I told them they could look but not get on it. Just then the tractor driver came up and said that sure, they could get on, and he helped them up.

Here are Zach, Aunt Sandy, and Anders on the wagon ride out to the pumpkin patch.

Mike, Drew, and me. Not the greatest picture of us, but it's not bad.

When we left the Living History Farms on Friday night and told the boys we'd be heading to the pumpkin patch the next morning, Drew immediately said he didn't want to go there because of the tall grass. Drew had never been to the pumpkin patch before, so I wasn't sure where he got this idea. We convinced him that there wasn't tall grass there, and if there was, we'd stay out of it, and eventually he was ok with that. Well, as we rode on the wagon from the farm house out to the pumpkin patch and came upon the corn maze, Drew said, "SEE? There's the tall grass!!!" It was hilarious. Thankfully he was ok with going into the corn maze, and we all had lots of fun in there. We didn't even attempt to make our way through the whole thing- it seemed pretty elaborate.

Next to the corn maze there were go-karts that you had to pedal, so we each took a kid and took off on the race track. With this pregnant belly it's getting tough to fit a kid on my lap, let alone fit a kid and pedal a go-kart. Amazingly, Drew never fell off my lap, but you can see from this picture that he may have been close a few times.

Anders looks only slightly more comfortable on his mom's lap than Drew looked on mine.

Zach seemed to have the most comfortable ride.

The pumpkins were pretty much picked over, but we did manage to find a few big ones that were good enough to take home. We wanted to get a picture of the three boys by some pumpkins, but basically they were too busy to sit still for that long. Instead I got this one of Anders and Zach.

I really like this photo I snapped of Mike and the boys heading out of the pumpkin patch.

There was goat feeding by everyone but me, I think. I can handle my dogs licking me, but I don't want farm animals licking me.

This was what the sign above Sandy, Anders, and Drew's heads said. Reason #2 why I don't feed the animals.

Despite how it sounds, I'm really not a germophobe, but I always feel kind of icky letting my kids play in public sandboxes or in places like this giant corn bin, but I let them do it anyway. It is always amazing to me how all this dried corn can intrigue a five year-old and a two year-old for so long. I'm still finding corn kernels in my mud room.

Anders got a little help from his mom walking up this huge log. Notice the concentration face- tongue out and everything! I love it!

Zach especially loved these giant hay bales, and Zach and Drew liked climbing to the top and sliding down, but it was tough to get a good picture of all three boys up there.

Once the boys were up, we got the pumpkins carved. The boys helped a little with scooping out the seeds, and then they told us what they wanted. Drew and I had picked up a Lightning McQueen stencil to carve into his pumpkin, and man, that was a pain in the butt. I was part way through getting the basic outline on the pumpkin when Drew decided he wanted a regular jack-o-lantern face instead, and I was more than happy to turn the pumpkin around and carve a face on the other side. This was how his pumpkin turned out.

Sandy carved Zach's to be a scary face, per his request, and then, instead of doing a tigerhawk like first had planned, she decided to do a bat. It's sort of a deformed bat, but cut her a break- it was her second pumpkin!

After carving the pumpkins we had a quick pizza dinner and took the boys trick-or-treating. They had a fun time, and thankfully it was a beautiful night for it. It's nice to be able to just go around the block with them. I know it won't be long before Zach especially wants to go to more houses, but until then, we'll keep it short and sweet.

Whew! It's done and the pictures are all here. Hopefully they show up this time. And maybe I'll be better about posting shorter bits and pieces here and there. Don't count on it, though.

For The Times, They Are A-Changin'

I had my 10 year college reunion this past weekend. People from big universities probably never have reunions, but if you went to a small college, as I did, you can expect organized reunions every 5 years. The last time I was on my college campus was 5 years ago, and there were major changes at that time, primarily a whole new student union. Now, another 5 years later, there's a brand new athletic complex, complete with an aquatic center, climbing wall, and state-of-the art weight room. As a former collegiate athlete, I can say I sure wish we had that when I was there! There are also new, much nicer dorms to live in than were available when I was there. These are all big changes, for sure, but possibly the biggest shock my girlfriends and I were faced with was what the students were wearing.

The guys' style hasn't changed much in 10 years- basically still t-shirts and jeans. Probably the biggest change amongst guys is that they don't curve the bills of their hats so much anymore. It was the girls who really shocked us. So I've decided to take a little trip down memory lane. I went through my old photo albums and scanned in some photos from my college years, starting with my freshman year and ending with my senior year. These are not necessarily my favorite pictures (especially the earliest ones, where I think my face looks fatter than it does now when I'm 7.5 months pregnant- thank you, freshman 15!); rather they are pictures that illustrate the point I want to make. In all of the pictures I've scanned in, my girlfriends and I were in "going out" attire. The small town where our college is located used to have basically one bar, for ages 19 and up, and it was a stone's throw from campus, so that was literally THE place to be on Saturday night.

So, freshman year- 1996-1997- this is me, Katrina, and my roommate Sandy. Notice the big flannel shirts.

This is also my freshman year- Sarah Freed, Sandy, Katrina, Britt, and me. Mostly big, baggy clothes. Clothes I wouldn't be caught dead in now, and clothes that totally were NOT flattering on me! Baggy AND horizontal stripes? Where were Stacy and Clinton then? (If you have never watched What Not To Wear, that may not make sense to you.)

Sophomore year now- 1997-1998- not as baggy, but just casual. This is me, Kristi (apparently the birthday girl), and Kat. Sandy, my roommate, was actually in the picture, but when it got scanned it made her face all white, so I cut her out of it. Sorry, Sandy.

My junior year- 1998-1999- mostly t-shirts and jeans again. Starting in the back left- me, Freed, Sandy, Cristy, Michelle, and then in the front- Britt, Emily, Angela, and Kristi. As a side note- all of these girls except Freed were at the reunion this past weekend, and that seemed to be about it as far as people we (Sandy, Britt, Kristi, and I) wanted to see. It was a pretty poor showing, really.

This was Halloween my junior year, the year my friends and Mike's friends started really hanging out. We had a big Halloween party. The dresses that Britt and I wore (we're on the left) belonged to my roommate Sandy's mom, and this is probably about the most "dressed up" I ever got for a night up at Joe's. These are the 3 girls that I went back to campus with this past weekend.

Finally, our senior year- 1999-2000. We were still doing the tank-top-with-a-shirt-over-it thing then. Those are candy necklaces, too, just in case we needed a snack while up at the bar, I guess. This picture also shows the girls from this past weekend- Sandy, me, Britt, and Kristi.

This last picture is taken a couple of days before our graduation. This is actually at the bar, and we are all up on "The Ledge" for this photo. Again, notice that we're mostly in jeans and cute t-shirts (as opposed to grungy or baggy t-shirts). These were my closest college friends- Heather, Britt, me, Freed, Sandy, Kristi, and Katrina.

So you can see from all of those pictures, that we dressed pretty casually for going out. It's small-town Iowa- we didn't need to get too fancied up. There's nothing like being up at Joe's Knighthawk this past weekend and seeing the current style to make me realize that 10-15 years ago, we dressed WAY differently, and that yes, I am indeed getting old. It seemed I was constantly picking my jaw up off the floor at the outfits I was seeing. Maybe it didn't help that I was already feeling old and out of place as the only pregnant lady in the bar (I realize I don't look like a college kid anymore, but if I hadn't had this big belly sticking out, at least I would have felt like maybe I could have passed for someone in my mid-20's or something), but man, those outfits were unreal. I tried to be real sneaky and used my phone to snap a few photos of some of the co-eds. Unfortunately, I'm not quite at the paparazzi level, so my photography skills aren't great. I was not able to get pictures of the most atrocious outfits, or if I did, the pictures just really don't do them justice.

This one (girl in the white shirt and black skirt) seemed somewhat modest, to be honest.

This girl's dress, while very short, wasn't horrendous, but it was northern Iowa in late October. She, like many other girls, probably had on high-heeled sandals with this dress.

All three of these girls' dresses were extremely short. In real life (as opposed to this dark and blurry picture), the one on the far left barely was covered, and that is no joke.

The blonde girl in the forefront of this picture seemed like she got her dress straight out of Robert Palmer's Addicted to Love video, minus the sleeves and high neckline. Definitely gave new meaning to the term "little black dress," that's for sure. I mean, I don't know how she'd sit down without showing her butt. And then the girl on the right has a very short little skirt with those high heels.

This is just a slightly better pic of the blonde in the little black dress.

So remember that ledge that my girlfriends and I were on in the one picture? Well, people still dance on that ledge. Girls in their tiny dresses dance on that ledge, and I can only hope they have the dignity to wear underwear under those tiny dresses. It really was disturbing to my friends and me to see all these outfits. I had to ask at one point (aging myself that much more), "What would their mothers think?!" Many of the dresses were also very low-cut and revealing up top, and it just wasn't good. It makes me thankful that fashion trends rise and fall, and I hope that by the time my kids are in college, this tiny-dress trend is out and jeans and t-shirts are back in! It also makes me a little relieved to just have boys (at this point, anyway), seeing as how they still wear basically the same thing. But it brought up a couple of interesting and also annoying questions that I posed to my girlfriends- why is it that the guys still just throw on a t-shirt, jeans, and a hat, and the girls go to such extreme lengths to get attention? Don't they realize the kind of attention they're drawing to themselves? Is that the kind of attention they want? Maybe I should suggest that some prof at the college teach a class based around that. I'm not saying these girls shouldn't dress in cute clothes or anything, but I guess I'm wondering if any of them ever wonder if they've crossed a line of sorts.

So, aside from the disturbing outfits, the weekend was really fun. It was great to see Sandy, Kristi, and Britt again, and to be back on our old stomping grounds, even if we felt like old ladies. We did make it out to the dance floor and we did stay up way too late, but it was all worth it! Thanks, Sandy, Kisch, and Britt! You my friends!!!

Fall Sports

I haven't been very good at blogging lately. Seems like life is just carrying on normally and there's nothing too exciting to write about, not that the blog posts are ever what I would necessarily call "exciting" anyway, but you know what I mean.

Zach just finished off another season of soccer. A couple of weeks ago I took a few pictures. Mike was gone that day, so it was just the boys and me, and by the time we got to the game, I was tired, both physically and emotionally (game was at 12:30, so imagine a busy morning, a rushed lunch, and just an impatient mom), so when it came to taking pictures, I couldn't really be bothered to get out of my chair to get the best shots. So here's what I got.

Zach is the little guy in white/gray with his foot up like he's about to kick the ball. His buddy Kenneth is the redhead in the green shirt. Kenneth's mom and I used to teach together, his dad and I went to college together and play soccer together, and the boys were born 1 day apart.

Throwing the ball in.

This was a different day, but this pretty much sums up how we would keep Drew entertained during Zach's games. Give him a snack (in this case an apple), and he's pretty content. I know, it's not good to give kids too many snacks, but it allowed me to watch the games without feeling like I had to entertain Drew the whole time.

Overall, Zach had a good soccer season. He enjoyed it, so that makes it a success in my book. He scored a few goals, including 2 in the final game this past weekend. He still needs some work on ball-handling and game strategy (he loves to just kick the ball out of bounds in the defensive half of the field, rather than trying to kick it up towards his goal), but he's only 5, so I'm not too worried about that. It definitely is interesting to see which kids have older siblings that they've played with. You can pick them out on the field by their aggressiveness and their better understanding of the game. Which has left Mike and me wondering- when do first-borns catch up to their non-first-born peers in that sense?

The last few weeks Zach has also been playing flag football. He loves flag football, and he does a great job at it. He knows when he plays that he has one of three jobs- block for his team's runner, run with the ball, or "tackle" (grab the flag) the opponent with the ball. Having just one thing to focus on each play really seems to help Zach be successful in football. It doesn't hurt that he is a competitive kid, either.

Here's Zach running with the ball.

And he breaks away from the pack. I believe he scored a touchdown on this play.

Going for the two-point conversion.

Zach says his favorite parts of playing football are tackling and scoring touchdowns.

Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of Zach blocking. The kid blocks until after the play is dead and the whistle has been blown. In his last game this past Saturday, he was blocking a kid who really did not appreciate it, and the kid took a swing at Zach. On a later play, this same kid was running with the ball and Zach got his flag, and boy, could you see that this particular little boy has quite the temper. Thankfully, Zach always kept his cool and didn't retaliate or anything, which kind of surprised me, because I'm pretty sure if it were me at that age, I would have retaliated.

Just like at soccer games, snacks help Drew get through football games. He does enjoy cheering Zach on, though, too, which is pretty cute.

And now, a couple of random photos.

Drew wanted to snuggle Foudy and have me take pictures of them together. The pictures were all pretty funny, but I thought this one was the most hilarious because of both Drew's and Foudy's faces. If you look closely you can see Drew's lovely sunglasses tan.

Last Monday Zach didn't have school, and the boys and I were supposed to go to the zoo. It ended up being rainy and colder, so we couldn't go, and the boys, especially Drew, were bummed. That evening he was basically in tears because we hadn't gone. The zoo here is fine, but it's not amazing, so I think it's kind of sweet that Drew loves it there so much. Zach gets out of school early on Wednesdays, so I packed a lunch and the boys ate it in the car on the way from school to the zoo. The weather was great and the zoo was not busy, so we had a great time. I only took one picture while we were there, with my phone, so it's not a high quality photo. We were playing on the big playground at the zoo, and I asked Zach and Drew to get together for a picture. This other little boy was near us and said, "I, too!" and sat down next to Drew and started smiling. So here's Zach, Drew, and some random kid.

And that's pretty much it for non-exciting news from here. I know Drew has said some funny things lately, but it seems like they're always better in person than written on the blog, so I just haven't written them down lately. Maybe something more interesting will happen in the next week or so.