First Day of Autumn 2012

Today is the first day of Autumn. Autumn is my favorite season of the year. 

I have actually had the house decorated for fall for a couple of weeks now 

 

 and this past week Seth and I did a few fall themed crafts.

 Tonight to celebrate the changing of seasons, we had a yummy fall meal. 

(Completely local: pork burgers from Crooked Creek Farms, baby kale from Sunny Point Gardens, sweet potatoes from Festina Lente Farm, Acorn Squash Bisque from Borderland Farms, with sauce from Hillbilly Grillers)

 Silas was a huge fan of the Pumpkin Pie Spiced Sweet Potatoes!

We also had an extra special fall themed dessert...

cinnamon apple bowls with a small scoop of ice cream drizzled with maple syrup.

  

 

Happy First Day of Autumn!

Seth "reading" Toy Boat

Seth loves for us to read Toy Boat by Randall de Seve right before he goes to bed. We have been reading this book pretty much every night since we studied transportation. I was tired and really didn't want to read this book again last night, so I asked Seth if he could read it to me. Thinking he was just going to skim through the pages, we snuggled into bed and he began "reading." I was amazed. He knows pretty much the entire book! I asked him to read it again today so I could get a video of him reading it. The video would've been over 7 minutes long, so it's edited, but here's a glimpse at Seth's "reading"...

Third Thursday Farm Day: Crooked Creek Farms

Last night we went to Third Thursday Farm Day. This month we got to visit Crooked Creek Farms. We buy our pork burgers, pork chops, and ribs from them. They also supply us with vegetables and fruit, and we even have tiny pumpkins that they grew sitting on our mantle. 

When we first arrived the kids were checking out a Jersey calf.

   

We also got to see chickens, pigs, goats, and horses. 

 

(We hope to get one of these moveable fences soon for our own chickens.)

 We got to see the difference between a laying hen and a meat bird. These two birds, that Chelsea is holding, are three weeks old. The one on the right is raised for meat. The one on the left is raised for their eggs. The meat birds are a lot bigger!

We also heard roosters crowing all evening!

 

There were lots of baby piglets running around. They could easily go under the electric fence and before we left for the night, there were a few that got in with the chickens.

We had pork burgers/pork chops, squash and potatoes, tomatoes, and watermelon for dinner. 

It was a perfectly Paleo friendly meal!

 

We brought some fruit along for the boys so they also munched on apples.

 We took a hayride down to the fields where all the vegetables are grown. It was getting dark quick so the photos didn't turn out great, but we did get to see plenty of pumpkins! Seth even got to take a pumpkin home with him. He was so excited!

 

  It was a fun and beautiful evening just like always!

Local Bounty: Yardlong Beans

I've picked up yardlong beans at the market the last few times I have been. I just think they are so neat. They are a common sight at the Festina Lente booth. Tim grows most of his beans up the stalks of his sunflowers. These beans are super long. To prepare them, I just nip off the ends and then cut them into smaller pieces. They are delicious sauteed with a little bit of salt, pepper, and olive oil.  

Walk MS Bowling Green 2012

MS has taken away half of my sight. MS has caused tingling in my feet. MS has been the motivating factor for the way we eat now. MS has made a big impact on our lives. Walk MS Bowling Green 2012 was yesterday. Our little family along with my parents walked. We walked to show support to others that have MS. We walked to show that we have not been defeated by this diagnosis. Thanks to several generous friends and family, I was able to donate $145.00 to finding a cure for this devastating disease. Maybe one day we will live in a world FREE OF MS!

Seth is 3!

We kept Seth's birthday celebration simple this year. Waking up to balloons...

 playtime at the park...

 a few special gifts...

 

 party hats...

 Paleo chocolate cupcakes,...

 

 and lots of love from the grandparents

 

made Seth's third birthday very special.

Tillery Tot School: Transportation

We have had such a fun time these last three weeks! We learned all about transportation. There are tons and tons of things that you can do for transportation. Here's what we enjoyed over the last few weeks...

Our Tot School Board:

 

I've already shared transportation sorting,

the transportation scavenger hunt,

the cardboard box parking garage,

and painting with cars and the car wash.

We also attached markers to our cars and drove the cars around and around.

We did some counting with our monster truck. Seth is obsessed with monster trucks right now so this was such a big hit. We would line up the number of cars listed on the paper, count them, then drive over them. So simple and so fun!

I picked up this magnetic transportation puzzle at a local consignment sale. It has been a big hit among both boys these last few weeks.

I spent less than $5 on a bag of rice and filled an empty storage container with it. Seth has loved playing with all his construction vehicles in it.

We decorated a car using stickers and made wheels from some plastic bottle caps.

I made Seth an apple car one day for lunch.

I saw this easy game where you match up the upper case wheel with the lower case wheel. Seth wasn't a huge fan of it, but I will save it for later just in case we want to try it again.

We had to match up vehicles in every transportation book we owned and the ones from the library.

We did some stamping.

We made a bus using half of an egg carton. We painted it yellow and added some black foam wheels.

  
We also glued foam transportation pieces to a sheet of paper.

 We made a traffic signal using a Popsicle stick and a red, yellow, and green pom pom. I did the gluing with my hot glue gun, but Seth did the blowing to make sure it was cool enough to quickly play with it.

 We stuck it in a piece of playdough and then went over what each color means.

 We also played a parking game. 

I would call out a letter and Seth would have to park his vehicle in the correct parking space.

 One night we went to the airport, the train depot, the skate park, the hospital's helicopter, and by the WKU buses. We had a lot of fun finding lots of transportation in our community.

We also thought since we were studying transportation we would get Seth his own bike. He still hasn't mastered the pedaling, but he already wants to be just like daddy (since he rides a bike to work almost every day).

We did talk about community helpers especially the ones that correlated to a specific vehicle, but we'll work some more on that later. In two weeks we will start our "Preschool at Home" so stay tuned for more learning!