on to football

If I can't be at a baseball game in October, I might as well be at a football game.  Can you sense my enthusiasm?

In reality, this was a very big day for the Wedan's.  It was our first game as season ticket holders!  In honor of this big event, we hired our sitter for the whole day - she actually spent the night so we could leave home at 5am sharp!  It's about four or four-and-a-half hours to drive, so we got to Green Bay around 9:30.  Time to tailgate!  Yes, we were eating hot dogs when most people would be eating scrambled eggs.



Up to our eight seats occupied by seven family members and a friend (and no kids - those days will come!) around 11:30.  It occurred to me I had never actually been to an NFL game.  The game was entertaining, the nachos were average-at-best, and we (and 78,000 other fans) got to witness the Packers' victory over the Lions first-hand.



The fall air was crisp, but a perfect weather day for football "up north", and the drive was beautiful.  We made it home by 8:30 to tuck the kiddies in.  Now, you don't have to be a fan of football to call that a great day!

10 reasons why I love home-preschool

I am a strong believer that what's best for one child might not be what's best for another, and this particularly applies to their education.  Brett started going to preschool shortly after his 3rd birthday, and I believe we made the right decision for him.  With Lydia, in particular, and for Reggie, this year, we carefully weighed the pros and cons, and decided I would do home-preschool with them.  Last year, we did home preschool also, but with Brett home in the mornings, and the two of them still taking naps, I had to squeeze the curriculum into less than 3 hours a week, not that they aren't learning through play all the time.  This year, we have more time to devote to it, and we've really enjoyed it.

Here are 10 reasons why I love home-preschool

1. It's (almost) free.  I use free resources online and check out books from the library.  Of course we need crayons and glue and construction paper, but we'd buy most of it anyway.  Here is the curriculum I'm using this year.

2 and 3.  Maybe it's just my personality, but I'm bothered by the time constraints and gas of taking my kids from here to there. (We will have plenty of years of that ahead I'm sure). We do home preschool on our time, in whatever we happen to be wearing, and the car stays in the garage a couple days a week.

 4.  It's everything times two with two four-year-olds.  I'm getting twice the bang for my energy.

5.  If I'm going to "stay-at-home" with my kids, I might as well have my kids "stay-at-home" with me!  I'm of the general opinion that we push our kids into too many programs too early and for their first five years, parents are their primary teacher.

6.  Each kid is different, and Lydia (who will be in kindergarten next year) is an eager learner.  She loves to sit-and-do learning activities, making my job easy (Reggie requires a little more creativity).

7.  Both kids separate well from Mom and Dad, one of the primary goals of preschool.

8. Both kids tend to make friends easily wherever they go, another primary goal of preschool, and they get plenty of opportunities to share and take turns with each other.

9.  Wow!  Lydia is starting to read!  And I get the honor of participating in the process.

10. Field trips!  A is for apple, so lets go to an apple orchard.  Z is for zebra, so let's go see one at the zoo!

teeth

It seems like just yesterday we were celebrating teeth coming in...

Brett, 15 months

And now here we are celebrating teeth coming out.

I have a feeling the Wedan's are going to be keeping that tooth fairy pretty busy the next few years!

now it's the kids' turn

We had our fun going to baseball games in August, it was the kids' turn to go in September.  Thanks to participation in the summer reading program at our library, we scored free tickets to a Twins game!  Brett and Lydia were both under two the only other time they had been to a MLB game, and it was Reggie's very first MLB game.

 The two main ingredients for keeping 4-and 5-year-olds content at games are coloring sheets...

 ...and sugar.

 See?

Maybe that was too much sugar for Reggie.

But for Brett, every event is all about the treats, so next up was the $16 "souvenir" bucket of mini-donuts.

 We survived 7.5 innings of not-watching the game and got a picture with TC before calling it a night.