Jaxon's October "ArtBoard"

Since Jaxon and I are always doing art activities, I thought it might be fun to start documenting these pieces for him as a keep sake. Throughout the month of October I taped every drawing, painting, collage, color book page, etc. to our fridge and at the end of the month, hung all of the work on my kitchen bulletin board. I then took a picture of the board... here's the first of many in a collection I call, "Jaxon's ArtBoard"! The "ArtBoard" stays up for the entire month of November, and at the end of the month, all of his work goes into a file folder. I then put up the November art and so on, and so on! Keep watching for more to come in upcoming months!

Costume Creation

Costumes, up until this year, have been pretty easy for me to find! The first year we were given a costume as a gift from Jaxon's Papa & Grandma Welch, that year he went as Superman. The next year my Mom came across a really cute farmer costume and last year he went as a football player.

This year, Jaxon was very admit about being a certain carnivore from the Jurassic period... Buddy (the t-rex) from PBS's new cartoon, Dinosaur Train! After discovering there were no premade costumes and that I would have to come up with this on my own, I began searching through his closet for an all orange outfit. Since I am no seamstress, I knew I would more than likely need to go another route and by another route I mean construction paper and duct tape! It turned out to be a pretty inexpensive costume, I paid $6.50 total and that was because I ended up buying the orange hat!

I am pretty proud of what I was able to come up with and even though no one else knew who he was supposed to be, he did and that's what matters most!

Pre-Halloween Prep

I love carving pumpkins so I was really excited this week to finally get the chance to do so. My plan was to do our carving outside this year to hopefully cut down on mess... the weather had other plans! Oh well, we had a great time, mess and all! Jaxon was given three designs to pick from... a ghost, some bats or the creepy spider. After all his excitement this year over ghosts (or boos, as he calls them), I thought for sure that would have been his pick! He proved me wrong when he pointed to the creepy spider with no hesitation! His reasoning behind his pick... "Daddy's scared of spiders!"

We had a fun day of Pre-Halloween Prep. After picking treats for the cousins, we put together their bags and delivered them as far as their Daddy's work. We made Orange Jell-O Popcorn Balls and a few batches of fun pumpkin and scary cat cookies. Tomorrow we will tackle a recipe for some pumpkin cookies that actually have pumpkin in them... the others were brought to us by our good friends at Pillsbury!

Jaxon is really excited about getting to go Trick or Treating for the first time with his Dad... his Dad is pretty excited too! His costume is done and as long as rain stays out of the forecast, we should be good to go! I haven't let him try it on yet since it's constructed of mainly paper and duct tape! Who knows, maybe Henson/PBS will see my pics online and hire me to mass produce my "Buddy the T-Rex" from Dinosaur Train! (Yeah right!!!)

Santa's Little Helper

I have only one child to raise but I feel sometimes like I live with two! And while I tend to spend most of my time writing about my adventures with Jaxon... I have a few w/ my other child (at heart) too! My husband has never been real good with electrical issues and why I thought this time might be different is beyond me!

Anytime we have an opportunity to work on home improvements, there always seems to be hurdles to overcome! This time was no different! With time change right around the corner we felt there was a need to add a few more lights outside to keep us safe while feeding our calves in the dark. We also thought it might be nice to add a motion sensored light to our back porch since we are always forgetting to leave a light on when we know we'll be returning in the dark.

Changing light bulbs went smoothly (even though the ladder we were using had a broken leg)!Kent's quick fix: random pieces of wood found on the ground (real sturdy)! Oh yeah, and me of course, to hold the ladder in case it decided to move on us! There are times in a wife's life when she knows to keep her mouth shut and yet I couldn't resist the urge to ask (while he was on the rickety ladder), "and what am I to do if the ladder decides to shift a bit?!" He didn't have a response for that one, just an under the breath sort of grumble!

Moving on, we next attempted to tackle the removal of an already existing porch light... no problems there! He was successful in wiring and mounting the motion light (at least we thought). Now we were ready to try out our new lights! Upon opening the boxes in which our bulbs were in, Kent discovered that attention to detail is of great importance... we had one red light and one green light!

Working together has never been real easy for the two of us when it comes to things that men are just naturally supposed to do better than women! And after much frustration with the ladder and various other things, I made the call to just try the lights out to make sure he had it wired correctly. After all, the bulbs could be exchanged! He went back inside, flipped the breaker and all I hear is a somewhat loud popping sound... I think I forgot to mention earlier that the back porch light and my kitchen light are on the same line!

After a much needed break on both of our ends and a call to my Dad for some advice regarding electrical tape, the lights are all working again! But I felt that "Santa's Little Helper" (let's call him, shall we?!), needed a reminder everyday that paying attention to the small details of life is of the utmost importance! After the holiday season the bulbs will be switched out but for now "fa la la, la la, la la, la, la"!

Indoor Art

If there's one thing that my child might actually be prepared for when he starts school, it's art projects! Now that my Planes, Trains and Trucks mural has been done for about a month we took a brief break from the paint brush and focused more attention on catching up on a few good books instead! Since my Hubby is a weather fanatic (lunatic) I pretty much know sometimes a week in advance how to prepare... inside or outside activities!

On Monday morning we took an hour to scour our yard for fallen leaves to use in a leaf rubbing activity I had planned for Wednesday. Jaxon really got into the collecting part... the rubbing part, well let's just say, he would have rather used some "blueberries" (a.k.a. some purple, weed berries he found while scouring), than the boring, old leaves! Anyhow, I did manage to get his attention long enough to create the piece pictured below!

And after much deliberation, Jaxon won the "I want to cut w/ scissors" battle we have been having for the past couple weeks! Now I know what you're thinking... but he actually is doing a wonderful job! And even though I have to sit there through every, little, sniplet... watching his tiny fingers grasp that little pair of scissors is awful cute! And you can't have scissors w/out glue! So I gave in and let him use a little glue too!
It was finally time for the final activity of the day indoors... the pumpkin painting! The pictures that follow pretty much explain themselves! Finger painting isn't just for paper... pumpkins work too! Needless to say, this was our final art activity for the week!

Pumpkin Patch

Fall is my favorite season for many reasons, one of which is pumpkins! Jaxon, myself, Aunt Sam and Grandma visited a local pumpkin patch this weekend in search of the perfect pumpkin! Jaxon had told me when I asked if he'd like to go, that he would be bringing home the biggest pumpkin in the patch! We managed to compromise and brought home one suitable for carving!

There was a nice man who offered to drive our pumpkins over to the car so we wouldn't have to lug our wagon all the way across the patch... Jaxon got to ride in the golf cart with him!

This was a highlight of our trip! Although, I've decided that when it comes time for school field trips, I will not be volunteering to drive and if they decide to leave my child, I won't blame them! See Jaxon under the tractor?!

Grandma and Jaxon

This is the last picture I took while at the patch. As you can see, Jaxon had had it with having his pictures taken... Sam & I had had it too! (And this is why when it comes time for his preschool class to go on their first out of school visit, I'm going to want to hide!)

Gone But Not Forgotten

We sold our second batch of calves this weekend... it's always really sad for me to say good-bye! I sort of see them as pets and after watching Jaxon read books to them (when they first came), it makes their leaving even more bittersweet! Thankfully we were able to bring a new group over the same day as the others were sold so I wouldn't have to suffer from the feelings of an empty nest.

The upside of the sale was that we were able to let Dinkee & Furbee loose with the new, smaller group so they are able to mingle with new friends! Jaxon continues to name those that have been with us the longest. We have grown quite fond of a steer we call SpiderCalf or Spider (due to his inability to walk on all fours all of the time) and a female w/ a hip problem that we call Mama (Jaxon seems to think that she is the mother to all of the smaller calves)... the day they go is the one I dread the most! Jaxon will never be told who we are eating for lunch in those days following their disappearance!

The vet came out earlier this morning to check one of our newbies... Jaxon thought that was really cool! He was really curious about what they were doing and asked lots of questions after they left. His concern for that little animal made me think... maybe one day he'll want to be a vet! That would make this Mama really proud!