Field trip

Em is studying a "community" unit in social studies so their class took a field trip down to Main Street to see all the businesses that make up our sweet village.

First stop? The fire station! They got to ask all kinds of fire questions and learn about the various trucks and hoses. My favorite quote of the visit, "Hey, those folded hoses look like uncooked noodles!"

Love to see her interacting with the girls in this class - all new ones from the past two years!

 Next up, the boat shop! When you live on an island it is good to know how to build a boat from scratch. 

Where's Emdo?

Chase was on the route. This was possibly the silliest stop. An employee came out to explain how mortgages work. To 2nd graders!!! I didn't even understand what she was trying to say and I'm a financial advisor! As we left, they told the kids to tell their parents to open up savings accounts for them. After we rounded the corner, I suggested the kids go to a credit union instead of a greedy bank to get a better savings rate!! 

"We give families loans at high interest rates and rape you over the course of 30 years."

Their last stop was our children's library where they went on a scavenger hunt. Definitely the funnest part of the day. 

This is one of my favorite places in town.

I'm slightly concerned my kid is reading the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. Not necessarily age appropriate, in my opinion, but she loves them. I'm slightly more concerned she is reading them with swimming goggles on. My kids are weird.

"Diary of a Weirdo."

Pumpkin pickin' and more

I love a good pork loin recipe. This one was easy and tasty and involved maple syrup and cayanne pepper. 

It rained ALL day Saturday, so we went a little stir crazy inside. Emma grabbed the iPad and googled Halloween crafts. She liked this one and we had a few sheets of orange paper left. Wala!! We hung them in our window. 

Chopped it! Me likey. 

At one point during the rain I sent them outside to play as I was tired of them fighting. Funny how playing in the rain can turn arguing siblings into pleasant playing pals. (Note to self.)

We went down port after dinner for a little DD lovin'. How adorbs is this pic? DD needs to hire her for their next ad campaign. 

I spent Sunday curled up in my sunroom reading this goodness. Oh, baby, I'm gonna get a solid "honey do list" going!!

When children are bored days later I find pics like this on my phone. Ha!

Daddy has a new exercise regime to build arm strength in our kids. Greaaaaaat. Now they just want to use our open stairwell as a monkey bars set. Nice work, daddy. Not!

Sunday was beautiful so we headed east to pick pumpkins!!

Lots of good ones to choose from. :)

We drove by the apple orchards afterwards and they were still open for business so we popped inside for a bag that daddy turned into UPSIDE DOWN APPLE CAKE. It was ridiculously good. So amazing that we immediately delivered giant hunks to friends so that we wouldn't eat the entire cake ourselves!!!

In Business...

We have singlehandedly kept our local beloved mom and pop toy store in business with all our invites to birthday parties the past FOUR weekends. Build-a-be*r, aquarium, chocolate works, home parties - you name it, we have done it. 

Our twin pals had a super cool Safari party at their home - too bad they also had a bouncy house and the kids spent more time bouncing than enjoying the iguanas, snakes, turtles and lizards. (Ben included.) 

I got lucky this day - our sweet neighbors offered to take Em w them to the Long Island game farm for Girl Scout day (she is a troop leader). I'm confident Em had more fun than reptiles and bouncy houses. 

Party two for Ben was at the Long Island Aquarium. I've never been there, but wow what a fun place for a birthday party!!

We had an awesome behind the scenes tour complete with 18 five year olds put into a three d motion shuttle for an underwater adventure!! All we heard were screams of delight (and some fright!!!)

Next party up? Build a second mortgage! Or better known as build a bear. These locations are a HUGE rip off. $20 per bear plus waaaaaay overpriced clothes. Of course, Em had a blast and hasn't put the dang bear down since. :)

The girls of 2nd grade Mrs Kelly class:

More last minute cute pics from the game farm. 

So adorbs!!!

Now onto the chocolate works party! Hy sugar!!!! Best party ever - I want to be invited next time so I can eat as much chocolate as Em did. 

 

It must be almost Autumn

A few weekends ago we headed east to our favorite apple picking spot, Lewin's farms. I love this spot and am happy about the tradition we have of going there. I should do a comparison of pics from the last four years to see how the bunch have grown.

I'm getting BIG, ma!

The honeycrisps (our fav) we HUGE and we picked a giant bag full. These apples are sadly the only ones I can eat raw, all other apples give me that yucky scratch in my throat (!) - so weird. Needless to say, as soon as we paid for them, we dove in! All but Ben, that is. This kid is missing out on some serious nature's goodness.

Daddy did a good job of grabbing the high ones.

I'll never get tired of this shot year after year:

My favorite people in the whole wide world.

We headed over to the tomato / peppers / eggplant farm next and grabbed another giant bag of veggies with which Daddy made AMAZING "Ratatouille" - oh, the yum. Didn't snap a pic, sorry!

I'll just play here in the mud while you pick.

Em came with me to the supermarket afterwards to buy flour. I did not realize until we pulled into the parking lot that she wasn't wearing any shoes. My choices were to leave her in the car and risk being arrested on "child endangerment" charges, or bag her feet and risk being thrown out of the store by the manager. Bag'em it was!

The manager made it very KNOWN that we should not be in the store. WHATEVER!

Instead of an apple pie, Daddy made an apple galette. I highly recommend you try some!! :)

Sorry no smellovision yet...