When November Turned to December...

Although we still had a few cold and clear days, we often woke to heavy frosts that were so beautiful! It almost looked as if we'd had a dusting of snow.

We did our final raking of the leaves for the winter...

The kids were beginning to get the hang of leaf raking and turning into quite the good helpers.

Miss Kate had a much better attention span than her 2yr old brother...

That's not to say there wasn't some goofing around on her part tho.

(I'm pretty sure her brother would have been raked into the leaf pile if intervention had not occurred.)

But she continued diligently raking even when brother left off with the work part of things...

And even when he began playing in her hard work...

she continued on.

After he paced back and forth several times in front of her he was made to fix her leaf pile...

But in reality I think he spread it out even more! :)

So Kate gave up on being helpful and gave in to having fun!

Did you know if you walk around in a circle, passing through a leaf pile, while shuffling your feet...

over and over...

and over again...

changing directions if you start getting dizzy...

and you do it for long enough...

you will eventually get a circle shaped leaf pile!

And if you have a circle shaped leaf pile with a path through the middle there are no end to the games you can play in it!

But all fun must come to an end...even fall fun!

Not to worry though, as winter fun is just around the corner.

And freezing fog is sure pretty to look out the window to.

Back in October...

We had some lovely leaf piles to jump in! Somewhere between then and now I lost access to my blog...plus with a new baby, a big Thanksgiving trip, a lot of sick, another big road trip to Cali. Conference, a visit to grandparents, a lot of more sick, some company, life in general and another round of colds...I haven't blogged in a long time...even though I did finally figure out how to get back on blogger. So, I thought I would do a few of posts I had backed up in the files from the past couple of months, starting with October.

Kate loves this photo simply because it was taken when Aunt Susie was in town and she has Gramma Jo's beloved Baby. If you look close you can see "Baby" is sommersaulting right along with Kate and in pretty much the same pose. :)

Elliotts attempt at sommersaults. :D

When your tired of sommersaults throwing leaves on your head is always fun.

better yet...

throwing them on someone elses head!

Or even just up in the air!

Such a glorious fall day!

Sunshine and leaf piles = fun times!

And of course October was Miss Kate's birthday!

She wanted a farm cake this year so we did one out of our traditional chocolate zuchinni cake with a twist of chocolate mint frosting. Yumm!!!

I went simple this year and bought some cute farm animals for the centerpieces and "built" a simple farm shed and fences from popsicle sticks. Can you tell she LOVED it! :D

When it came time to serve it up Kate wanted the piece with the ducklings on it...

And Tay-O wanted the "wild little donkey". :)

Another (much colder) glorious fall day that I couldn't resist snapping a photo of just 2 wks after the kids had been outside in their T-shirts.

Still not too cold to go out for walks/bike rides. I was able to go out walking or rollerblading with Aubrey and Tay-O in the double stroller and Miss Kate riding her new bike...though more often than not, I would end up pushing her bike and the stroller at the same time, on the way home. Somehow I missed getting any pics of kate on her bike, but did get a few of Miss Aubrey all bundled up.

she spent most of the ride asleep...

usually with her hood over her eyes to keep out the bright sunshine!

But she did come alive after we got back to the safety of home. :)

My little eskimo baby. :)

And then began many days indoors...fighting over who got to give Aubrey her binky and other such things. :D

And so began our winter months...