Kirby's Home

We picked up our new labradoodle puppy today!!!  We were up and on the road by 8:30AM.  Brian, Kristen, Emily, Vinnie and myself made the trip to Heath and picked up Kirby from Yestyear  Acres to bring him to his new home.

He did really well on the ride home as they had warned us about the puppies getting easily carsick, but Kirby handled it well. 

The kids are overjoyed at having him home and are paying him lots of attention.  He has lots of toys to play with and has had a bandana and a sweatshirt (stolen from a stuffed animal) on already.  Kristen is already talking about going out and getting him sweaters, but I think I have slowed that talk as I pointed out that he would outgrow them rather quickly!

It is fun to have a puppy in the house!

Celebration of Giving

Every year at this time of year, Emily's school does a 'Celebration of Giving' activity.  It kicks off the Monday after Thanksgiving and goes until right before Christmas break.  The children pick a charity and then do things around the house to raise money for the charity.  This year they are giving to Nationwide Children's Hospital and Childhood Cancer Research. 

Here is a great video that the teacher shared describing the event:

I wish family lived closer as I could send Emily your way to perform tasks and earn money for this great cause!!

Emily's TV Debue

I haven't been able to get the video off in a good format, so this will have to do for now. 

Emily's Stories

A book containing a few of Emily's stories came home on Friday and I finally had a chance to sit down and go through them.  Brian and I are cracking up at the one Emily wrote about having a baby brother.  And it is so funny as she gets along so well with Vinnie. 

Having a baby brother - by Emily Donato
If your mom's having a baby and you wonder what it's going to be like leave it all to me, I'll tell you the whole story.  If it's the same gender as you, you're in luck.  If it's the opposite gender (scary music), bad luck!  You aren't the only one.  It happened to me too.  Let me tell you what it's going to be like.  He or she will never share, he or she will take all your toys and say they're his or hers and he or she will jump on you.  The good thing is when he or she gets older, you're the boss.

Poor Vinnie!  Poor Emily!

TV Star

Last night we went to the light display at the zoo to see the lights. We were meeting up with family and had some time to kill while we waited so we were hanging around the pond area admiring the lights. Emily was bouncing all around when someone from 10TV approached us and asked if Emily would like to record a question to be shown on the Jack Hannah special being shown on December 2nd.

I figured that the shy Emily would show up, but she jumped at the chance! She stood right in front of the camera and stated 'Hi, Jack, my name is Emily. What was your favorite holiday present?'.

Afterwards she told me that she really wanted to do it because she has 'always wanted to be on TV'.

I really, really, really hope they use her clip because she is on cloud 9 about it!

The show is called Jack Hannah's Winter Wildlights (or something similar) and will be on channel 10 on Dec 2nd from 7-8pm. It is a live broadcast, but the ore-recorded questions will be spliced in.

Dancing on the Table

Here is a fun video of Vinnie dancing on the table to the opening of Shrek:


He's laughing because Shrek burps.  Yep, that's my boy!

Pumpkin Patch

Wow!  It's been awhile!  I have been neglecting this blog just a bit.  Life has been hectic, but hopefully I can drop quick notes once in awhile.

Today Brian, Emily, Vinnie and I went to the local pumpkin patch.  I was worried that it was going to be cold, cold, cold but I think I was basing that on how cold we were at the 9am soccer game.  It was actually quite pleasant at 3pm when we  went.

The kids played in the hay bale maze, the corn "sandbox" and were in and out of the bounce house type toys too many times to count.  It was fun watching them run around and seeing Vinnie overcome his fears as he entered the bounce houses ... as they do put out quite a bit of wind as you are trying to step into them.  It was a bit intimidating for a 3 year old. 

Next we took the tractor/hay wagon ride out into the pumpkin patch to pick our pumpkins.  It would have been funny to have a GPS chip in Emily to track her course in the patch.  She would see one faaaar away and run to it as she was sure it was the one.  It wasn't.  Then she's see another one faaaar away and she'd run to that one sure it was the perfect pumpkin.  It wasn't.  But all the while, she'd never look at the perfectly formed pumpkins right around her.  In this video you can see her chomping at the bit to take off running the other direction:

Vinnie on the other hand had a different method ... he could not be swayed into looking for a perfect pumpkin when there were so many that were split open and spilling their guts all over the field.  He said, "it was just like blood!"  He is such a BOY!!!  I finally just picked up a pumpkin and declared it his as we needed to get out of the field!

Here is a great video showing Vinnie's progress:

It was a fun day and a great day to get out in the sunshine.  The next step is carving them and I'm not sure when we are going to do that.  We are going to try to pick a day that Kristen will be home.

Box Tops Contest

Emily's school is collecting Box Tops 4 Education.  Each boxtop that is turned in is money for the school.  Plus, each class is competing to collect the most as then they get a pizza party, so Emily is always after me to turn more in!!!

So, if you are able, can you please save your box tops for education for Emily to turn in?  I happens several times per year, but the first batch is due October 21st.  Here is a link to the site that explains the program:  http://www.boxtops4education.com/

Thanks!!

First Day of School

School is in! And one of my kids is excited by this and that would be my 4th grader! Vinnie's "school" is the same daycare that he has attended the past 3 years, so the fact that he has to wear a uniform and have more structure is not thrilling to him. He'd rather stay home thank you very much!

Emily is loving it though and loves her new teacher. Her friends aren't in her new classroom, but I have no doubt she'll make new friends in her classroom plus she has recess and lunch with all of 4th grade.

Shirts!

Emily had a friend over so we decided to do a craft project. I had been wanting to make these tshirts with the kids so it seemed like a good time to try them. You take a white t-shirt and the draw a design on it with Elmer's glue (has to be the gel kind).

You then let it dry (which took forever). Unfortunately, this was the only part of the craft Emily's friend got to do. I think the girls may have used more glue than others.

Once the are dry you prepare RIT dye of choice and dye your shirt. Emily loved this part! I tried to keep Vinnie otherwise occupied so hr didn't end up dyed also.

You then let the shirts dry, do a couple of steps to set in the dye and then you have a cute customized shirt.

Here is the link to the original post that gave me the directions: http://www.u-createcrafts.com/2011/08/creative-guest-watermark-tee-by-sweet.html

(sorry about the sideways photo, I'm on iPad and cannot figure out how to turn it in this app.)