School Days

Josie continues to love school at Schmitz Park.  She is doing well, making lots of new friends, improving her reading and math skills and has even been chosen to be a part of a pilot program for kindergartners-   a very small group will be having lunch with the assistant principal every Thursday.  
To the left is a photo of her during her "Star Student" week.  I love the fact that I'm able to volunteer in her classroom once per week and see her in action and meet all of her classmates.



She continues to love drawing and creating things.  Below are a few pieces of her fall artwork: a dinosaur, a close-up of his footprint, a pumpkin collage and Tinkerbell. 

 

 Birthday gifts from Oma/Opa and Liz/Ed of rain boots and rain coat have come in pretty handy for our walks to and from the bus stop and for recess at school.  She stays toasty warm and dry. 

Another Fall Day

On another very beautiful but windy Fall day, Benjamin and I spent some quality time down at Alki.  Days like these remind me of why it is that we chose to live in Seattle and West Seattle, specifically.

More Halloween

I posted the Halloween post before I had looked through all the photos from the Fall Festival at the West Seattle Junction.  Here are a few more from that day: 

"oooh, what is in the basket? "

T

 "Thank you!"

 Benjamin ran into his "brother" Luigi

 And more and more and more treats!

 They closed the streets to cars California Ave was packed with people, kids and activities

 Josie ran into her new best buddy from school, Elliott the Monarch butterfly.

 Whenever the kids see a bike rack they think it is some kind of monkey bars and just MUST swing from it.
Unfortunately, Mario's belly got in the way just a little.

And a few more photos of the beautiful fall leaves on the walk home.

Trick or Treat

Mario, Princess Peach and Franziska (dressed in traditional Bavarian attire) were definitely ready to go trick or treating come Halloween evening. The rain had just started coming down as we were heading out the door.  It didn't matter. Nothing was going to keep these three back.  I went with them and Marty stayed back to hand out candy to the kids who came to our door.

All smiles...





And even a few tears!   I can't remember what had happened but this is her typical "NO!!" scream with very defeated shoulder and arm hang.  She got over it quickly and her and Franziska stayed out for another 45 minutes to do some more trick or treating.

Note the cool pumpkin bag Josie is carrying.  My mom made that probably 35+ years ago.  It has a top that goes on it but we leave that at home so we don't loose it.  We only use it once a year and surprisingly it is still in great shape.  Nice work, Mom!!

One Fall Day

One beautiful Fall day in mid October, Benjamin and I headed to park after co-op preschool. The pile of leaves were dry and perfect for running in and throwing up in the air.

Ready, Set, GO!

 And throw

 Of course, jumping in the leaves was the best.

No trip to the park would be complete with a some swing time

 And lunch

Halloween

This year for Halloween Josie was insistent that she dress as Princess Peach and Benjamin as Mario.  They play the video game Super Mario with Marty at night on the Wii and they are both really into the different characters.
The weekend before Halloween was a beautiful fall day.  It was sunny and even a bit warm, the leaves had all changed and most of them had fallen.  Mario, Princess Peach, Marty and I  walked up to the West Seattle Junction for the annual Harvest party and had a great time together.

Josie is a very protective big sister.  When they are out together she often takes the big sister role very seriously, takes his hand, guides him here and there and makes sure that no one hurts him.  It is very sweet and he *almost always* goes along with it without complaint.

Two and a Half!

On October 23rd, our little monkey turned 2.5!  It really is hard to remember what our small family of three was like before Benjamin came on the scene.  Other than his sleep issues (which are better but still not close to what I'd call normal) he is really a very easy going, sensitive, active boy.  Right now he is really into rockets, dinosaurs and any kind of car or truck or train that moves with batteries.  He lines up all of his trains and puts the battery powered Thomas engine in front and watches it go around the kitchen, into the dining room and the living room.  When one of the trains falls off he yells..."oh, no Thomas!  You lost one of your friends" and then the process starts all over again. 

Oh, and how could I forget cutting.  He loves to cut.  He can spend up to 30 minutes in the play room cutting up paper and old coloring books.  Unfortunately, sometimes he finds Josie's over abundance of artwork and gets his scissors into that before I notice.   Now we have a large box of junk mail and catalogs that are labeled "Benjamin's Cutting Box."  

We didn't have cake on the 23rd but we put a candle in his mini pizza and he was thrilled.  He is a bit of a pyromaniac and LOVES candles, matches, anything to do with fire!  I think we relit this candle 6 times.  Then we ran out of matches.  Happy 2 and 1/2 to my sweet little Benjamin Fritz!