What Fall looks like in these parts.

I left the house at 11 yesterday, and returned at 12:20 to see my house swarmed with ladybugs. I took pictures even though I was being dive bombed by the beasts. They continued coming until about 5 pm. After dark they were all gone. While they were landing on the house and windows, it sounded like rain. The back of the house was almost as bad as the front.

Fall is pretty in that skin deep kind of way. Not my favorite season, I know I am in the minority here.

It sure is fun to decorate for Fall......

Landon went to a pumpkin farm with his class and came home with this little pumpkin. He insisted that we carve it immediately. After carving it, we had to light the candle in it immediately. Then he drew additional details on it; made an additional cut with the knife right down its forehead. He then played with it like a toy for a day or two. And then we discovered it attracted (made?) fruit flies and we had to put the Jack O'Lantern outside.

October Sky- 7am

Fall in a Bottle

We've been feeling Autumn in the air here and Maura set her little creativity into gear and made this beautiful "Fall in a Bottle". It contains a couple of Landon's acorns, a leaf or two...so far. Landon asked what it was for, and when I told him that it was collecting signs of Fall, he said "well, ya can't put geese in there". 

I was taking photos of the mums on the front step and he said "Mom! Take wotts of pictures of me." And so he posed :) 

This morning as David was eating his breakfast he heard a menacing message from the living room.  "Have fun being in Heaven, David" and he turned to see Landon with a little cowboy pistol aimed right at him. Then he shouted the same thing at the laundry basket full of clothes and I then became an encouraging bystander, egging on the villain. 

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Each week the kindergartners have a Focus Letter that they work on, so far they have done F and M. This morning Landon told me that their new letter is B. So I said "B, like in baby." He said "Yes, but at the end of baby is a B."

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All the kids play games on my iPhone and I have downloaded several games that are just for them.  For Landon there are cute matching games and  learning games that clap when you get things right (he says thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou when they clap).  Anyway- somehow, there were games added that included gunfire and knives and violent things like that. I got rid of them one day and when he later went to play with the phone he got so mad that they were gone and yelled "someone deweeted all my apps!!" And as I was using the Google maps app to see if we had missed a road in the rurals of CT, he said "Dad already knows where he is going, can I have your iPhone?" That's our technologically smart babies! I asked Gord if he knew the word delete when he was  5 and he said "no, but I knew what a record was!" 

Saturdays are the best! Part 2

Yesterday, in preparation for Thanksgiving;  Gordie and the boys repainted the family room. It is the same Dijon Yellow as we painted it in Jan. 2000; Nov 2004 and Feb 2006. I guess we like it :) I had sought advice from the lady at the paint store and she advised me to stick with it, but to take some of the things of the walls. Hmmmpf.  I am so clueless about decorating, sad, but true. At about 4 pm, I made some dough for pizza. At 6 pm when the dough was ready, Gord changed the plan and instead made  these gorgeous, delicious Strombollis. The kids thought it was almost as good as pizza (they think G's pizza is the world's best). Here's what it looked like, SO sorry I can't give you a taste!





We also had these. You can't go wrong with Toll House cookies.

Sunset

leaving the park where we held the Sunday School Picnic:



I couldn't begin to do it justice.

Happy Halloween

Maura and I set out to make some Halloween decorations...

Grab some Modge Podge and an empty glass jar:


Tear up pieces of orange, yellow and white tissue paper and Modge Podge them to the jar, layering them to give texture. We are attempting to make the jar look like a pumpkin.

That cat looks nasty. 

After you finish, let it dry overnight on the window sill. I attempted to make the photo interesting by getting in close, but as I was focusing on just the right spot on the jar I saw an object move into my view behind the "pumpkins". Ohhhhh, shiny! 

Airplanes are so much more interesting :) It was Grandpa bringing his cute little airplane back to the yard. 

Our pumpkins dried nicely and we drew Jack-o-Lantern faces on them and wrote BOO and spooky stuff like that.  

A Day at Bushnell Park

The kids all had the day after Columbus Day off so we were trying to think of something fun to do. We had done the hayride and pumpkin farm thing the day before so we tried the Bushnell Park Carousel in Hartford.

We parked right beside the finish line from the Hartford Marathon- the only way I will ever cross a marathon finish line!


We were pretty excited to go and ride the carousel. I took Adam there when he was about 2 years old and it scared the tar out of hm and he screamed the entire ride. I warned him this day not to do that again :). No worries, it was closed for paint and repairs. So we walked around inside anyway.

When we came out of the Carousel building, we noticed a wonderful playscape right behind it. We had it all to ourselves- major city park and no kids in it? Where is everyone- there were not even preschoolers around. Here is a map of CT stamped into the concrete, complete with the CT River running through it. I think they are trying to not step on towns here. 

Maura ponders..........the table is an open book, the benches are stacks of books. 

She finds Chicken Little.

What do you see first... the people or the gorgeous white Canon lens? This is our favorite photographer, Brian Ambrose strolling thru Bushnell Park with clients. They were doing an engagement shoot and I can only imagine how amazing those shots would be!  Edited 12/17/08: Click here to actually see those shots.

The Carousel. 

My kids! So cute!

Maura and Landon- notice he is holding his imaginary friend's hand. (Rick is his name)

Adam took this one of our Capitol Building. 

Nice brother stuff happening here.

Landon makes Maura push "Rick" in the swing. 

Again with the nice brother stuff. It looks suspicious to me but they both say it was "all good". 

my cutie

Maura came home from school a few days ago and told me that her friend, Kevin, had put his house up for sale. I was surprised to hear this because I drive by his house everyday and I hadn't noticed. And I am very notice-y. The next day as I was driving Landon to school I remembered to take a look at Kevin's house. Driving by, I noticed there was an Obama/Biden sign on the lawn but no For Sale sign. I burst into laughs when I realized that she had mistaken the campaign sign for a For Sale sign. So that night I asked her "hey- who is selling Kevin's house for him?" She looks at me and laughs, momentarily burying her head in her hands, and says "Mom, it isn't for sale, it was one of those president signs!" We had a great laugh and I loved to see her not taking herself too seriously- just laughing at her adorable mistake.

Waco + foliage = beautiful

Our neighbor built this Waco and was taxiing it for the first time here. I think it is a thing of beauty. It sounded like a huge truck was in the yard and when I ran outside and saw this airplane I was instantly in a MAD scramble for the camera.

Reason #101 to learn to crochet

Isn't this the most gorgeous scarf ever?
It can be found at garnethill.com and I am SURE it is worth every penny of $88.
I'm wondering if I could master a granny square/hexagon?

Hay Ride, Pumpkin Picking and Corn Maze

Monday was a holiday here in the US (Columbus Day) and the kids and I usually go apple picking and a hay ride if nothing else exciting is happening. In the morning we were off to Toys R Us to redeem gift cards they had rec'd at the Sunday School picnic. When that was over, we found ourselves at a farm near home- one we hadn't been to yet.

The pumpkin bouncy house was "awesome": 

Some parts of the farms were looking a little sketchy. That poor donkey (in the middle of the pic) was running the same track of ground over and over and would make the same noise at the same spot each time. 

Here Landon discovers his "parents" and he was introducing us to his  mother and father and asked me to take his picture with them. He looks very delighted with his new set of parents.

On the table to Landon's right was a glass box with a taxidermied goat in it. Okay, that's wierd. I wish now that I taken a picture of it, but there were so many things about this farm that made me want to run away that I wasn't thinking about taking a pic. It was not just any goat, it had two heads. The plaque on it proudly read "This two headed goat was born in January of 2008 in this very room. It had two fully developed heads, two spinal cords and one set of organs. " In this very room- I wish they had left that out! It was actually really cute, except for the pesky extra head.  

The corn maze- which way shall we go?? This was huge and tricky. Very annoying. Dave saved our hides by running ahead and then coming back for us. Adam stands by his claim that we could have easily gotten out on our own. 

A tractor led hay ride. 

it was fun.....

The pumpkin patch!! We were shocked by the TINYNESS of the pumpkins but we each got one for ourselves. Maura's ended up being rotten and we traded UP for a nice fat sugar pumpkin. 

Playing with the old tractors was lots of fun. 


Checking out the little goats...