Summer is my favorite season, followed closely by fall. I would love it if we could take a couple of months from winter and give them to summer and fall! September and October are so beautiful in Minnesota. A few trees in the neighborhood are just starting to show their autumn colors. I've pulled my shabby looking, water neglected summer annuals and potted cute fall colored mums to decorate by the front door.
Thomas and Elle have started gathering jar after jar of acorns, just like last year. Still at 50 cents a jar. Ava is joining in on the fun this time. She'll be happy to have earned a gumball but Thomas and Elle have bigger goals. Both are trying to collect enough to fill 20 jars each and they are already talking about what they will buy with their $10 at Target.
On Sunday we had our first flurries of the season and Monday morning we woke up to a dusting of snow. The kids are getting excited for winter! I got out the container of coats and hats and pulled out a few things now that it's getting chillier. Wednesday and Thursday are supposed to be pretty nice so we need to finish raking the yard (Thomas got a good start on it today) and get everything cleaned up outside. Ready or not, here comes the cold!
The colors around here are stunning right now. I love looking out the windows as I do my day to day tasks. Folding clothes and washing dishes is much more pleasant when there is beauty like this to look at!
Our backyard, or 'The Woods' as Thomas and Elle like to call it. Soon they are going to be having fun raking these leaves into big piles to jump in!
I love so many things about homeschooling but one of them is the freedom to enjoy the moment. At lunchtime we noticed how nice the weather was so I packed the kids lunch in a cooler and they enjoyed eating it while floating around on the paddle boat. It was a good day.
Pear Butter
Thomas and Elle are always looking for opportunities to earn money. This week I gave them each a quart size canning jar and sent them into the yard to pick up acorns. I told them they'd get 50 cents a jar full and that they could fill as many jars as they wanted. It kept them occupied for a few hours and now the yard is much more pleasant to walk barefoot in. Thomas ended up earning $9.50 and Elle decided $8.50 was enough. They dumped the nuts in a pile in the trees....some little squirrel is going to think its found a treasure when it's discovered!
I love football season! The tradition continues of dressing up as a Husker football player and playing catch with Dad every Saturday. He said the pants are a little tight this year. :)
Elle is becoming quite the little cheerleader. She's got all kinds of new cheers that she made up today. All of them end with 'Gooooo Huskers!' Ava would've joined her but she was too busy watching Elmo. 
- plant flower bulbs
- finish washing windows
- clean garage
- start sewing Elle's Princess Leia costume for Halloween. Thomas is still trying to decide if he is going to be Anakin or Darth Vader. Wouldn't it be so cute to have Ava dressed up as Yoda?! Any ideas how to pull that one off?
Once the leaves turn they just don't last long enough! We have several bare trees around our house now and a yard full of leaves. Scott helped the kids rake a big pile to jump in this afternoon.
Then they played catch together. Now they are starting a fire outside. There are lots of pine branches that need burned. I'm sure Thomas, the pyromaniac, will take care of that for us!
Scott went into town and rented this machine to help make the job easier. He cleaned all of the high places, I cleaned the low parts. We first cleaned the siding with stiff bristled brushes and then Scott sprayed it all down with a Home Defense spray to help keep the spiders under control. We then washed the windows, garage doors, light fixtures, and window screens.
Thomas kept busy raking the yard. While Elle helped out by playing with Ava in the house. They were great helpers today. I was so proud of them.
Here is Scott working on another part of the house that is hard to work on from ladders. While he worked on the dormer I worked on the lower half. We were able to get two sides of the house done. We really would've liked to use this machine to finish the rest of the house but it would've tore up the yard too much. We aren't going to get this side yard done until next spring so we didn't mind messing it up a little.
Thomas and Elle got busy working on tidying up their playhouse today too. Elle cleaned out the inside while Thomas washed windows.
And here is where Ava hung out while we did our cleaning after she had taken her nap. When she got tired of playing with her toys she swang in her swing on the swingset for awhile and then Thomas pushed her around the lake in her stroller. She's got her big brother wrapped around her finger! :)
There the boat lift sits all lonely in the water. We put the boat in storage last weekend.
We savored all of the warm and sunny weather while it lasted. Yesterday the kids had breakfast on the porch and we even did some school out there for awhile before the rain clouds rolled in. 
This afternoon a local farm advertised that they were having a pumpkin party so I convinced Scott that we should go and get the kids some pumpkins and enjoy the festivities. When we lived in the cities we went to a wonderful apple orchard and took a hay ride out in their field and picked out a pumpkin with Thomas when he was just a little 2 year old. I remember that being such an enjoyable autumn afternoon but unfortunately the place we went to today didn't live up to that memory. It was unorganized, the festivites were non-existent and the pumpkins were ridiculously expensive but we didn't know that until we already had 3 picked out and were ready to pay. Oh well, I guess we have a new memory now. One Scott will enjoy reminding me of probably! :)
They did have some haybales stacked up which made a good backdrop for some pictures of the kids....if only Ava would look at the camera!
After the pumpkin patch I asked Scott if we could take the long way home (read: go out of our way) so that we could stop in at my favorite nursery and pick up some mums to put on the porches. Being the sweet and patient husband that he is, he did and when we got there there were only pink mums left and not many at that. I love pink flowers but really wanted fall colored ones so we drove home with our 3 pricey pumpkins and no mums.
