School Days

Parker and Graham are both loving their new classrooms at school.  Parker has become quite the little artist and her favorite thing to do is color or draw.  This picture is one she drew of her family (including Otis and Grandma & Grandpa). The rainbow in the sky is actually her depiction of Grandpa's special stacking cups.  I have no idea what the random circles are on our bodies, but I don't think they are boobs.

Parker's lead teacher, Miss Donnelly, told me last week that she has never had a student begin the school year with such a good ability to write her name. Parker's fine motor skills are awesome!

Here is a picture of Graham's new class, with one little boy missing from this photo.

I am pretty sure Graham is their most difficult "student".  Not because he is poorly behaved, but because he keeps injuring himself! He had another head injury last week that required us to pick him and take him to the Dr. to be checked out.  Then this week he fell and scrapped/cut his chin.  On that same day, one of these lovely children bit him on the arm, so we had two incident reports to sign that day.  Exhibit A:

This week at school they had Crazy Hair Day, so we got a little crazy (nearly impossible to get a good picture of them together):

And a picture from Graham's teachers and their water play:

Company Picnic

Every year at my company, we have a picnic where employees can bring their families.  It is catered and we have a bounce house, petting zoo, goody bags for the kids, and an ice cream truck!  Parker and Graham had so much fun and loved the animals.

Graham kept climbing the fencing to get in with the animals.  Those are piglets and baby alpacas behind.

Ice cream truck with Greg in the foreground

Otis

Our oldest and furriest baby turned 8 years old this month.  Otis looks pretty good for the dog equivalent of 56 years old.  He still loves to fetch and our yard is perfect for this (given that our neighbor doesn't mind us throwing into her yard as well). 

Otis is getting a little grey on the chin and does take longer to bounce back after a particularly busy day, but he is still energetic as ever.

Red Wings

Goforth Electric has started a new tradition of hosting their employees and families to a Red Wings game each year.  It was a gorgeous day and the Red Wings pulled out a win after three extra innings.  The game was at 1:35 and since Graham did not fall asleep on the way there, as expected, I had to "rock" him to sleep in the stroller.  He did OK though and got a 45 minute snooze in.

These pictures turned out a little dark:

Also this weekend, Greg took the kids for a bike ride while I went grocery shipping.  They rode to a park along the canal and got to have some playground time in between.

CSA

We joined a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) this summer at Wickham Farms.  It is a weekly pick up for 18 weeks, so we split it with our good friends (and Greg's cousin) the Nudds.  It has been such a great experience and opened our eyes to some new vegetables we had never eaten before...kohlrabi!  ground (or husk) cherries!

Every Thursday one of us goes to pick up our share.  There is an herb garden you can cut from each week as well.  The bonus is that the U-Pick fields are open on Saturdays and you can go and pick your own vegetables. We have gone three weekends in a row, mainly to get the green beans, tomatillos, cherry tomatoes, and flowers.

I don't have many pictures of the kids picking vegetables but Parker is a big help and able to follow directions very well (only pick the red tomatoes, only pick the ground cherries that are on the ground).  Graham loves it but really just pulls everything and anything he can and throws it in the bag.  The fields have some deep ruts too, so by the end of it, he is filthy from falling in the mud so much. But it is such a fun experience!

Here are a couple pictures of meals made using the veggies:

zucchini fritters, grilled tilapia and shrimp, cannelloni bean salad with grilled beets & goat cheese

grilled eggplant, leeks, carrots, & beets

One Saturday at U-Pick, they had a special option to ride a hayride to the potato field, where they read some stories about potatoes, showed us how the machine digs them up, and then allowed us to pick some.  Greg was gone all day, so I took the kids and it ended up being very fun.  They were purple potatoes!

They provided donuts too!

There is a tractor way at the end that dug up a row of potatoes, then we just picked them out of the dirt

story time

Good Stuff

These videos will give you a smile for the day.  

Self by Graham Goforth:

Backyard Monkey by Parker Goforth:

And some pics from a visit to a new playground last weekend...at Allen Creek Elementary, where Parker will attend Kindergarten in one year!

Grandma & Grandpa Visit

We were lucky to enjoy a visit from Grandma and Grandpa last weekend!  Greg was leaving for the weekend to go mountain biking in Vermont and it just so happened to be the weekend that worked out well for a trip from St. Louis, so that was great.

Parker had been looking forward to this visit for weeks and told me that she wanted Grandma and Grandpa to take her to a playground.  By herself, not with Mommy, not with Daddy, not with Graham!  So we made that happen and she got lots of one-on-one time Friday morning with visits to two playgrounds and lunch.

The next day Grandpa went golfing with Papa G and Grandma and I took the kids to the zoo.  The Seneca Park zoo is pretty small, but it's nice because you can easily see everything in a couple hours.  

On Sunday, Grandma and Grandpa took Parker to the Red Wings game.  Papa G and Sandy had a suite.  I declined because a 1:00 game does not work well with Mr. Graham's nap schedule.  I have learned enough as a Mom to realize that sometimes you just can't go to everything in order to have a happy kid in the evening!

That evening we hung out in the yard and enjoyed the amazing weather.  Perfect time for popsicles (shirts optional).

And a couple more of this handsome guy:

Parker loves her grandparents and misses them so much.  Graham warmed up to Grandpa pretty quickly since he brought his special stacking cups.  They have been Grandpa's secret baby bait for years.

Can't wait to see them again soon when we come to St. Louis in Sept!!