Fun On The Farm

Over the weekend we went to the American West Heritage Center for their Farmtastic Farm Festival.  The weather was perfect and we had a good time.


First on the agenda was a ride on the train.  Brennan wouldn't have it any other way.


"Choo Choo Whoo Whoo!"  (We heard this all the way around the track.  He wasn't excited about the train or anything.)


Awww, a new friend.


More baby goats.


A little pouty. 


An old "cool car."


A photo with the scarecrow family.


Feeding the chickens some corn.


I hung out with these horses while the boys went to see the pigs.


Driving.  He's in heaven.


One with Mommy.


Checking out the equipment.  Brennan couldn't get over that this car didn't have a "map" (GPS), or seat belts.  He was concerned about that the whole time.


They had a really cool corn maze.  Brennan decided to start a corn collection.


Pointing out a horse foot print.


Following our fearless leader.


Has anyone seen that episode of "The Middles," where Brick gets lost in the corn maze.  Yeah, that kept going through my head, especially when Brennan wanted to keep darting in the rows to pick up more corn.


We were way in the mix at the point.  I was wondering if they've ever had to send in a search party for corn maze participants, and glad that no one had to pee.


Jason decided he needed to take pictures for awhile.


We had sustenance (kettle corn) along with us since we didn't know how long we were going to be in there.  Brennan loves that stuff.  (Oh, and I did consider dropping it on the ground Hansel and Gretel style.)


We made it through!  This was Brennan's collection by the end of it.  We brought it all home to feed the birds.


Gold at the end of the rainbow.  Nope, just some pumpkins. : )


Brennan wanted to add this one to his collection.


Another ride on the train, and a failed attempt at a family portrait.


Jason wants this barn.


And another horse that decided to pose for me on the way out.

Like I said, a great fun fall day.

Brennan's First Day of School

Our little boy is growing up!!
Brennan started Preschool on Friday!  I had him on a waiting list to a school I really liked, and luckily on Wednesday they called and said they had a slot open.  Yay!

For now it's only one day a week, which I think is going to work out great, just to get him used to going. 

I think he loves it already.  Every morning he asks if we are going to school.  He also points to the art project he made (displayed proudly on the refrigerator, of course!) and tells me what is it, and that he wants to make more.


At Home Before School


When we got to his classroom he just sat right down and jumped right into it. 

Not that there wasn't tears shed.  There was a little boy in the class that was very upset to be there.  He cried the whole time.  At one point he had the whole class crying with him, Brennan included.  His teacher is very patient with all of them.  She wasn't bothered a bit; she said that was a typical day.  I'm glad there are people out there like her.  I sure couldn't do it.

Unfortunately, this week is Fall Break, so no school this week.  On the bright side though, we get to go on a field trip next week.  We're going to a local pumpkin patch.  Should be fun!

Oktoberfest

A few pictures from Saturday.




Jason checking out the German goods.










Pretty fall colors.

And for those of you wondering, there was no chicken dancing by anyone in the Bal family. : )

Yay October!

I just stopped by the blog this morning to add some Octoberish bling.  Most of you get the posts by the Feedburner emails, so if you haven't actually been to the blog lately come by and check it out!

We have a big weekend planned.  We're going up in the mountains to the Snowbird Oktoberfest.  We've been looking forward to this for awhile so we're excited to finally go.  Too bad we have to wait until the morning to leave since I have another dentist appointment this evening; but it will be a fun little getaway. 

I have a feeling we'll be bustin' out the chicken dance.

Have a great weekend everyone!  I'm off to pack!

Weekend Recap...I Know it's Tuesday

Of course I meant to write this post yesterday, but I had priorities.  I had to sew up these little cuties, so no blogging for me.



I think they turned out pretty well.  I would have made more, but I ran out of stuffing.

On to the weekend.  I didn't get to put up fall decorations earlier in the week like I originally wanted to.  Why?  Because the tote that had all the stuff I needed was way in the back of our small, dark storage closet, buried under all the Christmas totes, (never fails) so I had to wait for Jason to help me get to it.  So that didn't happen until Saturday morning.  When we did get it all moved out, you would have thought it was Christmas.  Brennan had the greatest time pulling everything out of the box.  Following the unpacking, the house looked like it exploded, but that's ok.  It was worth it to see Brennan so excited.  (For some reason he absolutely loves pumpkins!)  I haven't taken pictures of everything yet, but when I do I'll post them.

Saturday night we went to the Olive Garden to eat, and the walked around Target for a couple hours.  That's the usual routine; go out to eat, eat too much, and then walk around Target to get some exercise until you feel normal again.  Hey, works for us. : )  We did find some good deals on stuff we normally wouldn't have even looked at.  Jason found a new leather cell phone holder on clearance for $4.98 and I found two good-smelling candles on sale for $0.75.  Score!

Sunday was the usual, we did the yard work, ran to Walmart (I can't remember why, now), and watched football.  Some of us (Jason) got more napping time in than football watching time, but it was all good.  I did make my pot of chili.  It was really good, and I made it in the crockpot so I didn't make too much.  (Usually, I make so much we are eating the leftovers all week.)  Sunday evening, Jason had to go to the airport to pick up a friend, and Brennan and I skyped with Nana and Papaw (oh, and "puppy," we can't forget her.)

 Other tidbits:

We watched Sherlock Holmes.  Rating: Eh.  Definitely not a movie I will ever want to watch again.

Brennan has discovered he can put on his own shoes.  He proceeds to put them on and take them off several times a day.

He also has figured out how to "play" his harmonica.  We get to hear his "music" all day.

I started ready the Harry Potter series.  I know, how many years behind am I.  My 100 Books post from the other day got me looking through the bookcase and I found one of the Harry Potter books Shanny or Andrew must have left behind one summer.  I figured what the heck, so I read that one, and then ordered the others off of eBay.  So that's what's on my reading list right now, which of course will require me to then watch the movies.

Well, I think that's about it.  Let's see what we can get into this week.  : )


Hugs,

Welcome Fall!

Happy Fall, Everyone!  Or should I say as they do in the South, Happy Fall, Y'all!



Did anyone see the Harvest Moon last night?  It was pretty cool.  We only got a glimpse because of all the haze and the clouds.



Fall is my favorite time of the year!  I love everything about it; the colors, the smells, the crispness, the food.  And it doesn't hurt that my birthday is in October, either. :)

Fall Food...yummmm!!  Because of my tooth, the dentist grounded me from all things chewy, so no candy apples or candy corn for me.  (I should have got an apple at the State Fair the other week, darn it!  Instead we had funnel cake.) On Sunday, with the season in mind, I made a batch of fried chicken.  Definitely not something I do regularly.  In fact, it's only the third time I've fried chicken - ever.  It was not nearly as good as my mom's, but seeing that after the first time I made it (like 8 years ago) I said I'd never make it again, I'd say it was a success. (The second time was after a moment of weakness, and Jason talked me into making some after watching Driving Miss Daisy.  Yeah, my chicken did not look at all like hers.)  This weekend, on the other had, I am making something I make very well.  Homemade chili.  Can't wait!


Don't judge me by my chicken.

Today, Brennan and I are going to dig out the fall decorations and start putting them up.  I have been ready for weeks, but Jason said I had to actually wait until fall gets here.  Bummer.  In the meantime, I have been making some new Halloween decorations since I haven't updated my stash in years.  I don't know if I'm going to put them up today or wait a couple of weeks.  We'll see, but I will definitely post pictures when it happens.  Pumpkins and fall leaves, though, the house will be covered in the by this evening!

Flowers for Mommy

The weather has been so nice here lately, we try to take a walk around the neighborhood every morning.  Along the way Brennan likes to pick all the dandelions and fuzzy grasses he can find.

And then when we get home (or if he hands get too full on the way) he gives them to me.

Isn't he the sweetest boy?

100 Books

OK, I've seen this list posted on two blogs I read regularly, so I thought I would give it a go too.

The BBC apparently believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. 

Some of the books are children's books and some of them were required school reading, so I thought 6 was a pretty low number.  I marked mine as bold for "have read," and italic for "partially read," since some of the selections were whole series.  Of course if I haven't read it at all (or if I've just seen the movie, haha) I just left it alone.  I would love to see what everyone else says about it.




1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy.
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth.
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt.

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo


Not too bad, I'd say.  I might put a few of the non-read ones on my B&N wishlist.  I did wonder how they came up with these particular titles. 

And where's The Best Mouse Cookie?   

I get to read that one every day.

Just Ask Mouse.

Give "Peaces" a Chance

On Sesame Street last week Brennan learned to say "Peace" and to give the sign of peace with his fingers.

(Yeah, we're still working on the fingers.)  It's been his newest fascination, and he does it all the time.  I even hear him in his room after we've put him to bed saying "Peaccccccccce."  How cute is that? : )

He can also do the sign with both hands.

And what do you think you get then?


"Two Peaces." 

Of course. 

Why didn't the rest of the world think of that.

I've Been Crowned

You missed me yesterday didn't you?  That was because I spent most of my afternoon in the dentist's chair.  I didn't think it was a good idea to be blogging while there were several sharp instruments in my mouth.  Why was I at the dentist you ask?  It wasn't by choice, though I am due for a cleaning.  It was because of this very dangerous jar of olives.



On Sunday morning we went to the commissary to pick up a few things, one of them being the evil, dangerous jar of olives.  Later in the day we were getting ready to watch football, which of course requires snacks.  I was the one who opened the jar of olives so it was a requirement that I ate the first one.  You know, because they're packed all the way up to the top, and if you don't eat one some with your fingers how can you possibly get a spoon in there to scoop out the rest?  Well, that was my mistake, unbeknownst to me the first one I pulled out had a pit still in it, and when I tried to chew it, it broke my tooth.  Thankfully, I wasn't in excruciating pain.  The broken piece didn't actually come out, which is what I think saved me.  It did make it interesting trying to eat supper, (steak, no less) but I cut it up super small and made sure I only chewed on the good side.

The kicker to all this is Shanny called Sunday night to get her insurance information because she had chipped one of her teeth!  What's the likelihood of both of us breaking teeth in the same day?  We haven't heard an update from her yet, but hopefully hers isn't as bad as mine.  The only option for my battered tooth was getting a crown.  So several hours, and several hundred dollars later, I've been crowned. (Well temporarily, it will take a couple weeks for the permanent one to come in.)

From now on just call me Queen Heather.  I won't mind a bit. : )

p.s.  Happy Late Birthday, Mom!!  We love you!

Laugh at Yourself and the World Laughs with You

The other day I was trying to make a video of Brennan's version of  "You Can't Touch This."  It came on the radio the other day and Jason was trying to teach him the words.  Well, that video was a fail, but when I was playing it back on the computer I recorded Brennan watching himself.  Comedians only wish they could make people laugh this much.



It may just be because I'm the Mommy, but it cracks me up every time, too. : )

Rambling Wednesday...Give Me Some Coffee

I don't have a "What I'm Reading" post for today, since I'm not reading anything of note this week.  No "Wordless" or "One Word Wedneday" either.  Maybe because technically it should be Tuesday?  I'll just ramble for a bit and see what happens.

I'm not really "with it" yet this morning.  Brennan is being a major chatter box (he definitely doesn't take that after me!).  That, plus listening to the Cat in the Hat in the background is making it hard for me to think.  Martin Short is the voice (the most obnoxious voice) of the Cat.  Brennan loves that show, but it annoys me to no end.  And it's on for a whole hour.  Joy.  I think it will be radio time after it's over.

Jason got called in to work this morning at 4:00.  Poor guy.  That was after having to stay late last night.  So much for getting rested up over the weekend.  Hopefully he won't have to stay late tonight too.  All that is most of the reason why I feel so out of it this morning.  Since Jason got home so late, we let Brennan stay up late to be with him.  That cut into my evening mommy downtime, which snowballed into me not sleeping well last night, and then after Jason's wake up call this morning, I couldn't get back to sleep.  Brennan must not have slept well either.  When Jason came to kiss me goodbye this morning, he said when he checked on Brennan, he was sleeping on the floor in front of the door.  Funny kid, he must have fallen out of bed and rolled over there.  Good thing we put him to bed in warm jammies.  He must have been tired, Jason put him back in bed and he didn't stir a bit.

So enough about that.  Brennan and I did make some "art" yesterday.  I pulled out some of that stuff I got at the Dollar Tree over the weekend and we had some fun.


First we made some of these little pom-pom critters.  Why yes, those are twist-tie antennae.  I don't have any pipe cleaners at the moment.  They worked in a jiffy, don't you think?


Next we worked on making a paper plate smiley face.


Oh my, it looks like Mr. Smiley has some kind of crazy clown acne!


A House, A Tree, and the Sun.  Can you tell  Brennan was born in hurricane country?


Next we worked on some abstract mixed media.  It took extreme concentration.


"Better to See You With" Mixed Media By Brennan Bal

After all the artsy stuff, we also made some sugar cookies.  There are no pictures of those though.  They were tasty cookies, but not very pretty.  Let's just say when the recipe says refrigerate overnight, it really means it.


I also started working on my quilt again.  One of these days I will have enough diamonds to start piecing it together.

Well, I think that's about all for yesterday.  As for today, I think I need to go find some coffee.  Brennan is also telling me it's time for a "cheesy hand-wich" and a "pea-butter apple," so I better get on that.  I hope everyone has a Wonderful Wednesday!

Lone Buffalo