The remainder of Advent and Christmas Festivities

On Monday when I picked Bennett up from school they proudly showed me that he had written his name.  For the lower one, the teacher wrote his name first and then had him trace it in multiple colors.  And then he wrote his name on top.  Yay!

When we got home I didn't have anything special for Advent because I goofed and let him watch the planned movie over the weekend.  (A Curious George Christmas movie.)  For dinner I made pancakes including one that looked like Frosty the No-man pancake, as Bennett calls them since he doesn't pronounce the S.

Tuesday was Christmas Eve.  Bennett went to school in the morning so that we could have time for wrapping presents, last minute shopping, and scrambling to finish his big gift.  More on that later.  I picked him up after lunch and we came home for nap.  Of course it took him a while to fall asleep.

After nap (which we had to wake him from) we put on spiffy clothes and then headed off to pick up Nana and Auntie Hanna before heading to church.  After church we went back to their house for dinner and presents. 

Bennett started to play with bowls, measuring cups, etc and Nana gave him an apron to wear while he "cooked".

Lighting a candle with Nana.

Opening presents.

When we got home Bennett put out milk and cookies for Santa and then got changed into his new Christmas PJs.  While visions of sugarplums danced in his head, the elves were hard at work scrambling to get Bennett's big present (a recreation OSV barnyard) finished presentable.  Last week Chris knew that everything wasn't going to get done in time so he decided to just focus on the walls and fences.  We lucked out and one of his co-workers offered to paint the walls for us.  Woo hoo!  So Tuesday morning/afternoon Chris worked to get the fences finished and painted.  Around lunch time he asked me, what do you think about having buildings temporarily made out of cardboard?  At last, a step in the process that I could work on!  So I spent Bennett's naptime working on barns and after he went to sleep we were up to about 1am working on gluing fences into place and crafting cardboard buildings.  It actually helped the process a bit because we could think through some of the construction process, decide which beams could be eliminated from the design, what needs to be changed for the final product, etc.

Monday night progress

And the end result?  Bennett loved it!  He'd received a few animals for his birthday so we had those set up at the farm-- pigs in their pen, the oxen in their pen, Summer (the calf) in her pen, and the horses out in the yard since they technically don't even go with the farm. 

The farm on Christmas morning

MERRY CHRISTMAS!  Bennett woke around his normal time, 7:00.  He let us lounge in bed for a little while and then we went downstairs.  Here's what he saw when he came down the stairs:

His reaction as he saw Doc and Blue.

And even better, here's his reaction in video format!

Shortly after we came downstairs Grandpa came over to join us for breakfast and watching Bennett open presents.  We started with stockings. Bennett got a couple of cows (dubbed them Lance/Henry) and a sheep and immediately went and put them in the farm.

Next we connected with Grandma and Grandpa Tedford via Skype so that they could watch Bennett open all of his presents.  There were LOTS of presents!  When wrapping we realized that tags on Bennett's presents were pointless as almost all of them were for him.  Plus they were the ones in the Cars wrapping paper. 

One of Bennett's presents was a bin with more animals, all of which had to immediately be put on the farm.  He now has:

• A team of oxen (He got these for his birthday.  We intended them to be Lance and Henry but he named them Doc and Blue.
• A pair of horses, Jim and Pete (birthday gift)
• 2 pigs (birthday gift)
• Summer, the calf (birthday gift)
• 4 cows.  These were intended to be Bonnie, Button, Betsy, and Rainy.  He named two of them Lance and Henry (the oxen).  The other two he named Bonnie and Button.
• 2 chickens, a rooster, a group of chicks
• 1 ram, 2 sheep, 4 assorted lambs

Currently 3 of the cows at OSV are pregnant.  I'm not sure what happens when they give birth.  Do we need to get more calves?  Does Summer graduate to being a full-size cow?  Also, one of the pigs is going to be butchered in a few weeks and the other pig will be going to another farm.  Will Bennett want to remove his pigs until they get new ones?

One thing that was interesting to see was how he immediately put the cows into the milking stalls in the barn even though he's never seen the milking stalls in use (we always left for nap before milking time).  How did he know that's where they were supposed to go.

Cows in the milking stalls. 
Chickens sleeping in their coop. 
Horses in the storage area. 
Mater driving down the middle.

All of the animals in their appropriate pens

Other gifts included PJs, books, puzzles, baking items for his play kitchen, a hand knit sandwich (bread, lettuce, Swiss cheese, tomatoes, egg slices), toy cars (Lightning McQueen and Mater), pattern blocks, a Curious George ornament, Duplos....  They boy definitely had a good Christmas!

The animals are "sleeping" so he covered them with "blankets".

Modeling his new dinosaur hat.  (It's a red present.)

After presents it was almost time for lunch and nap.  Shortly after he woke up, Mimi, Uncle Andrew, and Aunt Gentry came over for more celebrating.

After not wanting to wear his crown, he finally put it on and then wore two more as bracelets.

And that pretty much wrapped up the day.  Shortly after everyone left it was time for Bennett to go to bed.  Chris and I did some dishes and then relaxed for a little while.  One more celebration to go on Saturday!

Games, apples and oxen

Evening activities this week consisted of puzzles and Memory.  He's getting really good at putting together this 100 piece puzzle.

Playing Memory with Bennett is still not much fun.  He doesn't like to only pick up two cards.  After one game, he put the cards out, but the silly boy lined up all the cards without mixing them beforehand, so most of the pairs were right next to each other.  He did much better than usual on that game.  :)

And here he is using his blocks to make pens for all of the animals.  (I don't remember if I've mentioned this before, but all of the animals are named after the animals at Sturbridge.)

And unrelated to Bennett, But I participated swap with my knitting group.  This project took much longer than I would have liked, but I finally finished.  And I had to keep reminging Bennett that these were for Jesse's birthday, not for Bennett.

And Jesse's mum got some lavender sachets, which coincidentally is one of her favorite smells!

With the cooler weather we've been putting sweaters/sweatshirts on Bennett a bit more.  And he loves them!  Frequently if we don't pick one out for him in the morning he's opening his drawer to pull one out himself.


On Saturday we went apple picking  with Grandpa.

And then we went to pick a pumpkin.  Our rule is that you can have any pumpkin you want as long as you can carry it.  This one proved to be too much of a struggle.

And then there was some time on the playground.

On Sunday we went to OSV for their "Field to Table" event.  There were LOTS of oxen there competing in a couple of competitions.  There was one team that we mistook for Doc and Blue because they were the same breed, but as we got closer we realized they were different.  There were also a couple of small teams being worked by kids.  The mom mentioned that when Bennett's about 5 he might be an appropriate age to start working oxen.  Anyone have a farm nearby and have some oxen so we can try it out in a couple of years?

Bennett also helped harvest potatoes.  He was a little unsure of what to do at first, but once we explained and showed him what to do he loved picking up the potatoes and putting them in the bucket.  There were a couple of REALLY big ones!

He also helped to shell beans, but that wasn't nearly as exciting.

Further proof that the interpreters recognize us:

• When we walked over to a group of people by the oxen one of the interpreters (Rhys) had his back to us.  He turned around, recognized us, and then waved to us.
• We were talking to the stagecoach driver about the horses since one of the regular horses hadn't been there last week.  Turns out we had Worthy and Barney mixed up as to which was which.  But the driver commented that we looked familiar to him.  And then, since there was no one waiting to ride the stagecoach, he gave us a ride for free.
• I was down at the farmhouse while Chris had taken Bennett to the bathroom.  Victoria asked me if we had figured out which weeks we would be able to come for the fall butchering.  I also mentioned to her what Bennett's Halloween costume is going to be (it's OSV related) and she said that I would have to show her pictures.

Here's one final OSV picture- Bennett checking out the bin of apple pumice (the mashed apples) in the cider mill.

And unrelated to anything else this week, but on Sunday Chris was watching football on TV.  Bennett watched for a little while and said, "he pushed him".  Why yes, he did.

Better late than never

Grandma and Grandpa Tedford came to visit last week which kept us all rather busy.  As a result, I didn't get a chance to update the blog.  So here's what we did August 12 - 18.

There was more basketball playing.

I'm participating in a knitting swap.  We all started knitting a monster toy.  Then we mailed it to the next person who knit a bit and then mailed it along.  Bennett and I got his monster back in the mail.  He was pretty excited about it which is why the pictures are blurry.  In fact, I let him open the package and as soon as he saw a corner of knitting he guessed that it was a monster.

Here's a better picture.

It has undies that come off.  The undies are super cute, but I'm also a little bummed that they hide some of the awesome knitting.

We went out to a local sporting goods store and Bennett had fun playing basketball with a real hoop.

Then on Saturday we headed off to Sturbridge for our weekly visit. Yes, we know it's kind of insane to go this often.  This time I got in on the cut-out fun!

Lance and Henry were out plowing one of the fields.  As we were watching we heard the driver saying something that sounded like "epotame".  We asked what it meant, and it turns out he was saying "haw to me" which meant just go slightly left towards me.  If he had just said "haw" that would have meant to make a sharp left turn.

And then we got to officially "meet the oxen". We like this chance to meet the oxen and hear about them, but we've done it so many times there isn't that much new stuff to learn.  Also sometimes there are just too many other people there.  In some ways, the impromptu meetings like seeing them in the field are much nicer.

I think every day there is a musket firing demonstration.  We've taken to announcing "Musket" when we hear it go off.  Only you'd never know that's what Bennett's saying.  On this visit we stopped to watch the demo for a little while.

Shortly after we got home, Grandma and Grandpa arrived!  Bennett was supposed to still be napping, but I guess he was just too excited.

On Sunday we went to watch the Lowell Spinners.

Surprisingly Bennett did really well.  Sure there was lots of climbing in and out of Daddy's lap, but he didn't wiggle and whine as much as we expected.

The Spinners won.

And then we got to run the bases.

And that wraps up the week.

Same costume, 3 babies

Shortly after a good friend of mine gave birth I came across a book with a super adorable cow outfit in it.  When we were in high school she and I had both really liked cows, so I knew I wanted to knit it for her son.  I gave it to him as an early 1st birthday present, and he wore it for Halloween in 2010.


T- the original recipient, in 2010.

 Then Bennett came along, and also having a fall birthday, the cow outfit ended up being his Halloween costume as well.




Bennett, in 2011- I get a kick out of the fact that the cow
is drinking a bottle of milk.  :)

And now we have another recipient of the cow costume!  My cousin's daughter just turned 1 so I offered it up to her.


R- the 2012 recipient.

So who will be next in 2013?  Anyone just have or about to have a baby who might appreciate a hand knit cow costume next year?  I love seeing this worn by so many little ones!  And not only has it been worn by three babies, it's also been to three states- Maine, Massachusetts, and Florida!