Changing Seasons

We have been up to many adventures. I'm going to start with a visit from Jason and his children. His wife went on a little trip, and they must have got bored and ended up at my house. We walked in (after being gone for the morning) to find a naked baby and poo all over the place. Since there was just a dad in charge, of course there were no extra clothes, so she got to wear her cozy jacket the rest of the day. I was under the impression Jason was coming over to babysit for ME, but somehow we all ended up going on a hike together. It was a lovely day for a hike, until it started raining on us. We headed back once the rain came, but we still got fairly wet.


Once we got home and had some chili for dinner the kids started begging for a sleep over. The last time Eli was here they did the same thing, but this time there was a care-free dad in charge. He was just like, "Ok!" So, Eli spent the night. He got to wear Sophie's clothes (since he hadn't brought anything to this spontaneous slumber party). He was pretty excited about that.


The next week we finally had some leaves fall off a tree. Chloe has sat and envied the neighbors with all the leaves in their yard. Yes, there have even been tears shed over it. Well, our yard finally got some and Brandon was ordered NOT to mow them. For FHE our activity was raking up what minute amount we had and burying Chloe in them. She was one happy little girl.



We squeezed in some fall traditions of carving pumpkins and making a gingerbread house. We even roasted the pumpkin seeds this year. They turned out much better than the last time I tried -- and after the girls got over their fear of them, they agreed they were pretty tasty!



I didn't have a chance to take pictures of the girls in their costumes on Halloween, but luckily they tried them on at least once a week in the months preceding so I have one to post. Chloe picked out her costume in May. She knew exactly what she wanted, and even had a coupon to the store she wanted. We weren't going to go trick-or-treating this year, but then Sophie's orthodontist mentioned how they buy Halloween candy from the kids (which got the girls all excited), and I decided that wouldn't be such a bad idea. Still let them participate in the act, get some cash out of it, and not have to ingest all that junk food. It was a win-win situation.


As promised, I took Chloe out for another photo shoot. She needed some pictures with leaves! I don't think my photography skills quite match up with her artistic vision, but I know she had a good time just being out in nature and enjoying the colors. There was one point where we were just hiking along and we came to this clearing of tons of leaves on the ground. I wish I could have captured the gasp Chloe let out. It was a pretty site. The girls just sat and threw leaves up in the air, trying to catch as many as they could in their hair.




Fall quickly turned to winter. We got a little bit of snow yesterday, but we actually got some to accumulate today. Sophie was worried that it would melt by the time they got out to play in it, so I let them have an early recess this morning. And I'm so glad I did, the snow was all gone by lunch time. But we had two nice looking snowmen to show for it.