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Nicole has been really interested in bugs lately.  I’ll find her outside talking to ants and offering them things.  In the picture below, she is giving an ant a ride on a swing.  As she pushed the swing she kept talking about how happy the ant must be and how much fun the ant was having.

Later she discovered some bugs on the sunflower.  She thought she found “a termite or maybe a mosquito.”  She said it had “long legs and a serious face.”  After we talked about mosquitos for awhile she decided that she needed to find a spider to get the mosquito while it was sleeping.  When I came out to see the bugs she was talking about, the one she had been describing was gone.

This is Thomas and his friend Sean.  They have been great friends lately.  I was impressed that they built this train track with out any help.

One of Ila’s very best friends is Sean’s older sister, Shannon.  Ila wants Shannon to be her sister-in-law so she has decided that she’ll marry Sean when they grow up.

This is Nicole doing her homework.  I’m always coaxing her back down to her seat, but she doesn’t stay in her seat for long.

Cookie day in kindergarten was a great excuse to make some cookies with my little helper.  This time I let her do some of the measuring.

I took the kids down to a local farmer’s market to meet Daniel Tiger.  Thomas is my biggest Daniel Tiger fan, but he can also be a moody 3-year-old.  So he refused to be in this picture and in the end he refused to meet Daniel when his turn came.

Ila was very disappointed when she saw Daniel Tiger and she was very loud about it.  Her first comment was “It’s a fake Daniel Tiger!”  She continued to lament and complain about how it wasn’t the real Daniel tiger.  Nicole studied Daniel from a distance and then contended “I saw him move, he’s real!”

Ila complained all the way home about how it was just an adult in a costume, I guess she expected to meet the real Daniel Tiger.  None the less, the children enjoyed some art projects and games and it was not a bad afternoon.

This is how little boys play with a doll house.  They drive cars and airplanes around inside it and toss the dolls aside.

I love that Thomas is so good at making friends and playing with other kids his age.  Having a daughter with autism really makes you appreciate when children have natural social skills and interact well with others.  Thomas, Sean, and Ian can play together much of the day and hardly ever have a disagreement.  I love listening to their conversations.

Here they are debating what should be done with a spider they found:

This is another of Ila’s neighborhood friends.  They are both in kindergarten, but they are in different classes.  (I took this picture on purple day which is why they match each other).

In preparation for the Fall Festival at school, the children decorate soda pop bottles.  Our neighbor Lucie came over and decorated her own.

Charlotte made a soda bottle look like her principal, Dr. B.  She was very proud of it.  She showed the principal her soda bottle and he took her picture with it.

Nicole was also pleased with her creation.  Though it seemed to have no rhyme or reason, she went on and on about how beautiful it was.  She wrote “fun” on it in a few different places.

Ila modeled her soda bottle after a girl in her class.  She couldn’t remember the girl’s name, but she said that she had lovely blonde hair and sometimes she wore a green dress with flowers on it.

With the permission of our neighbor, Thomas rode this toy home last month.  He loves it and rides it everywhere.  He loves riding up to one of our other neighbor’s houses and declaring himself the winner of the Piston Cup.

The Fall Festival is our elementary school’s big fund raiser.  I have to say that I love that the school does such a fun fund raiser.  Some of my kids have gone to other schools that have endless fundraisers which all involve wanting us to sell things to other people (I hate that kind).

The school is called Foothill Elementary because it is located in the foothills of Mount Timpanogous.  This picture is taken behind the school.  I love the backdrop of the mountains.

After the train we went on a golf cart ride.  I didn’t get a picture, but I got to ride with the children and Charlotte’s 2nd grade teacher drove us around the park on a golf cart.

The foam pit is always a hit with my kids.  Last year Charlotte thought ahead and brought goggles.

Ila swallowed some foam and didn’t stay in long.

Nicole spent the most time in the foam pit.  She jumped around throwing bubbles in the air and thoroughly enjoyed herself.

If you look closely, you’ll see 4 of my 5 kids in this bounce house.  Charlotte was in line to ride a horse when this picture was taken.

 

Nicole thought these things were fun.  She held onto the straps on the inside while I rolled her around.

The dunk tank was out of order this year, so they rigged up a hose to pour water when someone hit the target.  All the teachers and the 6th graders get the chance to get soaked.  Ila is soaking Isaac in this picture:

Isaac was freezing cold for the rest of the night, but he wanted to stay till he had spent all his tickets.

Charlotte won a soda bottle and choose to take her own home.  Nicole really wanted to win her soda bottle back too, but when she went to get hers, she saw one decorated as a purple elephant and took that one home instead.

On Saturday, Grandpa cut down one of his trees.  The children had a blast climbing around on it.  Nicole kept excitedly asking “Did you cut it down so you could build a fort?”  She also commented on how you can make paper out of trees and asked grandpa if he was planning to make paper.

The children helped clean up the branches and stack the wood from the tree then went out for ice cream with grandpa.  While they were out, Isaac bought mentos and soda to experiment with.  When they got home, Isaac gathered a few neighborhood kids and tried his experiment.  I came out after the experiment and snapped this picture: