Pumpkin Pickin'

Today it was time to go find our pumpkins! We first went to Foster's Produce. It was a pretty run down looking place and dirty but we got a few pictures. The highlight was definitely the fuzzy caterpillar that we found that is now in our living room in a glass jar.

We did not get any pumpkins there and decided to drive down the road to another farm called Garden Treasures. It was so much nicer and had an added bonus-it was an organic farm.

We were also very excited to find out that we could go out to the field and pick our own pumpkins, just what we wanted. So we found a cart and headed out to the fields!

Everyone found exactly the pumpkin they were looking for. When we got to the check out they were so cheap, we got a few more plus some gourds for $.50 each. We spent a total of $11.50.

We have been having a lot of rain lately so we were so happy that we had a chilly but dry afternoon!

Caramel Apples

Today the kids and I made Caramel Apples for the first time. The turned out great and it was so fun watching Naomi eat her first caramel apple and Jake trying to eat it with all of his teeth missing!

The tree in our front yard

Kelly and Max

Today we were so blessed to see our dear friends from Hawaii, Kelly and Max. Kelly and her husband John traveled with me to Africa to adopt their son, Max. Kelly's sister lives about 20 minutes from us. Kelly flew out to see her family and celebrate her niece's birthday. We were invited to the party which was at the Everett's Children's Museum.

I think that Max and Naomi will always have a special bond because they shared some many experiences together. They were sharing food and Naomi was always making sure Max kept his mouth clean!

The museum itself was AWESOME, we will be back for sure. On the roof they had these cool play structures, dinosaur area and music making area.

Inside it is all interactive and hands on. They had an airplane, farm area, trains, restaurant, water play area and more!

We loved every minute of it and the time we got to spend with Kelly and Max. They are like family to us and we love them dearly. They are the first people we have seen that we know since we moved to Washington and it was so hard to say goodbye without any tears.

Bake a treat with Mom

Here are the finished products of Jacob's reward of Baking a treat with mom. We used Grandma Cowherd's sugar cookie and butter cream recipes. She is my sister-in-law, Laura's, mom. We made pumpkins, ghosts and bats. They are delicious!

Another tooth gone

Tonight Jacob lost his 3rd tooth! I love that toothless grin but man is it hard sometimes to get a good picture of Jake!

See what I mean?

Kindness

One thing we want to teach the boys is Kindness. We talked about it all the time with them but we were not seeing a whole lot of kindness going around. So I came up with an idea called Kindness Cans. I spent one evening making and getting everything together and then we introduced it to the boys. We wanted to see how it would work with them first and involve Naomi when she is a bit older.

So each boy has a can and then there is a Kindness Can. Anytime we see them doing something kind, say something kind or think of someone else before himself they get to make a deposit into their own Kindness Can. We be sure to say "That was really kind!"

The things they put in are little scrap booking shapes that are pretty sturdy that I wrote "Kindness" on.

The goal is for them to earn 10 pieces of kindness. Whenever they earn 10 they get to pick a prize. Darrick and I had fun thinking up the prizes and we wanted them to not be a toy or something like that. The boys were excited about the prizes which was a good start.

It is interesting to watch the boys because we can see that kindness comes more natural for Jake then it does for Micah. But when Micah sees Jacob getting pieces of kindness he kicks it into gear and starts earning them too.

Here are some of the things they have done (and they have to be done without us asking):

• Micah read a story to Naomi
• Jacob opened the car door for me
• Micah got drinks for everyone at dinner
• Jacob gave Micah and Naomi the last two pieces of his snack
• Micah cleared the dishes after a meal

So during this week they both got to 10 twice. We want it to be sort of instant gratification to keep them motivated which is why we picked 10. For their first prize Micah picked 30 extra minutes of DS time and Jacob picked to play a game of HORSE (basketball) with just him and Dad. For their second prizes Micah picked (what else) 30 extra minutes of DS time and Jacob picked to bake a treat with me. Tonight we are made Halloween sugar cookies and tomorrow we will frost them.

Let's hope it continues!