Fall Festival 2016

 Zara's school held their annual Fall Festival this Saturday and the whole family attended. We broke out some old costumes because we're saving our family costumes for next weekend. (It's going to be epic.) Zara wore her Princess Leia costume from last year, Benjamin wore Zara's old giraffe costume, and Adelaide went as a butterfly fairy.

This photograph cracks me up because it so perfectly encapsulates these kids. Zara is trying to coral her younger siblings, Benjamin is smiling, and Adelaide is pouting. 

Isn't he such a cute giraffe? 

I put on my old zookeeper outfit because, well, these kids are a zoo. 

Benjamin fell asleep at the festival. It was right during his naptime. 

I volunteered at the pumpkin ring toss for a little bit and then we went around to a few of the booths. Zara also participated in the costume contest, but did not win. They also got a cookie to decorate and here's Adelaide trying to get the sprinkles off her mouth. Such a silly girl.

I love Halloween. I didn't use to love it quite so much but it's one of David's favorite holidays and we've been having fun dressing up in family themed costumes and decorating our house and getting into the spirit of the holiday. I'm looking forward to our ward's trunk or treat next Saturday when we'll all get into our real costumes for the year. Stay tuned.

Jason and Family Come for a Visit

Waaay back in August, my brother Jason and his family came through Atlanta on their way to Florida. My brother had a week-long work conference in Orlando and brought his family with him so they could take advantage of their attractions. He arranged his travel plans to take him through Atlanta so they could spend a few days with us and I'm so glad they did. 

Here are Sebastian and Benjamin enjoying some cousin time in the bathroom. Sebastian was born in November so it was the first time we got to meet him. He's a super happy baby just like Benjamin and I hope they'll be good friends as they grow up.

Here's Zara and her cousin Grisette. You'd never know it but they were born exactly one week apart. They also have a boy cousin (Seth) who was born three weeks after Zara.

Here's all the kids at church right before Jason and Elisa left for Orlando.

And here's the whole gang. Of course Jason had to give me bunny ears which is a long standing tradition in our family.

It was so nice to have a little bit of time with my brother. We don't get to see them as much as I would like and I always love getting together with them. My sister also came to visit in July but I stupidly forgot to take any photos while she was here.

Preschool Field Trip: Marietta City Fire Station No. 51

Two weeks ago, Adelaide's preschool class learned about F for fire. Angela, the mom, did a whole lesson on firefighters, fire safety, and fire trucks. And this week, she set up a visit to the Marietta City fire station No. 51 which also has a small museum attached which houses fire trucks from 1921, 1929, and 1879. We had wonderful guides--Firefighter Steve and Heck--who clearly love being firefighters and giving tours to young kids. Firefighter Steve was great with the kids. He obviously has kids of his own.

We started in the museum before heading to the actual fire station. We invited all the preschool groups to join us so we had a large group. One of the moms--a professional photographer--took a few photos which she shared with the group. (I cannot claim responsibility for all these photos, especially the good ones.)

Like this one of sweet Louisa. I love that you can see Benjamin smiling (though a bit blurrily) in the background. 

They even had firefighter Amanda dress up in all her gear (all 50 pounds of it!) and show the kids that they are the same person inside their gear and not to be afraid of firefighters and that they are your friends.

They even let the kids (and moms) have a chance to sit in their brand new fire engines.

Benjamin was SO excited to sit in the fire truck. He did not want to get out.

 All the kids got their own fire hats and badges.

Here's all the kids who came on the field trip. I'm surprised that even the babies sat for the photo. You'll notice that Landon, who has a little crush on Adelaide, is standing right next to her. 

And here's our massively large group. I had no idea the museum even existed but I'm so glad we had a chance to visit. We had a great time and the kids LOVED the firefighters and fire trucks.

Preschool Field Trip: Hillcrest Orchards

One of my favorite things about living in Georgia is north Georgia and the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Appalachian Trail starts in north Georgia and there are lots of beautiful mountains and hiking trails but best of all are all the apple orchards in Ellijay and Blue Ridge. We've gone to the apple orchards the last three falls and I look forward to it every year.

One of our preschool moms--Melissa--did a unit on apples so we decided to head to Ellijay on a September morning for a little preschool field trip. Hillcrest Orchards specializes in family fun. They have an apple museum, a petting zoo, a tractor ride, pig races, apple picking, duck races, cider tasting, cow milking, and so much more. It's a crazy little place but the kids had a great time. Even Benjamin, who had the kindness to throw up on the hour-long (plus) car ride up to the orchard. Luckily, I had packed some extra clothes.

Here's Adelaide milking a cow. She still talks about how she got to squeeze the cow.

Benjamin excited for the tractor ride.

All the kids learning how to plant and care for apple trees in the "apple museum."

Duck races.

Adelaide getting ready to cheer on the pigs--including Donald J. Rump and Hillary RodHAM Clinton--before the pig races. (In case you were wondering, Mr. Rump won.)

At the petting zoo. The little boy standing next to Adelaide (in the dark blue shirt) has a little crush on her and it's adorable. He always asks his mom if Adelaide is coming to storytime but then gets all shy and doesn't talk around her. And Adelaide is totally oblivious.

Adelaide holding a kitten, which she has plenty of experience with now.

After our tour, I popped over to BJ Reece Orchards across the street because they have a better selection of apples. But we also went apple picking at my favorite orchard--Mercier Orchards in Blue Ridge--two weeks ago and I'm still swimming in apples. I need to make some more applesauce tomorrow. It's the best.

Adelaide Goes to Preschool

Our ward has a very large nursery/Primary and lots of kids all around the same age. (But our ward boundary covers a large geographic region so most of the kids don't go to the same schools unfortunately.) Some of the moms with preschool aged kids decided to form a co-op preschool this year. Given our numbers, we split into three groups. Adelaide joined a fun group with four other girls her same age. 

Here she is about to go off to her first day of preschool. It's super low key and each mom takes a turn hosting preschool once a week (Wednesday) for 2.5 hours. We talk about a letter or a color, read some books, sing some songs, and do a few crafts and activities. 

We've even gone on a few field trips which I'll talk about in separate posts.

But mostly, the girls just like dressing up and playing with each other.

And here's the adorable group: Adelaide (love that face), Eleanor, Hannah, Kate, and Zina. We've been having a blast together this year.

Terrell Mill Park

One of my favorite local parks is called Terrell Mill. It's one of the few parks that has some shade and a good mix of play structures for big and small kids. A few weeks ago, I took the kids there and discovered that they had ripped out half of the playground. They've been replacing a lot of parks around here and not always for the better so I was bummed they'd hit one of my favorites. (They also ripped up the playground next to the gymnastics center. Not sure what that's going to look like yet.)

I heard the new section had been put in so I took the kids on Friday to check it out. And for once, I think it was a vast improvement. I love the new playground and it's fun for lots of ages. Benjamin loved the tubes and there weren't super tall slides that he could easily fall from so I didn't have to be on high alert every second. I think we'll have to go back soon and put this park back in heavy rotation.

The Malone's House of Felines

Let me tell you a story about some cats.

Here's the short version: Fed a stray cat. Thought it was a boy. Really a girl. A pregnant girl. She kept coming around. Disappeared. Came back not pregnant. Five weeks later discovered three kittens under our house. Really four. Raised them up. Found homes for three. Kept one. And the mama. So we went from 0 cats to 5 to 2 in six months time. Welcome to our madhouse.

And now the long version: A few months ago--way back around March and April--I noticed a tabby cat was often hanging around our house. Unlike most strays, this one didn't spook easily around humans and would let you pet them. My feline anatomical understandings being somewhat rusty, I thought the cat was a male and I dubbed him Robert Louis Stevenson--or Louie for short--in the grand Hayman tradition of naming our pets after authors and literary characters. I started putting some food out for the Louie (leftover from our dear departed Suyom) and he'd come around every so often.

Well, he grew bolder and bolder and started coming by every day, even sometimes just inviting himself into our house where he would curl up and sleep on our rug for an hour or two before heading back outside. I thought he was a sweet cat, but wasn't sure I wanted to adopt him (thinking he might have a home somewhere else) and not sure I wanted the responsibility again. But he was tolerant of the kids and very easy going so I couldn't make up my mind what to do with him and therefore did nothing.

My brother and sister-in-law dropped by for a visit in April, maybe early May, and wondered if I knew our cat was pregnant. When I adamantly insisted it was a boy, they dropped the matter but said she sure looked pregnant to them. When my mother-in-law came by later that week and said the same thing, I knew I was in trouble.

Yup. Totally a girl. Totally pregnant. Being that I was already so accustomed to calling her Louie, I just switched her name to Louisa May Alcott. (And now she gets called Louisa, Lou, or Mama.) She kept hanging around. She kept being pregnant. One night in May she laid on the couch in between David and I while we watched TV and we could see her belly moving with all the kittens inside. The next day she didn't come around. And the next.

She showed back up a few days later looking not pregnant. I followed her around for awhile hoping I could find where her kittens might be hidden, but had no luck. After a week or two, I started to suspect that maybe the kittens had not survived since Louisa seemed to be hanging around on her own most of the time and not spending much time caring for phantom kitties. A few weeks later on the Saturday before Father's Day, David was looking at our AC unit under the crawl space of our house when he discovered a raggedy bunch of kittens. He thought he had seen three or four but wasn't sure.

The kittens were obviously frightened, having never seen humans before, but we caught three of them (we searched the entire crawl space and didn't see more) and brought them inside where we immediately gave them all much needed baths and picked off their fleas. We bathed Louisa as well and set her and her kittens up in our playroom after I ran to the store and bought litter and kitten chow. We figured the cats were 5-6 weeks by this point. 

The next day, we were supposed to head to David's parent's house for Father's Day when I decided randomly to check the crawl space one more time. I opened up the little door and sitting right there was kitten #4. I snatched him right up and brought him inside for his own bath and flea treatment before reuniting him with his mama and siblings. I'm sure he spent a miserable 24 hours on his own, poor thing. I'm so glad I checked again. (I went back several more times over the next few days, but never found another kitten so I'm 99% sure we found them all.)

The kids, of course, were ecstatic to have a whole litter of kittens to play with. They were fluffy and small and just their size. 

Being that we had named the mama Louisa May Alcott, I decided to name the kittens after characters from Little Women. The calico female I named Jo, the lighter grey tabby I dubbed Teddy, the blue-grey cat I called Meg, and the dark tabby--the one I pulled from the crawl space last--I named Bhaer after the German professor Jo eventually marries. 

As it turned out, my feline anatomical knowledge was still abysmal because Meg--who I thought was a girl--turned out to be a boy. I couldn't think of another name for him (Little Women, naturally, being a tad short on male characters) so I just started calling him Not Meg, which the vet thought was hilarious.

The kitties grew and grew. They slept everywhere and wanted to eat constantly. Louisa proved herself to be a capable and caring mom. She was also apparently an extended breastfeeder because those kittens never wanted to quit. (I took her in to be spayed when the kittens were 12 weeks old and she was already pregnant again! Poor thing. I felt terrible about that, but we certainly didn't need more kittens.)

I found it interested that they almost always lined up in the same order to eat--Bhaer, Jo, Not Meg, and then Teddy. 

They were a lot of work. I was constantly cleaning the playroom and changing/cleaning out the litter box multiple times a day. For the first few weeks, they mostly stayed in the playroom and rarely ventured out. But they eventually discovered there was more to the house and they wanted to explore as much as possible.

 The back of the couches were their favorite places to sleep as well as on top of my towels in the rolling cart in the kitchen.

By 12 weeks, I was ready to find them homes. A woman in my ward wanted to adopt two of them, but after a lot of back and forth, they ended up not being able to take them. But she did tell her friend about our kittens and her friend did adopt Teddy.

He was our first to go, several weeks before the others. Teddy was a beautiful light grey tabby who was something of a mama's boy. He loved his milk.

He was also the most socialable of the kittens, always wanting to play and sleep with the others so I was very happy that his adoptive family already had a cat, two dogs, and kids. He was definitely not meant to be alone. 

It took me a little while longer to find homes for the other kittens but Not Meg was the next to be adopted. I'll admit that he was not my favorite of the kittens at first but he really grew on me as he got bigger even though he had a penchant for attacking my toes.

He was a stikingly handsome cat with blue-grey fur and white paws. He was also the biggest of the kittens and I imagine he'll be a big tomcat someday. He was adopted by an older woman with grown children whose last cat had passed away a few months before.

Despite being the beauty of the bunch, Jo was the last to be adopted. I think, in part, it's because female cats can be more trouble and really need to be spayed if they're going to be a good house pet.

And like most females, Jo could be very persnickety and demanding so I was glad that she went to a home where she will receive lots of attention and be spoiled. She was adopted by a very nice college student from KSU who grew up with pets and wanted a cat to keep her company. She sent me some photos last week and Jo is indeed being spoiled rotten and she looks terribly pleased with herself.

And Bhaer, my little friend I plucked from the crawl space after all the rest? He's staying with us as is Louisa.

Bhaer proved himself to be the most tolerant of the kids. Adelaide constantly picks him up and carts him around, bundles him up in blankets and lays all over him and he just takes it. Not happily, of course, but he doesn't tend to scratch or bite unless severely provoked. He's super cuddly and purrs almost as soon as you touch him. He's totally rambunctious and is on a mission to destroy our blinds, but I think he'll settle down once he's through kittenhood. And he's got an appointment to be neutered this week so that may help, poor thing.

 He still tries to nurse but Louisa just kicks him away.

So that's the story of our house of felines. I'm glad we were able to find homes for them and that I no longer have to care for five cats. I was starting to go a little crazy there. But Bhaer and Louisa are sweet additions to our home and I'm happy to have them here.