And Still More Fall Fun

More Fall Fun

Today I took the kids to the park for a scavenger hunt. They each had their own list of items to collect or photograph. We had a really good time! The kids commented several times about the beautiful fall colors and really seemed to enjoy our walk. They were so grumpy this morning, that, honestly, I didn't have high hopes for the afternoon. Thankfully I was pleasantly surprised.

(Tyler took the picture of Danielle looking through the pipe. I thought it was cute.)

We have enjoyed the beautiful fall weather the past couple days! The kids had yesterday off school, so we went to the "pumpkin patch". I use that term loosely because the pumpkins included in the price of admission don't amount to much. We knew that from our visits in previous years, though, so we were ok with that. There is a lot of other fun stuff to do there, as you can see from the pictures. Ron and Tyler also enjoyed the corn cannon and laser tag, and Ron beat me twice at the rubber ducky races. Our admission price was supposed to include pie pumpkins from the field, but there were so few left that we all picked out gourds instead. We had a nice time.

Fall!

Oh what a beautiful day it was!!! After a quick trip to the grocery store, I took a detour on the way home and stopped by the park for a couple minutes. The sun was shining, the fall colors were brilliant, and the air smelled so good. Tonight Danielle and I took Clara for a walk. Danielle stomped through the crunchy leaves and picked up various red, yellow, green, and purple leaves to make a collage. The day ended with a gorgeous sunset. The sky looked like it was on fire, and then it slowly faded into pinks and purples. It was beautiful. Days like this are why I love fall!

This and That

Here are some pictures from this past week.


The girls had a good time cheering this week. It was the first time they all looked like they were geniunely having fun. Only 2 games left.









Tyler has been practicing using his skateboard. He's slowly improving.
































I thought this bird was really pretty. It's just a type of sparrow. Why would it matter if it was pretty? There are so very many different types of birds. Isn't it amazing that God didn't just create a bird. Instead he created birds. Birds with different designs and patterns, shapes and sizes, calls and songs, colors and hues. Why would it matter to Him if mankind had only one or two types of birds to fulfill their birdy purpose? Yet it did matter. He gave us a rainbow of species to watch and enjoy and care for. He loves us enough to care about even the smallest details that make our daily lives that much brighter.


















This little guy has his work cut out for him! My milkweed plants have been overrun by aphids. I'm not too worried about it since our monarch season is over. I'm just waiting for my seedpods to mature before the frost kills them off.













We tied a record high today - 87 degrees in the middle of October! The temperatures may not feel like fall, but the scenery declares it's here!

TMI!

While I was at the library the other day, I picked up some new books for the kids. I saw one titled Sparrows in the Children's New Non-Fiction section that I thought Danielle would like. I flipped through it and thought the illustrations were nice and it had just the right amount of simple sentences, so I checked it out. Turns out I should have paid a little more attention as I flipped through the pages. I think maybe the book had too much information about sparrows.

This went over Danielle's head

but this one totally grossed her out!

First Practice

Cheerleading practices were cut back to once a week (hooray!!), so we decided Danielle could start twirling now rather than wait until cheerleading was over at the end of the month. Tonight was the group's first practice. As you can see from the pictures, Danielle was really concentrating. She had a really good time and no one got bonked on the head by a flying baton (yet).

Catching Up

Danielle is not enjoying cheerleading as much as she had hoped. Really, it's a leadership problem. She enjoys the actual cheering and attending the games, though. This is a picture from one of her games a couple weeks ago. We missed last week's game & will miss this week's, too. She signed up for baton twirling, which will start in a couple weeks. I've met the instructor, and I think she'll enjoy that class a lot more.









A couple weeks ago we released our last two monarchs of the season. All the monarchs around here have started migrating. Before taking off, one of our females paused to check out the milkweed flowers. I am really pleased with the amount of eggs-butterflies we had this year! Now I'm hoping the frost will hold off long enough that the seed pods on my plants can mature so I have lots of seeds for next summer.

























A few weeks ago Tyler decided to create Lego City in our foyer. He only worked on it occasionally, but finally got most of his city sets together. Tyler didn't appreciate the humor when Ron added Lego flames to the house's roof one day. I can't believe his city withstood dog paws for so long! We finally started dismantling the city today.


































Our fall colors are supposed to peak in another week or two, although reports say the colors won't be brilliant this year due to high temperatures and lack of rain. Still looks beautiful to me.





















Tomorrow is our school carnival. Here are our cupcake donations for the goody walk. They are a modified version of Taste of Home's monster cupcakes. I made extras for us this year and warned the kids that if they play the cake walk and win, they have to pick someone else's cake this time!

Boo

It's October. We can officially pull out the Halloween shirts.