Fortnightly review

Once again this post will cover multiple weeks.  One of these days I'll get back into regular weekly posting.  Hey, a girl can dream, can't she?

We start off our recap with Presidents' Day.  Chris and I had off from work but Bennett's daycare was open.  We took advantage of that and took a trip to Ikea.  Then in the afternoon I finished sewing a bonnet for my costume.

Bennett and Daddy later had lots of fun racing some cars down a ramp made of Ikea boxes.

One day while in the car Bennett drew a picture of our cat Tony.  We didn't see what he was doing as he was drawing, but he mentioned legs, a tail, the head, a collar, and a heart shaped tag.  Considering most of his drawings are still indiscernible scribbles, we were rather impressed when we saw this.

On the 22nd Bennett had his last skating class.  They gave him a ribbon indicating that he had passed Tot 1, but we're pretty skeptical about that.  We had decided to hold off on signing him up again though because he spends a lot of time on the ice just people watching and doesn't seem all that interested.  So maybe next year he'll be back?

The other exciting part of our weekend was that Chris and I along with Andrew, Gentry, and 9 strangers participated in a Dinner in a Country Village at OSV.  Sturbridge explains it best:

Enjoy a unique opportunity to prepare and eat a meal as early New Englanders did. Participants gather in the Parsonage, where costumed interpreters oversee the preparations, but the guests do the roasting, baking, and mulling. Roast meat using a tin reflector oven, fire a brick bake oven, and mull spiced cider over the hearth before sitting down to enjoy the results, all by candlelight.

Chris and I had gone to one of these events last March and knew we wanted to do it again.  Andrew and Gentry agreed to join us, and Andrew also suggested that I dress up, so for the past two months I've been busy sewing.  I'll get more into my costume at a later time, but for now here are a few pictures from the dinner.

While we were out Bennett spent the night with Nana.  He had lots of fun baking, playing in the snow, etc.

On Sunday we picked Bennett up from Nana's house and went back to OSV.  Yes, it's official.  We're crazy.  I showed a picture of my costume to one of the interpreters and her first thought was that I was Victoria.  (Woo hoo!  My costume was a success.)  She then asked me why I didn't work/volunteer at OSV.

It was a good visit with a couple of baby animals.  Button had her calf, a girl, earlier in the week  Button and the calf were in a mostly private barn but one of the interpreters snuck us in to take a look.  Button apparently wasn't too thrilled because she pushed the door closed on us.  The message was clear- stay away from my baby.

There also was a baby lamb.

Perhaps the most entertaining part of the afternoon though was the running of the sheep.  Typically the sheep are kept in a pasture at one side of the common during the day, and in the afternoon they run down the common to go to their barn for the night.  At first that's what we thought was happening, but then we realized that none of the interpreters were around.  Turns out the sheep had broken through their gate.  Unfortunately the gate by the barn was closed so there were a number of confused sheep milling around.  We thought about opening the gate for them, but soon a couple of interpreters arrived.

Bennett quickly turned a toy cow/ox/calf that he had received in January into Button's calf for use on his farm.  "Shhh, my Button's calf is sleeping."

Continuing with the weekly pie, we once again had a Pork and Apple Pie.

Moving on to this past week...

Here I am rocking my baby while he rocks his baby

On Saturday morning I wanted to make my pie and Chris was busy with other things.  I let Bennett watch Cars, but since I also wanted him to eat some breakfast (he chose cheese and crackers) I set him up on the couch with a tray.  This worked rather well for containing crumbs.  Otherwise he would have been up and down from the couch or would have forgotten about eating.

And speaking of pie, I found a new one in one of my cookbooks called Fruit Salad Pie.  It had banana, pineapple, and strawberries with tapioca as a thickener/binder.  It was ok, but I'm not sure that I would make it again.

After the pie came out of the oven we headed out to Sturbridge.  Knowing that Button was going to have a calf soon we stopped at the gift shop and picked up a toy calf for Bennett so that he would have it when the time came. A few minutes later we learned that Bonnie had had her calf the night before.  And it was a boy!  The hope is now that Betsy will also have a boy so that they can be raised as a pair of oxen.  If Betsy has a girl then this boy would be raised for about a year and then it would be sold.

We suggested to Rhys (the interpreter in charge of all the animals) that this new calf should be named Bennett since we come so often.  We'll have to see if that happens.  As it is, Button's calf still doesn't have a name.  Rhys gave Bennett and I a sneak peek at the calf and later he brought others into the pen as well, but we lucked out with a much longer look.  Since Chris had been in the cooper shop when Bennett and I saw the calf, he joined the line of people to get the quick peek.  I had Bennett go with him and I gave Bennett the new calf.  He proudly showed the calf his Bonnie's calf and Rhys asked if that was the calf for his Freeman Farm.


Bennett had also brought his Doc and Blue with him and of course had to show them to the real Doc and Blue.  Here we have Blue giving Doc a bath.

After Sturbridge we headed out to Agawam.  Luckily Bennett fell asleep quickly in the car, but it was still a shorter nap than we would have liked.  Oh well.  He had a blast playing with the other kids (he excitedly told us about their dance party).  I'm sure he frustrated them a bit given that there's a bit of an age difference, but they were pretty good about it.

On Sunday we had a relatively quiet day.  We visited Mimi and then ran some other errands.

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!

Evolution of a Halloween Costume

This past week was pretty much all about getting ready for Halloween.

Here's what I was making.  Meet Doc (and his teammate, Blue).

Cutting out the fabric took longer than anticipated so at first I was feeling a little stressed about getting the costume done in time.  But once I got sewing, it went together pretty quickly.

SUNDAY
Realized that for the suggested layout of the pattern pieces, I couldn't have the fabric folded in half.  Ugh.  Cutting out fabric is tedious!

MONDAY
Finished cutting everything out, and after night one of sewing I had this:

TUESDAY
The next night, after we got home from work/school, I had Bennett try it on so that I could mark the hems.  He was so excited that there was a tail!

That same evening, while Chris worked on making dinner, I started working on the head covering.  It's a good thing that I did this while Bennett was awake, because I had to do a couple of adjustments to get it to fit right.  After he went to bed, I finished putting it together and got this:

At which point, I figured I might as well try putting some paint on it.

WEDNESDAY

The  next evening I had Bennett try the whole thing on, including the mittens and foot coverings.  He was excited to see that his head covering (hood? hat?) had "corns".

And then Daddy did a test fit of the yoke. (One must be on all fours like an ox for this part, right?)

After Bennett went to bed I stuffed the costume with bubble wrap and taped it to the drop cloth on my floor so that I could better visualize how it would stand on all fours so that I could get the rest of the paint done. And then every time I walked past my craft room I thought there was something in there. 

I also decided to give my old stage makeup a try.   It didn't go as well as I would have liked.  Maybe because it's about 17 years old?  I also didn't have the best of luck taking it off, so decided it wouldn't work for Bennett.  Instead I turned to Amazon and ordered some face paint.  Yay for Prime shipping!

THURSDAY
Not too much left to do.  I had decided that the mittens I made probably wouldn't be the best, so ran to Target in search of black mittens.  Easier said than done.  So many black mittens have other color on them as well.  I did find some "ski mittens" which have the long arm gaiters.  Tried them on Bennett and he declared them "too big".  Checked at home and found that we did in fact have a couple of other pairs that might work, but Bennett wasn't a big fan of either of them.  Maybe if he's cold enough he'll give in and wear them?

After Bennett went to bed I added some velcro to the hood to keep it on and Chris also did a little more work on the yoke.

FRIDAY
Face paint arrived!  I had it shipped to my work address and the box was sitting on my desk when I walked in.

And then after work/school, we went to Sturbridge for their "Treats & Tricks" event.  Unfortunately we weren't able to attend.  (Hurumph.)  It was a free eent this year and there were too many people trying to attend.  We had left work early to try to beat some of the traffic, but we ended up spending over an hour and a half to drive two miles.  We arrived right at 8 when the event ended.  What was frustrating about it was that the way the roads are in that area, there's really no way to give up and turn around- we were stuck.

SATURDAY
We decided that Bennett should go in costume for our weekly visit.

I'm inclined to say that most people didn't recognize him at first.  Maybe some did?  But after hearing that he was Doc, they then agreed that yes, he did look like Doc.  One of the interpreters was very excited to see that his back was in fact painted like a Randall Lineback. 

Here's mini Doc with the real Doc and Blue behind him.

We tried to get him to work at the cider mill, but he knew Henry was supposed to do it.  (You can see Henry waiting to get hooked up in the next picture.)  Daddy tried to show Bennett how it was done, but he wanted nothing to do with it.

We made our way down to the farm and Victoria loved the costume.  Bennett walked in first and I could tell that she was looking at him trying to figure it out.  And she did!  (Maybe it helped that last week I had mentioned he would be either Doc or Blue?)  But what was even better was when she pulled out her phone and handed it to me so that we could get a picture of him for her so that she could share it with Dave. 

If Dave had been working we likely would have asked him if it would be possible to get a picture of Bennett with the real Doc, but we didn't feel comfortable asking that of any of the others.  Instead we lifted Bennett over a fence to get pictures of him in a field.  We asked him to get down on all fours, but he didn't want to do that.

And here are a couple other pictures from our visit.

And where's the yoke, you ask?  Since it was made from a garden hose Chris tried painting it.  But the paint remained tacky, so we had to skip using it.  Maybe we'll have it ready for Halloween?

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.