Leaf Jumping

I'm typing up this post on the coldest day in years. Like -14 cold. BRRR. So, the sunny, beautiful October day looks even better!!!

Colin's biggest request in the fall is make a pile of leaves and jump in it. Gillian enjoys it too. So, one beautiful early October day the three of us hit the park with our rakes. We had a blast.



























My favorite shot!


A couple little videos for your enjoyment!

Run, Daddy! Run!

In mid-September Daddy ran in a 5K through his work. They hold one every year; I think this was the 26th year maybe? This was Daddy's second time to run this 5K and we were there to cheer him on! It was a nice, brisk early fall morning, perfect for running!

Daddy, Aqua-Girl, and Skele-Boy.





And he DID IT! Under 23:30 and a personal record! YAY DADDY!


We celebrated by taking our model rocket out for our first test flight. Sadly, we lost our rocket in a tree...but we had fun.

Squeezing in Some Summer Fun

The week before Labor Day (yes, almost two months ago...) we had NOTHING on the calendar. NOTHING. That hadn't happened for a long, long time. So, we decided to have some summer fun.

We started with the spray park and farm! We checked out the farm first, just the three of us and then met up with Miss Laura and AJ and friends at the spray park!




(It looks like a lot of standing around in towels, but the DID play in the water.)

Later in the week, we took a long, meandering walk through the park to pick some Queen Anne's Lace to dye and we ended up wading for a bit.









They kept wondering why they didn't see any fish! AND they did not enjoy finishing their walk with wet shoes and shorts. But overall it was a lovely walk.

And we came home and made this:




The Friday of Labor Day weekend, we decided to go to the local park for a free concert. We didn't really know who was playing and it didn't really matter. We packed a picnic, grabbed a blanket, and some glow bracelets and we were set. Very nice evening, indeed.









I think these were Angler Fish, maybe?




It was so nice to have at least one week to enjoy the lazy, hazy days of summer!

Experiment

Last week I took the kids to the park one morning. We go to the park 3, sometimes 4, mornings a week when it's nice. Most of the time we go to one of the playgrounds, but this time we went for a walk. We walked past the duck pond and gazebo, then over the little foot bridge, and down to this (what I assume is) rock art installation. The kids like to look under the foot bridge and climb up the rocks and jump off. They are really into jumping off of things lately. Then we walked further down the hill and used the swings on one of the little playgrounds.

After much convincing and some screaming on Gillian's part, we headed back to the car. On the way back over the foot bridge, we found some Queen Anne's Lace and I remembered a friend's recent face.book post about dyeing flowers with her daughters. So, we picked some, and Gillian was quite pleased to carry it to the car for us (thankfully, it distracted her from screaming). When we got home, we filled three juice glasses with water. Colin picked red dye, Gillian picked blue, and I picked green. After about 24 hours, we had these:


The colors got much darker and intense over the next two days, but I didn't take any more pictures! The kids enjoyed seeing them turn colors and we talked about how and why that happened. So, all in all, our first science experiment went very well!