October

 It's that time of year for playing in the leaves.  The maple tree field is great fun for the little ones, especially since Clive has made all kinds of secret tunnels!

 The rope swing is good fun too.  The maple tree is like a big yellow tent, its branches reaching almost to the ground.

 Of course it's time to make cookies.  Clive wants the biggest cookie cutter, David is soooo careful, rolling and cutting, Matthew is bored after making three cookies.

David pulled the seeds out of the pumpkin for roasting.  This picture is overexposed, but that is a plate of seeds top left.  David wins the prize for patience. 

 Matthew has moved on from the vampire teeth.  It's weird seeing him with such long hair.

I'm still figuring out my phone/camera/life.  This is a rare moment of David and Matthew cuddling on the couch.  I cannot get Matthew's eyes to stop being green.  Perhaps there is a message here?

A good friend of mine told me she thought there should be pictures of me on this blog.  Her argument was that my boys needed to see how much their mother loved them at this time of their life.  I think these pictures might be used for other purposes, but here goes!

This is me trying to hug Clive in front of my phone/camera.

Matthew is still an easy target.

David is not too sure about things...

Here she is!  The chicken lady!  When my boys look back at this in twenty years, everything will make sense!

Matthew was soooo excited to go on his first field trip!  The best part was getting to ride on a real school bus.  He has a lot on his mind here.  This was the beginning of a big day.  Pumpkin patch, then swimming with Wyland!

This morning I took this vampire to Castle Care to register him for preschool.  Needless to say he is already very popular.

The usual

Molly continues to "guard" the toad.  She is getting better at lifting the lid, so we now have a pumpkin sitting on it.  Our Halloween decorations are really coming along.  Even Molly managed to find a real spiderweb to wear on her back at dinnertime last night.

After two quiet spa days I am back to kids.  Landis was here for twelve hours.  The rain has started so we are mostly indoors.  When we did go out, Landis decided it would be fun to break all the eggs in the hen house.  Really??  Luckily I caught him midway through and we marched back to my house while I lectured the boys on why we don't smash eggs in the hen house.

Before and after school.  Boys playing with Lego.  What you don't see here are the many time outs and the noise of five boys (mostly mine) fighting.  This was an exceptionally long Monday.  My boys were asleep by 7 pm.

I am enjoying being back in the spa environment.  It is quiet.  I am learning to be an employee (I think).  This is a big step, we'll see how long I last...

Thanksgiving

We're thankin' the girls for their eggs.  We are getting 21 a day on average.

Had a day in Victoria for a laser birthday party.  Look how excited Dad is.

Matthew and I went to the mall where he jumped on this mural painted on the floor.

We met Kelly for dinner.  It was quiet and relaxing.  NOT!

As our summer seems to be sticking around we have seen more of Mitsy our barn cat.  Here is Clive introducing her to Molly.  

The boys watched an episode of the Nature of Things.  They now want to run everywhere, having learned that is what the human body is built for.  Clive wants to run barefoot and has run all the way from Bev's house to home!

We've had our second pruning and it feels so light and airy!  We've been picking at caterpillar egg nests.  It's like picking scabs, so fun!

David wanted to make grape juice for everyone for Thanksgiving.  When he realized how little juice came from soooo many grapes, he decided to make juice just for the kids.

Because it was so beautiful and HOT, we had Thanksgiving dinner outside.  The frogs were thankful for the ponds having fresh water from our hose.  We are all thankful for this extended summer!  Kinda makes you not want to recycle...  And now that it is getting dark earlier, the boys had a good run of laser tag.