November 25, 2009
What? It's 2010 already? But what happened to fall and winter of 2009? It seemed to have slipped by without an update about all the stuff Jonas has been up to. I guess maybe because he is such a busy guy it leaves little room for me to sit down and blog about it....that or I'm just super-lazy. You decide.
I will try to get you caught up as painlessly as possible. We'll try out the Reader's Digest Version of everything from Sept through Dec 2009.
This awesome pumpkin magically grew in Aunt Connie and Uncle Pat's garden. Neat-o! We got to enjoy it at our house for about 6 weeks until it became a little more squishy and a little less magical.
Jonas stared his second year of preschool in September. He is at the same school as last year but he goes 3 days a week this year. His teacher is Miss Shalynn and she's super nice. He's been having a great year so far. As you might recall from other posts, Jonas is really into ASL (sign language) so he was very excited to find out Miss Shalynn is teaching sign language in class. Since he knows all the alphabet signs and most of the colors, Jonas gets to stand up in the front of the class with the teacher and show everyone else how to do the signs. He loves it. (Sept 9, 2009)
One morning before church Jonas found the sandals I had put out for myself to wear and he thought it very funny to try them on for size.
"Boys can wear sandals, too, right mom?"
(Sept 20, 2009)
We had our first encounter with Shoofly Pie this fall. Our wonderful friend Lil sent a homemade Shoofly Pie all the way from Lancaster County Pennsylvania for us. And her husband Dave was so kind as to transport not just one but a whole bakery's worth of pies from PA to OR for all of us Oregonians who needed to experience this fabulous creation. It is worthy of its title Official State Pie of Pennsylvania. You can see that Jonas really enjoyed his experience with this delightful dessert. Thanks Lil !
(Sept 12, 2009)
Jonas is becoming quite the crafty kid. He got a whole box of crafts for his birthday and I think his favorite is this melty bead kit. He is really quite good at following the pattern on the front of the box. He has made this owl at least a dozen times this summer and fall, maybe more. Jonas does not, however, like to actually melt the beads to make it permanently into the design. He prefers to just dump them back into the container and make it again. And again. And again.
(Sept 2, 2009)
Memorial Day started off by Tony cutting down about a thousand limbs out of the trees in our yard. Then we proceeded to drag them from their various places in the yard to our burn pile behind the garage. It was a big, tiring job and by lunchtime we were pretty wiped out but only about halfway done. Instead of just eating lunch and trudging through the rest of the job we decided to be spontaneous (which is rare here in the Cook house) and throw together a quick picnic and head to the park. Jonas rode his Big Wheel around while we cooked hotdogs. After lunch Tony pitched some balls for Jonas at the full sized baseball diamond. Pretty funny for a 5 year old to run around that huge baseball diamond. He shouted out that he was exhausted about the time he rounded second base. (Sept 7, 2009)
We surprised Jonas with a trip to Sun Mountain Fun Center in Bend for a round of mini golf. It was pretty fun and not many people were out there that day which was good since it took Jonas an average of 25 shots for each par 3 hole. We stopped keeping score after the second hole. (Sept 4, 2009)
We headed up for the Annual Tree Hunt during our stay-cation in December. After playing in the snow a little we found a tree, took some photos and headed back into Sisters for lunch at he Depot as usual. Then we went right home and got that tree up and decorated. I think that's a first for us to cut and decorate our Christmas Tree all in one day. (Dec 2, 2009)
I really wanted to make an Advent Calendar this year with drawers or doors to open each day with a note inside with some kind of activity for Jonas to do. I found a beautiful kit online but, alas, it was sold out so I did the next best thing and scrounged at the Goodwill for something to fancy up. I found this sad little thing...
and turned it into this. It was not exactly what I had envisioned but it was fun to make and Jonas loved opening the doors each day and finding out what the "surprise" was for the day. There were things like going to cut a Christmas Tree or drinking hot cocoa and listening to Christmas music or....
making Christmas cookies...
or making a Deluxe Gingerbread House complete with Gingerbread Boy and Gingerbread Tree.
(Dec 2009)
Whew! That was a lot of catching up....and we haven't even done Christmas yet! Maybe I'll start another post for that. Take a break, you deserve it for persevering through this ridiculously long post.
