The Harvest is upon us

Fall is here. Don't you love it?! (except for the long cold winter that follows) We've started a Sunday evening tradition of hiking a trail in a park close to our house. It's fun to watch the leaf progression and the kids enjoy the park at the end of the trail. This week I've been enjoying the beautiful scenery of Fall. Every morning when I open the curtains in the bedroom I enjoy a "magical" moment of watching golden yellow leaves swirl to the ground. My new view definitely beats my old view of an apartment parking lot!

Brady is slowly but surely learning to pump...at the park at the end of the trail.

I chaperoned Emma's 1st grade field trip to Ramseyer Farms this week. It's a "working" (I got a good laugh out of their description since I grew up in farming country) potato, pumpkin, and popcorn farm. They did an amazing job with the kids. We all feasted on homemade (right before our eyes) potato chips. Can I get a yum - o?! We also enjoyed a hayride out to the potato fields where we dug up potatoes and also to the pumpkin patch where we picked any pumpkin (of the smaller variety) we wanted. Emma and her cute friend Mackenzie (above) carefully wandered across the whole field surveying all of their options before selecting the perfect pumpkin. No Harvest outing would be complete without some sort of a maze these days and the kids enjoyed a potato box maze as well as a plethora of animal and Harvest games. I love the parental involvement at Emma's school. There are 22 kids in her class and they had 15 chaperones. Most of the parents drove, but Mackenzie's mom Kelly and I braved the big yellow bus. I enjoyed getting to know her. After school Mackenzie came to our house for a playdate and ended up sleeping over. She's a sweetheart and I'm glad Emma has become such good friends with such a sweet girl. Our whole family loves her southern drawl - she moved her from North Carolina.

The kids all had fun making...and eating...this cute Fall craft for their teachers. Hopefully there will be some candycorn left in the vases tomorrow when they give them away. Ellie has really taken to candycorn and keeps sneaking it. Having a toddler in your house sure keeps you on your toes! :D

World without Electricity

Well, we're proof that you don't have to live on the coast line to suffer the effects of a Hurricane. Late last Sunday afternoon, Hurricane Ike winds swept through Northeast Ohio at gusts of 80 mph. What started as a beautiful Sabbath morning ended with trees and branches snapping like twigs landing in yards, on homes, on powerlines, in streets, on cars, and leaving millions of people in the dark. Little did the Ohio Edison electric company realize that there nice act of kindness in sending 30 crews down to Texas to aid those hurricane victims would come back to haunt them. Now, if you're prepared not having power is a completely livable situation....but add to that having a well and septic system....no power = no water. Yep, you guessed it - our new house has just that...a well and a septic system. We lost our power/water at a little after 6PM on Sunday night and finally had it restored on Thursday. All schools were closed on Monday so it made for a very long day of 3 kids without modern day conveniences. Now, I do realize how lucky we are to have not lost our home or our loved ones like many in Texas, but this was quite the trial for our family. After a couple of days of holding it and running to the Grocery store to relieve ourselves we finally figured out much water and how hard to pour it to get gravity in aiding us to self flush our toilet. We also did homework by flashlight and had story time on the porch because it was lighter outside than inside. We had several kind ward members (the outage was very splotchy) who allowed us to bathe in their homes and do our laundry. We were eventually able to borrow a generator on day 3 that we plugged into our deep freeze so that we wouldn't have to throw away a freezer full of food. I could go into so much more detail, but I wanted to say what a wake-up call this has been for our family. In no means were we completely unprepared for this situation, but we definitely were not prepared enough!!! Here's just a little advice to those wanting some. Now, there's obviously a lot more you should have than what I've listed, but I've had several people ask me what we needed/used the most in this particular situation so here goes:

1. WATER (having just moved to our home with a well 2 weeks ago - we were not prepared enough in this category).

2. EXTRA BATTERIES for flashlights (so happy that we buy ours in bulk at Costco).

3. CORDED TELEPHONE (cordless phones are convenient, but don't work in a power outage).

4. ICE CHEST (we have a huge ice chest and this allowed us to transfer food from our fridge).

5. ICE (to use for the above).

6. CHARGED CELL PHONES (get your phones fully charged everyday).

7. GAS CANS & EXTENSION CORDS (so that if you get lucky enough to borrow a generator - you can power it).


About midway through our "adventure," my mischievous little ones got bored when they were done painting stumps and trees etc... and decided to redecorate the front door. Thank goodness for washable paint!

Near the end of the week I found every opportunity to just not go home (I was getting very discouraged and a wee bit depressed). So, I loaded up Brady and Ellie and we headed 30 miles to an outlet mall I've always wanted to check out. I was able to pick up a couple of random things for the kids so they have what they need this Winter at rock bottom prices. To top it all off they had a train that goes through the courtyards of the stores, out into a pasture, by a lake etc... It was $3 for unlimited rides so my kids were on their best behavior in each store so that they could take another train ride. Brady loved waving to all the people and checking out the view.

September 11, 2001

As a family we just want to publicly pay our repects to the men and women who lost their lives on September 11, 2001, and we want to honor and respect those who have died or have fought for our country at anytime in our country's storied history. I still can't believe that something of that magnitude occurred right before my eyes on tv as I was watching the morning news while I was getting ready to go to school. NY mayor Michael Bloomberg said "it was a day that began like any other, and ended as none ever has." Stacy was so awesome this morning to get all of our kids dressed in red, white, and blue to show respect in their own small way. If anything good came out of that day, it is that we seem to be more united in our love for our country and our freedom.

Neighbors

I am usually not one to brag, but we have had the BEST neighbors here in Ohio! We just moved away from the Crandalls (who are so great), and we have recently met our new neighbors. Three of the six families we have met are related to each other which makes it easy to remember last names. They have brought dinner to us, tomatoes from their gardens, and one of them is fixing my lawnmower as we speak (I stopped mowing to fill up my tank and gas started leaking out of the carburetor). They let the kids ride their bikes in their driveways and just treat us so great. Anyway, we feel extremely lucky to live among some great people.

Catch Up!

Emma is now officially in her 3rd week of being a first grader. She has a very nice teacher named Mrs. Cunnningham. Including her, there are 4 kids in her class this year from last year. After her 1st day of school was over, she skipped over to the car (yes – I’m an anti-bus parent at least for now) jumped inside and proclaimed she was now best friends with Mackenzie and Carly. Ironically an hour later when I took her to her first gymnastics class of the school year, her new friends Mackenzie and Carly were both in attendance. There are only 7 girls in the class! What are the odds?! She is in seventh heaven and loving her new school life. We haven’t had any “peanut issues” during lunch hour and I’m getting more comfortable with everything. I did, however somehow miss that I was suppose to be sending her an afternoon snack daily. The teacher finally wrote me a note asking me about it. Talk about embarrassment – I felt…and still feel guilty about it. Anyway, we’re glad she has a good attitude about school and is anxious to get out the door everyday. The first couple of days the 7 hours she’s was at school seemed long, but not so much anymore.

Brady also loves Pre-K. He goes 5 mornings a week and is in the same class as his 2 best buds Zach and Jack from last year. He runs down the hallway to his class everyday without even the slightest glance back at me. I can’t believe I have to initiate the goodbye at only 4 ½ years old. He also thinks it’s pretty neat that Ellie goes to his school now too. Sorry about the quality of his picture. At this point the camera was still in a box and I had to substitute with a cell phone pic.

Ellie is also attending pre-school this year 2 mornings a week. She cried last week when I left her for the first time, but as soon as her teacher picked her up she stopped. I stood outside the door for quite awhile and finally decided it would be okay if I left. Coming home to an empty house was very surreal. I found it helpful that I had a house full of moving boxes that needed my attention therefore helping the time to pass quickly. When I picked her up she was all smiles and told me repeatedly about the “tookie” she had for a snack.

I’ve jumped into the new school year and am now officially chairing the After School Program for the entire Elementary School (I find out all that entails on Thursday), and also serving as co-chairs on the compassion and hospitality committees of the PTA. I thoroughly enjoy being so involved in the community and in the school. We had our first PTA meeting of the year this morning. There’s been some serious discussion about redistricting the school boundaries within the Copley-Fairlawn district and my stomach feels sick knowing there’s a possibility this could affect our family. In essence the Fort Island school family feels like our real family…especially Mrs. Dodd who is a dear close friend of ours. She is referred to as my “Ohio mom.” Anyway, if it all changes….well I just can’t go to that place right now.

THE MOVE
I have to say that even though we made all of our arrangements for our move ASAP – everything had a way of crashing down anyway. Now that we’ve resolved everything and we’re getting settled into our new neighborhood (yesterday we made cookies by the dozens and officially met our neighbors), we can recognize the blessings that came from several of these mishaps. Since I’m sure you’re already quite tired of reading, I’ll try to summarize. If you want more details, just let me know.

1. Computer completely crashed a couple of days before we moved. BLESSING – Since Matt’s doing work study in the IT department at OCPM now, they fixed it for FREE and saved us from having to buy a new computer. They even miraculously recovered all my kids’ pictures. I’m sorry to say I lost all my Family Cookbook information, but getting my pictures recovered made up for it. Needless to say, we took them cookies too. LESSON LEARNED – I must save all documents and photographs to a jump drive!
2. Our credit card was stolen by a Wendy’s employee at the drive thru (we grabbed our kids some dinner on the way to pick up our moving truck). We have actual evidence of this and Matt spent the night before and then some of moving day dealing with Wendy’s management. The District Manager was very apologetic and accommodating in helping us and in dealing with the misguided guilty employee. BLESSING – Since we thought we needed our credit card when we picked up the moving truck, Matt discovered within an hour having his card stolen that it was gone. Sooooo….we were able to report it stolen immediately before it could be used to make unauthorized purchases. Plus, we also received a nice Wendy’s gift card in the mail. LESSON LEARNED – pay with cash at the drive-thru.
3. You’d think since we’ve heard about a million U-haul horror stories and since we’ve had good luck with Penske, we wouldn’t have booked U-haul, but at the time the reservations were made it was the most convenient arrangement we could find. So, in spite of triple checking and reconfirming our reservation (even a couple of hours before pickup) – after 45 minutes of standing in line behind several irate customers, you’d think we wouldn’t have been surprised when the man couldn’t seem to find our reservation and then informed us they had no truck to give us – but we were. At this point, we’ve just discovered our missing credit card and I’m trying to referee all 3 of my kids who were playing hide and go seek and catch me if you can underneath, in between, and all around the piles of boxes in the U-haul store. Crying and clicking my heels together at this point sounded quite enticing. Anyway, after some very FIRM haggling a returning customer pulls up with a truck just the size we need and we convince them to give it to us. Ironically, it had an Idaho logo and Arizona plates. Go figure. BLESSING – Even though it smoked like it was on fire and made several unusual sounds – it made it the 13 miles from the pickup location to our old duplex to the new house to the returning location without dying. Also – the gas gauge stayed at the very same place so we didn’t even have to fill up the beast! LESSON LEARNED – Never ever ever do business with U-haul again!
4. Making utility arrangements, waiting on hold, and hanging around your house all day long until someone shows up is just a pain….especially when they don’t hold up their end of the deal. Long story short – our appliances were not delivered on the day we scheduled. The internet guy didn’t show up during his chunk of allotted time. The phone company insisted we had a dial tone, when in fact we didn’t. It took 4 days for them to believe us and send out a technician to top it all off, some man thinks that my cell phone number is somebody else’s and won’t leave me alone. If it was just calls, I’d ignore it but they’re texts and pictures I find quite disturbing and very inappropriate. BLESSING – Moving has cost a lot of extra money even though it was just 2.5 miles and now our rent is higher so any extra money is greatly appreciated. Soooo….because of all the mistakes these different companies made, we are now receiving free and/or discounted services and saving money!

For those of you asking, I promise to send more house pics after I have things looking a little bit better.

After surviving all of the above, we decided we needed to get out. We met up with some friends of ours who live near Kirtland, hired 2 baby-sitters for our 6 kids and went out…without a plan. We ended up eating at the Willoughby Brewing Company. They had awesome Mashed Potato Pizza and Homemade Root beer. Then, we went to watch the waves at Lake Erie. It’s actually the first time that Matt has “visited” Lake Erie since we’ve lived here. Since he’s always busy studying, the kids and I do more exploring than he does. After that we were driving down the road and saw a glow in the dark mini-golf place and thought “Why not?” We wagered an ice cream bet and Matt and I won. It was a really fun night and it was the first time in a long time I actually felt myself relax.