Tour de Aledo

A tour of the Aledo Parks.
Nana, Mel, Jenni, Malorie, Kaylie, Makala, Tori, and Alli
What a great way to spend a couple of hours, free, but priceless memories.

1st stop Jaycee Park, not a lot of equipment so only about 20 minutes here.
Next stop Memorial Park. A little more equpment, but started to get hungry so about 25 minutes here. We also had Polar Pops here, so Alli was happy.
Stop #3 Fenton (no sign, what a bummer.) This is where we had our picinic lunch
Menu: deer sausage, string cheese, and yougurt.

4th Stop Apollo (Malorie and Makala's school) The most equipment, so we spent the most amount of time here. Playing hide-and-seek took up a lot of time.
Last stop RMA, End of the tour and we were definitly slowing down. Alli only lasted about 5 minutes. As soon as someone mentioned ice cream the others were done.
We then went to Maple City for Ice Creams, Alli had her nap, and the girls rested.

As I am writing this they have gotten there second burst of energy and are swimming in Nana's hot tub with Mel.

Our hope is they will be soooo exhausted tonight they will all actually fall asleep. This is night number two of our sleepover. The daddies are on their ATV trip so the girls all have a party, and last night it took quite a while to get all to sleep.

Scarecrow festival

Here are the scarecrow festival pics.
My little sunflowers.



Tori in the corn maze. She was the leader and got us in and out in 15 minutes. yeah!


Allison in the corn maze had to have her picture also, a little too close maybe?


Hudson Homecoming. We lasted untill half-time, not bad for 5 children.

On sunday we went to the scarecrow festival, pictures will come later. The girls were really not all that interested in the scarecrows, but really enjoyed the corn maze and petting the llamas. My favorite part was getting some fresh and hot kettle corn.
At the house our news is our bathroom is in shambles. We are re-painting, putting in a new floor, and new toilet. We are doing it all ourselves and with being crazy-busy right now the end is not in sight. I started peeling wallpaper three weeks ago and just now got the first coat of paint on. the toilet is in the shower and no floor done yet. Our problem is we don't even really like the color. Yikes!!!!
The girls and I are in Aledo through the weekend, I have my classes and then we are hanging out for the weekend, since daddy is on his fall ATV trip to Missouri.
Alli update: no new completet words, but we now get letters out of her.

Hello

Well I am off and running closer to the finish line of my master's degree. this week i started some new classes, I will be taking two at once, and then only one left. the end is in sight. So the past three days I have spent 11 hours in a car, Yuck!

Tonight we are looking forward to going to a cookout at a friends and then going to the homecoming football game. GO PIRATES!!!!

Nothing else new.

1st Dance Class. Tori now has a new outlet for her energy. They started learning ballet positions and few little jazz moves. Tori truely liked jumping and follow the leader the best.

So we were in Aledo over the weekend and Saturday morning we found a wet basement. Not just any rain water either, the sewer was backing up into the basement. YUCK!!!! Needless to say we had a long day ahead of us, with lots of work.
Tori liked to play with the rubber gloves. Notice large on her feet and small on her hands, she didn't want any icky water on her, even though she wasn't allowed near it.
Since we couldn't shower or use much water, we went to a hotel to stay the night. The girls loved it, swimming pool. They swam for 90 minutes non-stop and even had races across the pool.
Allison has a few new words (or noices we can interrpurt) She makes a noise that means thanks. She is also making an attempt to say things when we say them to her.

The letter 'Aa'

So Tori got a letter from school saying every monday they would have a new letter, color, shape to discuss and the kids are encouraged to bring in something to do with that topic.
After reading the note I tell Tori she is supposed to bring something to school that starts with the letter A. I am thinking in my head this could be a long conversation and decision about our item to bring (**see not below). But on her own in an instant she says with such excitment she says "Allison" she starts with A. I was so proud I almost cried. (Background info: she has been practicing writing Alli almost as much as her own name.) We decided on a picture of Allison with cousin Andrew, double cool.
**the first week of school she was supposed to bring something to tell about herself and she wanted a picture of Otis, okay, she does love that dog. Well as we are looking to find a picture she sees a picture of Otis and Chloe, that was it, nothing else would do. We did not have an easy time trying to explain why we probably should not bring that in and have her say "this is my dog Otis and my dead dog Chloe, she got sick and is in heaven now, I really miss her". Daddy finally got through to her and said who else do you love, and instantly Malorie and Makala were it.

Allison newsflash: 'UP' is her new word. So now we have a three word vocabulary: hot, cheese, and up. She does do some syllabuls now, mamama, and dadadada.

Tori also got in her head that she wanted to learn how to climb a tree today. So mommy has to start, Tori gets in the tree and goes about 2 feet and is done. Mommy decides we should try a bigger tree. Tori says no way, mommy thinks she is 14 again and goes for it. I was pretty impressed with myself, more so than my daughter, untill that is it is time to get down. I really climbed to get up the first branch so I could not make the jump back down. Kurt had to put me on his shoulders, just picture it, then being funny starts walking, i freak out and we are in a very akward position. I finally got down and Tori said "I don't think I yike to cimb trees"

Lake Pictures

Here are the pictures from Labor Day weekend at the "big yake" (Lake of the Ozarks)
Two cool chicks. The three older girls sat at the front of the boat on every ride to be the drivers stick watchers. Allison just walked around the whole time, she had very good sea legs.

One of the girls favorite things to do at the lake is eat outside. Here they are enjoying their Kiddy Cocktails (nana's special treat). One time Tori asked for a Cat drink like nana makes. (cat--kitty--kiddy) it took us a while to figure that one out.

The girls went out on their own paddle boat ride.

Enjoying the lake before the waves would engulf us.

Labor Day Weekend

Labor Day weekend at the lake was wonderful. 6 hours in the car each way was not fun. Alli is just not a good traveler. We had a fabulous time swimming, and boating. The girls had so much fun just playing. Tori was a superb swimmer, and jumped off the dock non-stop. Alli did a little swimming in the lake but mostly enjoyed playing with buckets of water filling and dumping.

Tori is still having a great time at school, she is excited every day and can hardly get in the door fast enough. She is upset on non-school days. Alli had adjusted wonderfully, she plays by herself great.

I will try to get pictures on soon.