Fall Visit with Laurie and Mark

We were very pleased to have Laurie and Mark come over this weekend for a visit. They are thoughtful guests who notice and appreciate whatever little things are done for them (making it extra fun to entertain them!). And-- busy as they are-- we appreciate the time and effort they take to come all the way to Eau Claire to see us now and then. The kids enjoy their company (Mikey in his quiet, subtle way; Emma more emphatically as she clings to, kisses, and pens love notes to her beloved Aunt Lulu).

Laurie and Mark arrived in mid-afternoon, before the kids were done with school. We had dinner at our house Friday night, and Mark watched his tree stand safety video while we waited for Jon to finally come home. Jon got home late, but the next morning him and Mark set out bright and early for bow hunting.

They didn't see much action in the woods, but had a beautiful clear day outdoors, at any rate. Laurie and I had a leisurely morning drinking coffee and chit-chatting. After lunch we set out with the kids for a "seasonal" experience. First we took her to what I thought was a fall festival, but left that quickly when we realized it was a lame money pit featuring hay rides around the parking lot and lots of attempts to sell us Mary Kay, Tupperware, and other products. Kids were "free", but first you had to walk them past big inflated kid's games that cost $5 to play.

So! We decided to try something else. Beating a hasty retreat, we headed west of Eau Claire to Pleasant Valley Tree Farm in Elk Mound. This is very near the property we hope to buy someday, and it's beautiful, wooded farm land with lots of scenic overlooks. The tree farm itself is typically where we take the kids for Christmas trees in December; you pick out and saw down your own tree, then ride with it in the back of a sled to the main building. They shake it out on a machine (the kids always like watching that part), bundle it, and you pay for it.

But they also do a big fall celebration at the tree farm. They construct hay mound forts, complete with tunnels, through the hay bales, creating look-outs and attached slides; they have a "spooky woods", where you walk along a winding trail peopled with all kinds of funny and ghoulish scarecrows (wearing Halloween masks); they have a corn maze and scenic overlook; a petting zoo (unfortunately, closed when we were there); kids can pan for gold (painted) rocks or pedal pint-size tractors around a track; there's a huge gift shop (mostly featuring Christmas decor) and of course, a tractor-pulled hay ride (but this one pulls you past cows in the pasture and scenic wooded hills, rather than rows of parked cars).

Another fun feature of the tree farm is they have a giant catapult that blasts pumpkins an amazing distance into a nearby field. A bell will ring every 15 minutes or so, and a few minutes later, "whoosh!". The pumpkin travels so far you lose track of it after awhile.

We participated in different activities with the kids, then let them run wild in the play areas while we browsed the gift shop. Each of us bought something-- Laurie bought a small braided rug for their house, and I was drawn to a couple of unnecessary but completely compelling Christmas items.

In the late afternoon, as it started, cooling down, Laurie and gave the kids a 15-minute warning that we were about to leave, then sat on a bench with some hot apple cider.

Before going home we stopped at a store to look at Halloween costumes for Michael (Emma already has a couple of nice ones to choose from that were leant to her by her Aunt Ann). As Laurie noted on her blog, the choices for boys (and girls) were really limited. We decided to postpone the search for another day, when we could spend more time.

We had dinner at a restaurant and then went home to wait for the guys. They came home well after dark, tired but uninjured at least (good thing they watched their tree stand safety videos!).

So, all in all, an excellent visit! Thanks for coming, Laurie and Mark!

PS: The next day I went to four more stores, with the kids, looking for costumes. We finally settled on a "Death" costume (black hooded gown with face covering), which we paid $24 for, but it really felt like we were settling. Next year I'll have to start the costume searching a little earlier, and maybe look around on eBay a little bit. There's got to be better than that out there!

Fall Tidings

We probably experienced peak fall color here in Eau Claire this past weekend. The vibrant reds, oranges, rusts, and yellows really stood out, especially during the sunny interludes we had this weekend.

Sunday the kids and I drove to Cornell, to visit Jon's parents, and even that short distance north noticed there's considerably less foliage and color than we have here. So now we approach that gray, gloomy part of fall that sets the scene for Halloween...

I saw Jon's mother in Eau Claire on Friday. Her daughter Ann brought her to an eye appointment here and, as I don't work on Fridays, the three of us were able to meet for lunch.

Jane has had problems with one of her eyes for years now. She's been taking three different kinds of drops to keep pressure off her eyes and prevent glaucoma, but the specialist she saw this week thinks she already has glaucoma. She's having surgery for it this week (possibly tomorrow; Friday at the latest) to try and prevent things from getting worse. Hopefully things will get better for her; keep her in your thoughts this week.

Jon had to work this weekend but had a few days off last week, due to rain. The positive thing about him working so far away is that sometimes the rain they experience at his work site doesn't make it all the way to Eau Claire, and he's able to get things done around here. The weather cooperated enough where he was able to tear the shingles off our garage roof. Right now there's paper on one side of the roof and tarp over the other; but hopefully in the next week or two he'll get it shingled.

An assessor from the bank came to our house Friday. We want to know how much our house is worth now so we have an idea of what our equity is. We'd like to buy a piece of land in the country (and yes, we have a specific piece of land in mind). We should find out later this week what we're working with. Our fingers are crossed!

I also had a doctor's appointment on Friday. I thought I was having an ultrasound, and even dragged Jon along with me, since he happened to be home. But my next ultrasound won't be till next month... November 23rd, I think. So we have to wait a few more weeks before finding out if it'll be a boy or girl. Very disappointing. I know I knew the sex by this time before, with Mikey and Emma. But both times they warned me it was too early to be sure and they weren't promising anything. Oh well. At least we were able to hear the heartbeat and verify that things are still proceeding normally.

The other day I saved a bunch of photos taken from John, Don, and Laurie's blogs (Bill, I'll get to yours next!!). I saved them on the hard drive of my computer, then burned them onto CDs. Then I had photos developed from the CDs. The photo quality was a little off, but not that bad, and thanks to you guys I have a bunch of nice pictures of our recent visit to Madison and new nephew Stephen. (Our digital camera decided to croak during that visit). So I'm very pleased and have a renewed appreciation for our blog efforts!

We are excited that Laurie and Mark will be visiting us in Eau Claire soon, for a Friday to Sunday visit. Jon and Mark will do some hunting on Saturday, and hopefully we will all be able to do some fun autumn things (pumpkin patch and possibly a haunted house?). Should be fun...

Trip to Madison and... Boy Scouts (gulp)

Well, I'm having to post "old" pictures again-- this time because our camera is not working. It failed on our recent trip to Madison, when I wanted to take pictures of our visit with Don and Hope. Great timing, huh?



It was nice to finally meet Stephen and get to hold him for awhile. What a sweetheart! He was very open to be held by all of us "strangers", and hardly cried. He's an armful! His size and full head of hair make him seem older than he is at first, but he's still just a little guy and needs his head supported and is kind of curled up and snuggly, like a newborn.

Hope very graciously delivered the maternity and baby clothes I'd given her back to me, all the way from Arkansas. Of course, at the time I gave them to her I never expected to need them back. But it was fun rummaging through the box and recognizing items-- especially some of Emma's little dresses and bonnets. She enjoyed seeing them, too. She immediately claimed a couple of baby blankets she "remembered" (even though I've already allowed her to keep three other baby blankets she remains attached to).

We had an excellent meal at Morels Friday night, and a lot of fun having cocktails with Bob, John, Jim, Laurie, Mom and Dad as we waited for Don, Hope, Kenny, Beth, and Stephen to arrive. (My cocktail was seven-up, of course). The food was great and we were spoiled with our own little banquet room, so the kids could run around and wrestle with each other and their uncles.

We had adjoining rooms with Don and Hope, so the kids had a passageway to play between our two rooms. The motel pool was unusual in that it was open all night long, so we let the kids swim until about 11 at night. The pool water was VERY cold, but the hot tub was pleasant.

The next morning we had continental breakfast at the motel, packed up, and congregated at Laurie and Mark's house in Middleton. We had coffee and donuts, and the kids had fun tagging after their Uncle Mark while he harvested a giant edible mushroom from a tree stump in their back yard. It filled a grocery bag when he was done, and weighed approximately 10 pounds. He figured it was equivalent to at least $100 worth of mushroom. I forget the exact name of it, but it had the word "hen". Mark sauteed some in a pan and let us sample it, and it looked a lot like chicken. Very mild and interesting taste.

Well, I better make this brief. I have to get ready for our Girl Scout meeting tonight. Let's hope it goes better than last night's Boy Scout meeting. That was a fiasco. It was the first time this year that I led a meeting all by myself, and without their old leader, Bob, there, things broke down into chaos pretty fast. Apparently I'm not loud and intimidating enough. We have 10 boys, but almost half of them are "special needs"-- 2 unmedicated ADDs, one autistic boy, and one boy who's kind of immature for his age and real wild. I was not prepared for the way the ADD kids got up and walked / played around the room. The situation was further exacerbated by the presence of two parents who sat through the meeting but mostly just stared on in horror rather than helping me in any way. Also Emma and another sibling were there, so it was a full house.

Things were bad: bad enough that after 45 minutes I had to ask another parent to take over so I could leave the room and weep a little. It sounds ridiculous, but I was just not prepared for how naughty other people's kids can be! I'm so used to Mikey and Emma, and things that work with them simply don't work with these high needs kids.

But I'm not giving up and am determined that next time will be different. I've lined up another parent (male) to be present during the meetings and help me maintain order. Also, I'm going to request that the three boys who behaved worst have a parent accompany them and sit by them during the next two meetings, at least until we get some sort of routine established. Third, I'm establishing a discipline policy where each boy gets two warnings, and if they misbehave after that I'm calling their parents to pick them up early. It simply isn't fair to the other half of the boys, who are listening and trying to cooperate and deserve to get something educational out of the meeting.

I don't know HOW teachers do it! I have so much admiration for that profession. And these are third graders... I recall how much worse junior high age kids were.

Optical Oddities

You may recall from an earlier post that Michael received his first pair of glasses at the start of the school year. The eye doctor said that his problem was mild and that he only needed to wear the glasses when looking at the board at school or maybe when watching TV.

Michael's been keeping the glasses in his desk at school and faithfully wearing them about 3 hours a day, during board time. But his teacher had contacted me to let me know that she was having trouble getting him to keep the glasses on. I thought maybe he was embarrassed about the glasses and trying to avoid wearing them, so asked him about it.

During my conversation with Michael it came out that he did not think the glasses helped him see better and that they in fact started bothering him after he wore them a couple of hours. I explained to him that when I first put glasses on as a child, I was immediately impressed by the improvement and could see all kinds of details I had never seen before. Michael said it was never like that for him and that he thought the glasses were helping him in some kind of abstract way that wasn't obvious to him (like taking a medicine where you don't feel immediate results). Since Michael is usually a very truthful and obedient child, I set up a second eye appointment, at a different eye doctor.

This second doctor determined that not only does Michael NOT need glasses, but his vision is better than 20/20. Michael had also passed an eye screening at school last week, as well as passed an eye screening he had at the doctor's office for his physical (I didn't let either of those screenings discredit the first eye doctor, though, because they aren't as thorough and are meant to detect more serious vision problems).

So I don't know if we were deliberately deceived or Michael just gave some misleading answers during the doctor's tests, but Michael has been wearing unnecessary glasses for about a month now. I'm upset about it and plan on taking our eye business elsewhere. I have a sneaking suspicion that the eye doctor was taking advantage of our good eye insurance. We paid $40 out of pocket, but the glasses cost $225 and the exam was over $80. I paid $45 cash for the second opinion, and that was the total cost of the exam (about half the price of the first exam).

Things that make you go hmmm...