Kaleidoscape

With two very busy weeks behind us, we looked forward to the past week and getting back into a sense of "normal" - morning - school- home- bedtime.  I must confess after two crazy weeks, my body needed rest and I was asleep 15 minutes after the kids were in bed.  Poor Leif - left to hang out by himself - I don't think he minded too much - he's a bit of a night owl anyways.

To celebrate our week of "normal" I decided to treat the kids to a special place called Kaleidoscape (http://www.kplaystudio.com/).  One of the pros of moving to Anchorage area was the amenities that would be close by.  Leinna keeps asking if she can go to "Old McDonald's" to play and thus I decided we needed a new play experience.

Kaleidoscape is a play studio!  It's an amazingly safe, clean, place where kids can just play.  There's everything from a reading corner, to art station, to dress-up clothes, a stage and musical instruments to play on/with.   They also offer classes throughout the week that I'm hoping will explore in the future.  The kids had a great time and even Leif said it was fun to just sit back and watch the kids have fun.

Here's a few pictures from our Kaleidoscape day - 

What a great fun way to spend our Saturday morning!  

Having an experience like this reminded me that as adults, we too need to find our own "Kaleidoscape"s and make sure we take time to "play."  My goal is to return to the land of knitting for at least 15 minutes a day.  We hope you can find time to play this week too!

Fall Activities

ROAR!!

Good morning Oven-Mit Monsters! 

We took part of some typical fall activities this weekend - carved our pumpkins and raked the leaves.

Leinna and Lukkas were very excited to make their pumpkins. 

 Lukkas kept calling it a ball.

After consulting on the design of the pumpkin

we were ready to pull out the seeds.  Leinna wasn't too sure about the texture

of the seeds and "slime", but we encouraged her to be brave and try it.  

Brave indeed!  

She did great with pulling out the seeds and "slime" and said she was glad she was brave because it was fun!

Lukkas- no fear at all.  The only problem was telling him he couldn't put it in his mouth! 

Here we are with our carved pumpkins!

Don't you love our silly pumpkin faces!?!

We also helped rake the leaves up - what a new concept for us.  Leaving in a rainforest for the past 6 years, we never had to rake leaves up.  The kids had a great time running through the leaves and helping to clean up the yard.  

Finally after a wonderful fall weekend, what better thing to do that to snuggle in and enjoy a good book. 

Growing

With the end of 1st quarter this week and all the "To Do's" that come with that - photography took a back seat this past week.  However, we did have one  afternoon where we captured a few photos to show how stinkin' big the kids are getting.  You know that commercial where the little boy goes to bed and then in the morning he's out grown his Pj's?  I don't even know what product they are trying to sell - well anyways- that's how the Jacobsen kiddos are these days.  Put them to bed and they are a whole new person in the morning!

                             Even though they are growing taller each day, she still twirls her hair like she did as an infant and   

                            

 

he is still all smiles to try and distract you from his mischievous plans. 

What does Bailey think of they kiddos getting bigger...

well - it's giving her a lot of grey hair!  

Miss Bailey sure is aging this year - we believe she has cancer as she has several growths/lumps.  The vet says there are things we could do, but Leif and I agreed that we'd let her enjoy her last few days/months/years medicine free. We rescued Bailey from the animal shelter in Fairbanks when she was 8 years old.  We don't know for sure if she was abused or not, but she was very skittish around men.  She's much better now (4 years later) and we believe she's a happy dog again.  Bailey continues to eat well and still enjoys her evening walks - so it doesn't appear that she's in any pain right now.

So, here's to growing and aging and everything in between!

The beauty of Mother Nature

The fall colors continue to thrive in our neck of the woods.  Coming from the coast rainforest of Cordova, I love having a sense of fall in Eagle River.

 We mostly have the orange and yellows, but if you look lower there is this lovely bush that is such a vibrant red.  I need to find out what the name of this bush is - it's so stunning.

We've also been blessed with some amazing sunsets this past week - I definitely miss walking along the ocean at Orca Bay to snap a photo of the setting sun. However, I was surprised to be able to look out my back door and have such a lovely sight.

This may be one of my favorites for awhile.  Leif was home with the sick kids on Wednesday, so I spent some extra time at school.  This school year has been very challenging for me in a variety of ways.  As I was driving home, tired, frustrated and unsure of my future as a teacher - this beautiful rainbow appeared in the sky.  Since I was driving, I was unable to capture it's full beauty.  It's been some time since I've seen a full rainbow in the sky - and the one above turned into that.  It was almost like I drove under the rainbow on my way home.  Simply breath taking.

As I said - sick little ones this week.  They don't look that sick here, but both have had fevers off and on throughout the week. Leif stayed home Wednesday with them and took them to doctor as strep has been going around.  Leinna is fine - just has a nasty cold - turns out that Lukkas had an ear infection.  Both seemed fine on Thursday, but then Leinna started to run a fever again, so I stayed home with them yesterday.  Good thing, because now I'm sick too :o(  Leif was smart and escaped to Fairbanks this weekend - we were all going to go - just to get out of town - but with us being sick, we thought it best to stay put.

 While Mother Nature has blessed us with the season of fall and beautiful sunsets - my brother is in South Dakota and was hit by a blizzard.  He sent this photo of my nephew enjoying all the snow - I think they ended up with 3 feet or more - according to my brother, one of the worse blizzards he's seen.

My nephew seems to love the snow and well 

Lukkas is patiently waiting for his turn to play in the snow!

Until next time - hoping everyone is healthy and safe.  Much love to you all!