Dewberry Farm

When Brian's family was in town a couple of weeks ago we loaded the kids (and adults) up and headed out to Dewberry Farm. We've been every year for the last three; it's become our little tradition. This year we got to share our tradition and their first farm
experience with Kiera and Kaiden.





You may be asking yourself, what did they do?
Well...

The kids jumped, flopped, ran and skipped across the jumping pillows.





The big kids (everyone minus Deegan) slid down the rolling slides, climbed the stairs and slid down again....and again...and again...



We went for a tractor ride.





The big kids rode on and in the black mamba.







Deegan dug in the corn barn.



We all played in the kid's farm.





All of the kids had a pony ride.
Even Deegan, who wasn't too happy about it.







We finished our day with lunch, snow cones and
a short trip through the corn maze.

Reading Survey

I am conducting informal research for a project in my Foundations of Early Literacy class. I am specifically looking at parents' views of reading.

Please click on the link below and take the time to fill out my
short survey about your views of reading.
What Is Reading?



All information and responses are kept confidential.

Thank you for your help!!

T-Shirt Time

For some reason I got it in my head that I wanted to make the kids t-shirts with their hand prints. Christine and I googled different hand print animals and went back and forth about what we wanted to do before letting the kids chose themselves. Amazingly, they all chose different animals so we decided to go with a zoo theme.







We made a trip to the craft store to buy paint and t-shirts that turned out to be way too big. The next day was spent turning Camden's hand into a tiger, Kiera's hand into a zebra, Kaiden's into an elephant (which we all decided was the cutest) and Deegan's foot print into a lion.
We made individual shirts for the kids and a compilation
shirt for the grandparents.





I use the term "we" loosely. Christine said that I was in charge of the idea, painting, decorating...basically anything to do with this whole shirt business. She was in charge of childcare (without it the shirts wouldn't have been completed) but was willing to take credit for the shirts if they turned out cute. Which they did. Good job Christine! :)

A Week With Four Kids

Brian's Mom, sister and her two kiddos came into town last week and spent a whole week at casa de Butcher. Here is some of what we did...

Made oodles of funny faces and laughed a lot.



Played outside....a lot!







We pushed kids on various swings.
The kids, on the other hand, swung back and forth countless times while asking to be pushed higher and higher.





We chased down the ice cream man and ate a few frozen treats.







We played dress up with costumes we scored at Target for 70% off.
Yea for clearance!



We did so much more that I didn't capture on film but let me tell you that we had fun and made memories.

Trick or Treat

We spent Halloween night with my friend Katie and her family. We ate dinner, dressed up and headed out to trick or treat the night (aka couple of hours) away. We walked around her mother's neighborhood which I have to admit was great; people in costume, decorate houses and lots of kids. Our neighborhood...not so much. We had a great time and were thankful to be a part of their family for the night.