Motivated

One afternoon in October, the kids raked and raked the back yard, bagging up all the walnut tree leaves and even some leaves from the adjacent yard. They ended up with over 11 bags of leaves!! I was soooo amazed that they did all that work without me asking them.

(Reagan was pretty amazed too....)

I looked out later to see all the of the bags deflated and scattered on the grass and a gargantuan pile of leaves next to the trampoline.....They were merrily jumping and diving into their freshly created leaf pile!
Come to find out, creating a huge pile had been their plan all along. Well, no wonder they were motivated to do so much work-- I should have known. Hmmm.......sigh...those leaves never did get cleaned up again until we did our final mow for the year.

Lately Leif likes standing on his head. He'll just look around for a little while enjoying the new perspective. Even through the blurriness of this photo you can see to admire his fat little thighs and cute tippytoe feet. :-)

Remember the quilt I mentioned awhile back?

"Hey, Taylor and Hailey- would you mind doing a photo shoot of the baby quilt I just finished? You know, outside in the sunshine with some nice snow and evergreens as a backdrop?" This was my request when I went into town today for last minute groceries. (I missed our normal shopping day because of Tuesday's snowstorm.)

When I downloaded the camera, this is what I found:

Hmmmm...... not quite what I was imagining. This is the back. Nice ski goggles Hailey.....

Oh, okay, here we go- this is the front of it.
So, weren't they sweet to help me out? Especially as it was only 13 degrees outside. :-)

Duckling

Taylor enjoys using GIMP (gnu image manipulation program) to play around with our photos. I love how this picture of Aflack turned out. (Aflack grew to become a big white duck and, ever since our move, she resides on the farm with Grandma and Grandpa)

SNOW!!!!!

Woohoo! We are so excited about the SNOW in Hagerman!!! The kids and I were starting to think that we'd have to go back to Twin Falls to experience some of this beautiful white fluff......not that Twin Falls is known for its record snow, but at least they've had some this year! So yesterday, Leif experienced 2 firsts: snow and hot chocolate. He liked only one of them and I bet you can guess which one it was......(hot chocolate!) The kids are working on a snow fort in the park and Heidi is back to making her favorite concoction of snow and maple syrup. The older kids are all ready getting excited about their favorite winter activity: skiing.
I was driving Torsten to seminary early this morning and individually marveling at the beauty of the vineyards, evergreens, blackberry bushes and cliffs with their new coats of white. The full moon made the snow on the distant plateaus glow a soft blue......so lovely.
I wanted to include snow pictures in this post, but the camera is presently incapacitated. So the pictures are vintage 2009.

October in Review

Here's a few photos from October that I wanted to share before trying to catch up with November's fun. The computer is in hot demand around here with so many kids needing it for school reports, math and science lectures, etc. When I finally have my turn at it, it seems I just end up reading email and catching up on political stuff and friends blogs! So here's a quick recap of October.

Leif's first year to enjoy the autumn leaves. The kids had fun burying him too but I can't find the pic's.

Taylor made a beautiful cheesecake ALL BY HIMSELF! He loves cheesecake and I wasn't responding to his request to make one so he took matters into his own hands...
Halloween-
Leif as Baby Bear and Hailey the Gypsy

At the trunk or treat-
Reagan as Sherlock Holmes

Heidi the Indian

Taylor as himself....
Taylor and Torsten helped Grandpa do logs and clean roof gutters that day and didn't get back to the house in time to dress up. That was okay because this year the boys didn't have a cliff with trash to look for great costume props. (Did you know that at our last house people would throw things off the cliff, so the kids would hunt around in the rocks for interesting things to use- crutches, sunglasses, the pipe for Reagan's costume...etc. And yes, we bleached and disinfected that pipe!)

Here's a random silly picture, very typical of a day at our house. Kids doing school but getting distracted dressing up Leif and taking pictures-- and look at Taylor in the background.....he's walking around with his arms down the legs of his sweatpants looking like a pair of legs with a head. Yes, very typical.
To conclude I have to include another picture of Leif's birthday. Even though the quality is bad I love the happy look on the kids faces. The cute pumpkin cake was made by Grandma Clayton!