It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

One of the many joys of the holidays for me is all the decorations. We decided to get ours out before we left for Thanksgiving. Here are the boys setting up their tree...




And the finished product...
Pictures of the family tree to come later...

No more Training wheels...

As often happens in a house where there are four boys running around the youngest learns to do things a little bit sooner than others. This is, of course, because by this time their parents have learned all the tricks...

Don't believe me...

OK, it is because they have big brothers to look up to...

Probably a little more likely...

However, in the case of Seth and his training wheels there may be another explanation... It started early this summer... Seth would be out riding his bike and it would fall over. We would help him up and the same thing would happen. After a couple of times of falling, we would have to bend the training wheel back in place... It seems that after years of being used (these training wheels have been passed down from one bike to another) they had gotten a little weaker.... As the summer progressed we would be out taking a bike ride and the training wheels would bend or slip off of the support and over Seth would fall. As we began to inspect the training wheels further we realized how worn out they really were.

The options came down to... Get new training wheels or teach Seth to ride without them. So we took them off and off he went. It appears that he had been learning through his many falls, not to rely on the training too much anyway. I actually think the presence of training wheels was causing him to fall more because once they were off he stopped falling. Now he is zooming around with his brothers. We still have to help him get the bike started but he is able to steer, ride and stop along with us.

Johnny Appleseed Festival

When you come to the city of Fort Wayne, you can find the gravesite of the legendary Johnny Appleseed. Each year the city of Fort Wayne holds the Johnny Appleseed Festival, a trip back in time that celebrates colonial life in Indiana.

There are games for the kids...

And shows that explain life during the colonial times. The boys and I are watching a lady with a Possum in this picture.


One of the highlights for the boys was the loud, booming cannon that went off every half hour or so.

Strides of Hope Run...

This year I ran my first ever 5k. The Strides of Hope is a fund raising event for the Hope Crisis Pregnancy Center. My goal was to run the whole thing and to finish it in less than 40 minutes. I ran everything except for 2 short uphills (at the advice of my husband who said it is a waste of energy to run uphill) and finished in 36:50.


On the other side of the road are the walkers who did one lap and cheered us on as we ran!

Bear Football!

Zeke and JJ are also playing flag football this year. They have been assigned to the BEARS. (I know tough for a Packer fan to say "Go Bears" but for our kids we will do it!)

This is their 3rd year of playing flag football and they are both getting to be pretty good. They have learned more about where to go and can even run plays. One of my favorites is when the coach has them run a reverse with each other.

Homeschooling...

I think one of my favorite parts of homeschooling is getting to watch the process of your child's learning. I also have the opportunity to create learning opportunities that help drive the point home. This week we are studying the Vikings landing in the Americas. We have used maps to show where they came from and we created boats to show how they got here. The kids also recorded a little speech about what they learned about the Vikings.

A tasty fall treat...

Today the we picked up a tasty fall treat at the store! The boys loved their caramel apples!