A Favorite Fall Tradition

Many fall traditions make me smile: jumping in the leaves, trick or treating around the neighborhood with the boys, and eating chili dogs on Halloween. Yet, the one event I look forward to every fall does not involve any of those things. It is the annual trip to the corn maze with my mom and dad.

Mom and dad visited about a month ago. (I know I am slow on getting updates. ..) We filled one cold, fall afternoon with many activities including the corn maze. First, we raced mom and dad to one town to watch Brendan play soccer, then we immediately followed this with a 30 minute trek to watch Andrew play football. After the football game, we decided to go to the Corn Maze. For the past three years, we have journeyed to the same maze: Treinen's Farm. They are reputed to have the largest corn maze in Wisconsin. And we love it.

The maze was crowded, but we still managed to have a great time. The basic concept of this maze is that you look for a series of mailboxes in order. When you find a mailbox, you find a piece of the maze that you paste on your map that guides you to the next clue/ mailbox.

With our master maze finders, we never struggle with the basic finding of the mailbox.

We always challenge ourselves with one of the mazes fun traditions-- the hole punches. They hide eight hole punches hidden on metal poles scattered throughout the entire maze. Most of the time these hole punches are much off "the beaten path" and therefore have to be scoured for. This is where our group's fun really begins. If you look carefully in the picture below, you can see the metal pole we have to look for.
This year, we added the challenge of also "finding Grandpa." Grandpa got left behind in the second puzzle piece of the maze. He looked down to study his map, and the boys went running on the paths they wanted to pursue. The adults quickly followed out of fear of losing the little guys, so when Grandpa looked up, we were gone. And, we didn't find him for at least 45 minutes. We tried cell phones, but it is hard to get a signal buried in a corn maze.
Eventually, we found grandpa meandering down the path. (Much to Brendan's relief. He had been fretting over grandpa's disappearance, thinking that we would never find him.)
For our maze navigating and hole punch finding prowess, we were all rewarded with a proud Maze Master certificate! (Yes, Brendan is crossing his eyes in the below picture. I can't ever get him to be serious for a picture. )
On our way out of the farm, we stopped and let the boys each shoot pumpkins from a slingshot into the pond. Andrew and Brendan are both still sporting uniforms-- if you were wondering why they had an affinity for purple. . .


If you can believe it, we even had enough energy to follow all of this with a trip out to eat for dinner and a round of "boo"ing our neighbors before we collapsed.

Another amazing fall tradition. Can't wait for next year!

The Power Ranger, The Clone Trooper, and The Skeleton Man

What do the above people have in common?

No, not the start to a bad joke. Not the desire to force and destroy evil on the world. Not even the similarity of a three person name. (Ok, so they actually do have the prior things in common, but that isn't the most important.)

Their most important similarity is that my boys all chose them for Halloween costumes this year. For the past three years, I have easily escaped the purchase of new Halloween costumes. Essentially, Andrew and Brendan had to always decide which football jersey to wear, and then we would don helmets and pants. And Evan would just look in his dress up box and find an outfit of his favorite superhero. Then, we'd be off for the night.

But, this year the boys wanted to buy something new. They were tired of the same outfits. So, I tromped off to Target with the boys and each chose a scary guy to dress up as for the holiday.


Halloween was chilly this year; we had spent the day at a football game freezing! But the wind died down, and the evening was calm and cool. This year, Evan was a joy to watch! His enthusiasm for Halloween surpassed everyone. He ran gleefully from house to house with no concern for anything else but candy. He could be heard chiming, "Trick or Treat" as soon as the door opened. Then, he would respond with "Thank you and Have a nice Halloween" after each piece of candy was dropped into his bag.

Andrew and Brendan were excited but absolutely much more focused on the candy than the joy. I can't believe how quickly enthusiasm wanes. But, they all had fun.

And the results. . .


. . .Our dentist weeping in his sleep at the thought of the impending cavities!

Want to Watch a Puppet Show?

. . . is what my adorable, five year old asked me on Monday? His enthusiastic demeanor could only allow one response: Of Course!

He placed his brand new paper bag owl puppet, freshly made from a day in preschool, on his hand and proceeded to duck behind the counter and begin reciting random dialogue.

What made all of this even cuter was that Evan has been losing his voice, altering even his normal voice for the character.

About two minutes into the performance, I couldn't resist taping him, and I surreptitiously grabbed the camera and caught this precious film.


Thirty seconds of puppet show? Priceless.

A Great Season

One of the many events that has quickly come and passed this fall in the life of our family holds importance for Andrew: his final game as a 4th grade football player.

Over the course of this season, Andrew began to take on many roles for his team, varying from kicker, to center, to defensive tackle. All of these roles Andrew enthusiastically embraced. Unfortunately, the season wasn't a roaring success for the boys.

Andrew's team won one game in the middle of the season, but they continued to get beaten by much bigger boys. For the final game, their team had much discussion about the enormity of the players they were about to face from Pecatonica. Two of the linesman were purportedly over 160 pounds. In 4th grade. Seriously. So, they went into the last game a little cautious.

At the game, we could see that the size discussion was correct. Look at this picture with Andrew walking and notice the size of the guy in the background. He's a 4th grader!
But on this day, similar to David and Goliath, size didn't matter. The boys played hard and won their second and final game. Here is Andrew lining up on defense. (He has the 4 on his shirt- he was number 54.)
After the game, the team celebrated with the standard Gatorade-on-coaches-head celebration-- much to what I assume was the coach's displeasure as it was freezing cold that day. Then, the team also concluded their season by awarded spirit awards to each of the boys.
Andrew received the Mr. Positive Award for his consistent positive attitude and willingness to do whatever his coaches said he should. This attitude was obvious when in the final two games, Andrew played almost every snap of the games because he was playing both offense and defense, filling in for missing kids.

It was a fun season full of learning of all sorts. I am proud of Andrew's tenacity and commitment to doing his best. What a great fall for him!