Rolling Hills Red Deer Farm

In the last post, if you guessed a groundhog,  a woodchuck, a land-beaver, or a whistle pig, you are right! They are all names for the same animal. Here's some trivia for ya...The groundhog is called a woodchuck because the native american called it a wuchak and eventually the settlers started saying "woodchuck." It's also called a whistle pig because when it senses danger, it stands on it's hind legs and whistles to its group that there's danger ahead. And, Groundhog day started in Pennsylvania!

Anyway, today we visited a deer farm. . .

First, we fed goats while we waited for the tour. The kids laughed every time the goats would head butt each other. 

Addi thought they would slobber her hands. It was too gross for her to try to feed them.

The kids each got a bucket of food to feed the deer.

Lyssa was the bravest. Addi was again worried about it slobbering her hand and Ben was nervous too.

Tons of deer 

After a pep talk with Addi, and showing her how to hold the tip of the food, she was finally brave enough to try. The food would drop half the time because she'd pull her hands back too fast.

Even though Ben was nervous to feed the deer, he loved holding the bucket. He would not put it down. 

Notice the closed fists. He did not like that his hands were dirty from holding the deer food.

Ben, Smile!

See how many antlers you can spot in the next few pictures. Papa's paradise!

The guide said the biggest buck they had was a 23 point. 

Another grandpa on the tour helped Addi feed a few deer. She was getting braver!

On our way home, Steve asked, "Who wants to run through the corn fields?" Of course they all replied, "Me!!!" So we pulled over and let them play for a bit. Danville and all the neighboring cities are filled with corn fields.

Quick Tour of Our Danville House

Here are a few pictures of our house here in Danville. We are really enjoying living here!

 Family room (view from front door)

 Kitchen

 Bonus room downstairs in basement

 Fourth bedroom downstairs in basement

This is actually suppose to be the master bedroom 

but we wanted to be upstairs with the kids.

 (It will have a bed as soon as we have visitors - hint hint)

 Our house

 We love that it's a dead end street and the kids love to play in the big open field down there.

We've even spotted deer in the field.

 Ben's Room

Backyard View

Our little visitor
Any guesses what it is? It took us a while to figure it out!

First Day of School

There's so much to blog about since we moved here. I thought I'd start with the present and work in some of the things we did over the summer as I go along. So to start, here are the girls today on their first day of school.

(She wouldn't wear the cute shoes I got to match the outfit! She said they hurt her feet, which is true of 99% of the shoes I buy her!)

Alyssa woke up extra early because she couldn't sleep. She said she woke up 3 or 4 times in the middle of the night. Then she couldn't eat as much breakfast because of her butterflies. She helped me pick out her hairstyle the day before. We found it on pinterest. She was so proud of it and she said she got lots of compliments!

I had to wake Addi up for school. It took a lot of effort. She was so tired even though we went to bed early. I bet it took her awhile to fall asleep last night. Poor girl. I wish I took a picture of her hair in the back. It had criss-crossing braids that turned out cute too!

On the way to school, Alyssa said, "I'm nervous." Then Addi said, "I am too." They get to walk together to the cafeteria to meet both of their teachers. It's good they get to walk together especially because the school does not allow parents to walk them to their classes even on the first day! You could only drive up and drop off the kids. Knowing this, we visited the school several times this past few weeks. We were ready!

When they got home, Addi was full of energy! She had a day filled with excitement starting off with a hunt for the cookies that the gingerbread man stole (this was to help give the kids a tour of the school). Poor Alyssa was just the opposite. She said her teacher was so boring and didn't do anything fun on the first day. I'm already not liking this teacher. My first impression at back-to-school night wasn't all that great either. Who doesn't do something fun on the first day of school in elementary school!?!

As we drove away, Ben asked many times to go to school. He kept saying he wanted the girls. Then I had to drop him off at babysitting at the gym all by himself. Thank goodness his favorite friend here in Danville showed up to play!

Addi's 4th Birthday

Addi HAD to have a Scooby Doo birthday party. She is obsessed with the whole gang. And actually, she likes Scooby the least because he's not pink.

My cute birthday girls who loves to strike a pose!

Here's the goodie table

with the Scooby snacks, of course

The first thing we did was color t-shirts that had the whole scooby gang on them. This was no small endeavor. It took me forever to iron on! I even burned my bathroom counter. (That makes 2 burnt counters in my lifetime.) But it was worth it!

Jinkies! Velma lost her glasses! They were hidden all over the kitchen and then they played "Pin the Glasses on Velma".

Next, Shaggy was hungry for scooby snacks, so we fed him PLENTY of snacks. The kids really loved this game. We put the line close enough so the kids were all getting them in his mouth. I think they were proud they could do it. Haha. (And I was proud of my drawings!)

I can't believe that they make Scooby pinatas! It was hard to figure out what games to play for a scooby party. Thank goodness for this pinata. This one was a hit! (haha no pun intended).

We had our traditional Little Cesaer's pizza.

Next we went to open presents, but they were missing! Gang, it looks like we've got a mystery to solve! The birthday phantom had stolen them! NO matter how much we told the kids that he was a really nice phantom, we still had some kids way too scared to even help us figure out the mystery.

We searched for clues in each room that finally led to the phantom (our neighbor Casjen) hiding in the bathtub with all the gifts. He had a white sheet draped over him. We snuck up on him and then ran back downstairs to devise a plan to trap him. We set up one more birthday present and called him down. All the kids were hiding behind the couch. The only two brave enough to watch were Alyssa and Addi.

When the phantom came down to get the last present, we trapped him! We took off the sheet to reveal who our phantom was! Casjen said, "I would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for you meddling kids!" Addi was in shock and was so excited! We had two kids with tears of joy and relief. It was pretty funny. We got it all on video, so no pics of this part of the party.

Excited to open gifts!

Ben enjoyed his cupcake even though he got booted to the floor.

And finally we played Scooby, Scooby, Phantom (duck, duck, goose) and Freeze Dance to the Scooby Doo theme song. They wanted to dance forever! The kids were having a blast and screaming so loud. At this point, I was ready for the dance party to be over!

These last two pictures show Alyssa playing duck, duck, goose with Addi and the kids cracking up at her. She was saying silly things each time she ducked a kids head. They were dying laughing at her. Alyssa was in her glory. She kept going around for awhile as she enjoyed all the attention. Too funny!

Below is the mysterious floating bat. It took me awhile to figure that mystery out.

After the party, we had our own little family party. Addi waited all day to open her gifts. We wanted to wait for dad to come home. She was okay with that because I let her open two Scooby Doo DVDs in the morning and she carried them around with her all day. (Don't ask me why this is underlined! I can't get it off!)

I think this was one of her favorite gifts!

Whew! I made it through the day! I feel like a free woman now!