Jumping for joy

One more sleep and then we're off to spend Thanksgiving at a house on a lake in southern Virginia with my sister and her family. This has been at least six months in the making. We are a family of five living on a PhD student budget plus my job, so the vacation fund doesn't really exist yet and I'm beyond excited to get going tomorrow and have a little four-day retreat.

Getting ready for this seriously took me all of the last two days. It was insane. And totally worth it. And I'm sure I'll have tons of pictures and stories to tell when I get back. I.cannot.wait!

This is how my children felt about the packing today:

That's right, snug as a bug in a rug. Geez they're so cute. I've been noticing the little things that make them awesome lately and it's done me a world of good. Here's to seeing a lot more of those this vacation. Yay!

Tomorrow is one of those big days

There are a few major milestones in the PhD journey. Tomorrow is one of them. Bill defends his dissertation proposal to his committee at noon tomorrow. He turned in his qualification exam today. It's kind of a big deal. He is pretty confident it will go well. I am confident in him. But it's still a big deal and I will be happy when we are successfully past it, when he can officially call himself a PhD candidate, when he officially has his Master's degree under his belt at the end of this semester, and we are that much closer to finishing. His program has gone remarkably well the last two years, albeit with some hiccups here and there. Here's to that trend continuing on through the rest of the program and through the job search process.

Aaron at Four Months

This kid is smiley as they come. He is in the 90th percentile for height, 75th for weight, 60th for head size. So despite looking like he has a huge head like his siblings, apparently not so much.

He has a big gummy grin that he pulls out for anyone willing to make eye contact with him.

He loves his siblings. Spencer has started rolling him on top of him and pretending Aaron is body slamming him and Aaron just grins and loves all the attention.

He takes several naps a day and sleeps regularly for 5 or so hour stints at night, though last night he didn't wake up until 5:30am, which was incredible. I could go for more consistency with that routine.

We regularly have to tell the kids to treat him like a person not a toy, but I can't blame them. He is like a fun little toy to play with. :)

Proud parent moment

The kids have a chalkboard in their room that they occasionally play with. You know how that goes with most toys. The other night we were reading bedtime stories and Spencer started doing something I had heard him do from the other room a few times, but hadn't come and witnessed. We have a LeapFrog Letters Factory movie that goes through all the letters and their sounds with a little song that goes with it. He's known his letters by sight for several years now but I watched him sing the little ditty, "The A says aa, the A says aa, every letter makes a sound, the A says aa," and then write an A on the board. He proceeded to sing it for every letter of the alphabet and write their letter on the board. I was completely floored. This kid. He is really talented. I'm so very impressed every time he shows the things he has learned. Some of the letters were a bit new age in shape, but I could make them all out and watched while he drew off and on with both hands. He's left handed, but definitely still a bit ambidextrous like most kids.

The other fun thing is that since we have gotten this movie, a kind friend gave it to us from their stash, Genevieve has learned all the letters and their sounds too. She roams around the house singing the little song about whatever letter she happens to like just then.

Speaking of Genevieve, she has been potty training this week. The first two days were amazing and I was so impressed with how easy it was. It's been a little more bumpy since then as the novelty wore off, but the habit is slowly building and we have more times where she makes it to the toilet than that she misses as of today. I'm just tickled that I'm not changing diapers for two kids anymore. Right when Aaron was first born Spencer even still wore one at night, so I had at least part time three kids wearing diapers. Let's just say one feels pretty great.

And not to leave Aaron out, he is just a ray of sunshine all the time. His newest trick is spinning in circles and occasionally rolling over. He's very content with life and he isn't that driven to move yet but slowly and surely he's developing and is a delight to watch.

Jeeping

After camping we headed home to switch cars so that we could go jeeping with our friends! When it rains good things, it pours. Bill and I literally have not been off roading in the Jeep since I was pregnant with Spencer about four years ago. It's been quite the ride since then. Three kids in 3.5 years, a Master's degree for me, a Bachelor's degree for Bill, a cross country move, about to be a Master's degree for Bill, and we just haven't had time for jeeping. But our friends happen to have nearly the same model Jeep we do, just a year or two older, and we decided it was high time we headed out off roading together. So we headed up into the mountains and roamed around some hunting trails for three or four hours. It was fantastic. The kids absolutely loved it. They loved the bumping, they loved throwing rocks in the river, stopping at mid point and running around the forest, plus all the Halloween candy I kept feeding them, haha! The fall colors were lovely. We missed the peak by maybe a week, but they were still stunning. It was a great choice to go out.

Greenville Zoo

Grandpa sent the kids some money recently and told us to take them to do something fun. Bill and I decided it was high time they experienced the zoo. The Greenville Zoo is a tiny little thing, but just perfect for kids our age. They had an absolute ball there today. We were there for a couple of two or three hours and they just delighted in the whole experience. It was funny because we've been talking it up for days and Spencer kept telling us he didn't want to go, he just wanted to stay home. When we were there he kept telling us he never wanted to leave. I love that kid!

Highlights were the monkeys, the monster-sized snakes, Genevieve labeling every line on the ground a snake after that, the giraffes, the lions, playing at the little park, the ducks, and the alligators. All this evening they told us about all the animals they saw. It was a great day.

Two fingers. That's what he has settled on as his favorite items to suck on. He finds so much joy in sucking away all day long.

Unconventional Halloween

Last year some friends camped at the local state park a day or two before or after Halloween. When we saw that Halloween landed on a Friday this year several of us decided to camp there this year. People bring candy along and the kids can go trick or treating. It was going to be awesome. So six or eight months ago we reserved our spot with a couple others. But lo and behold, cross country season got in the way and a few families dropped out because their kids had a meet Saturday morning. So it ended up being just us, which is not a problem in the slightest, but just different than we expected.

Wednesday last week we had a church party and trunk or treat. The kids had a ball. They loved trick or treating even to only about ten cars, which is all they had attention for. But they were in heaven.

A minion

A monkey, but only worn for a few minutes.

Our resident skeleton.

A fairy.

So Friday we headed out to go camping. It happened to be the first cold night of the year. That's right, we've had 8o+ degree weather upon until just a few days ago. I swear I've been sweating since I was about three months pregnant a year ago and I've been waiting so long for it to cool down. Well Friday night it did! We just packed accordingly and went adventuring. This summer we had bought a huge 10-man tent for just such occasions after we camped in our old 4-man tent the last time and essentially were one giant spooning family the entire night. This thing is a beast and it's totally awesome. I can't even reach the ceiling of it, so it's probably over six feet tall inside. It has two rooms, a door that swings open, and all the space we could ever hope for.

The kids were in heaven. Spencer talked and talked and talked about how daddy had set up the tent just for him. We got their sleeping gear out and they practically didn't leave the tent after that, except to go play on the old school swing set at the campground. They loved that I swung with them on the tire swing. I filled up the hole and they clambered all over me and hung on tight. It was awesome.

The night really did turn out to be frosty. Apparently it snowed in Greenville several inches while we were out, but surprisingly, even though we were very close to the mountains, it didn't snow on us. It was crazy windy and rained a bit in the middle of the night, but nothing serious.

The kids did just great. We bundled Aaron up in a full body fleece suit plus a blanket. Spencer snuggled deep in his sleeping bag and slept like a log, though he did request a blanket in the middle of the night. His bag certainly isn't rated for 30s temps. Our handy jean quilt in the van worked just great to fix that problem. Genevieve was our little crazy sleeper. At one point she ended up completely out of her bag and on the cold floor with her head on her pillow. She just roams in her sleep and she had trouble staying in the sleeping bag. Spencer used to be like that too when he was younger, so I think she'll figure it out. She loved being in her sleeping, she just didn't stay in it. Bill ended up zipping her into his own bag and she warmed right up and slept happily. Bill and I got rather terrible night's\' sleep since we were worried about the kids, but honestly, I never get good sleep camping on the ground so that wasn't a downer for me.

With it being so cold and dark when we got to the campground we never pulled out our costumes and trick or treated. There weren't very many people out and about since it was so cold. It totally didn't matter. We had so much fun. The kids didn't miss it. They were too busy playing in the tent.

All in all it was as fantastic trip. We'll have to do it again sometime when it's a tad warmer.