Out of the mouths of boys...

Haven't posted about some of the entertaining things the boys say lately. ;) So, here ya go:

Not long ago, Noah, Micah and I were at a bookstore and Micah was delighted to find that they had an entire shelf of Star Wars books. Back at home, he was telling Asher about it, and Asher declared, "I'm gonna buy the whole shelf!" Micah looked at him and said, "but then you wouldn't have any books." ;)

The boys were telling me the other day that Micah's kindergarten teacher sometimes calls him "Noah." I explained that she'd been Noah's teacher a couple years ago (when she was teaching 3rd grade reading and science) and that he (Micah) kind of looks like Noah. Micah quickly and indignantly replied, "but I'm so much cuter than Noah!" No offense to Noah, but it's true.

So, the boys were randomly talking about what they'd grab to take with them to the basement in the case of a tornado (I think they'd just watched something about tornadoes on tv). This is what they decided on (or at least what I overheard them decide on):

• Noah: his bike (and helmet), the Atom I (a Lego set he designed), his wallet and his netbook
• Asher: various Lego sets (mostly Star Wars), the laptop the boys use, his wallet and a cribbage board
• Micah: his wallet, a cribbage board (in addition to the one Asher grabbed so that we could play two games at once, lol), and a slew of Lego sets that he listed by name
• (Guess you've gotta have priorities, lol!)

And, earlier tonight, Nathan was trying to explain the world of Star Trek to boys obsessed with Star Wars. He was telling them that Klingons are a warrior race. Noah, in trying to understand, asked, "So, Klingons are sort of like Wookies?" Yes, I suppose they are. ;) 

That's all for now. Hope to be back this weekend with some Halloween pictures! :)

Annual Leaf Walk...

So, pretty much every year, the boys and I go for a "leaf walk." It's a fall tradition that we love. We watch the trees...waiting for gorgeous colors and plenty of leaves on the ground. Sometimes we just walk around or find piles close to home. Most times, we wander our neighborhood with our kid rake in hand. In any case, yesterday was "the" day. ;)

We headed out just after lunch, having scouted our desired destination earlier in the week. Just north of our subdivision, there's a little area with a pond. We'd never walked there before but drive past it regularly and saw that it was beautiful and, more importantly, had plenty of leaves on the ground. It was a fabulous afternoon...about 70 degrees and sunny (actually warmer than our leaf walks usually are, but I'll not complain lest the snow come sooner, lol).

Noah opted to ride his bike while the rest of us walked...rake and camera in hand. We got there and began raking up our pile, taking turns with the rake while others floated leaves in the pond. As it turns out, we picked our day well...as a groundskeeper showed up with his leaf blower shortly after we'd begun. (There are various pediatric doctor and dentist offices just south of the pond.) He explained that he'd be mowing soon and was just blowing the leaves away from the edges first but that he wasn't planning to do the side where we were just yet. He then even helped us build our pile much bigger (man, leaf blowers are cool, lol). 

And, so, without further ado...pictures of our annual leaf walk (click on any of the images to view them larger)...

We started out with some jumping pictures, because that just seemed like a fun thing to do. ;)

 
Noah took this last shot (of me) but we're still working on our timing...so here I am, having just landed. ;) After that, and once our pile was large enough, the boys took turns burying each other and then dissolved into just throwing leaves at each other and everywhere:

And then we walked/biked around some more, just enjoying the fall colors, before heading for home:

And that was our annual leaf walk. ;) (The boys, though, have decided that we may need to take a couple more leaf walks this year...to hit some of their other favorite spots from previous years, lol. Who am I to argue?)

10.10.10 (belated)

So, did you do anything fun on 10.10.10 earlier this month? I know I'm a bit late, but I did manage to snap a couple pictures (at 10:10 am) and even made a layout (the first I've finished in months!):

(click on the image to view it larger)

Yup, just a quick little list because it seemed like the thing to do. ;)

Yummy geography...

Just a quick post to share our geography lesson yesterday...we've been talking about landforms this month...defining them, talking about how they're formed, finding them on the map, etc. Inspired by these awesome land and water form trays I'd seen in a catalog years ago, we'd been talking, too, about landform pairs. Because I'm cool like that, yesterday's lesson incorporated all of that along with frosting, graham crackers and a touch of blue food coloring...

Here's Noah's strait/isthmus:

And Asher's bay/peninsula:

(Asher got a bit excited when I told them they could eat their landforms after we were finished...hence the, ahem, "mountain" (of chocolate frosting) on the bay cracker, lol.) And here's Micah's island:

Yeah, Micah ate the lake before I remembered to grab the camera. ;)

And that's just a wee part of why my boys love homeschooling... ;)

The past two weeks...

Wow. Sorry. I went missing there, didn't I? ;) Here's a brief recap of what we've been up to:

Nathan's mom came to visit, and we headed up to Rocky Mountain National Park...did a couple hikes we've done before and enjoyed. Though Micah decided to stage a protest partially along the trail (after the Alberta Falls hike and before the hike around Bear Lake), the other two were all smiles:

All in all, it was a lovely (albeit slightly warmer than would have been ideal) day, complete with ice cream in Estes Park after a late lunch. A couple days later, given the still summer like weather, we decided to celebrate fall with a front yard water fight:

I love the looks of concentration on Micah and Asher's faces as they prepare their attack on Noah...while Grandma Nancy and I watched from the safety of the sidelines. Noah, of course, had the advantage of size:

The rest of the week passed quickly. Coincidentally, it was our week "off" from homeschooling (remember, we do three weeks "on" and then one week "off"), though we still had soccer practices and karate. On Friday (10/1), we found ourselves at Anderson Farms. We'd waited as long as we could in hopes of cooler weather and actually managed to go on a day in the 70s, but it was still rather hot amid the corn field without shade. ;) Even carrying our own water and wearing shorts and tees, this was a most welcome sight:

 
Yup. That's us finally leaving the corn maze. ;) Whew.

(For the record, we did this corn maze last year also. It's really rather amazing in scope. Check out pictures here. We opted only to do the eagle portion of the maze (with the FSI mystery) this year and still took about 1.5 hours, having only gotten really lost at the beginning while we sorted ourselves out, lol. Incidentally, what's with the weather? Last year, at almost this exact same time, we went to Anderson Farms in jackets and between snow days. Weird.) 

After the corn maze, we took a ride to the pumpkin patch, stopping to feed some odd looking long-horn cows on the way:

They had really long tongues and came right up to the trailer (unlike the buffalo who just stared at us). We were fortunate to have the trailer all to ourselves, so this was pretty cool. We continued on to the pumpkin patch:

The boys each picked a pumpkin, and then we took advantage of some of the farm's other offerings...such as seeing baby goats that had been born an hour before we got there, pretending to milk a cow, riding the pedal cars and seeing the baby calves who were born on Monday:

Fun day! :)

The next day, sadly, Grandma Nancy had to fly home. :( After she left, we had soccer games, the older two attended a birthday party for a friend and then we all resumed "normal" life.  Boys went back to the routine and that's kept us busy since. 

Oh. And two other things last week (after Grandma Nancy left and before today). We had the exterior of the house painted. Here's what it looked like before:

(Note the discoloration above the garage there. There was also peeling in the back, and apparently the previous owners had hired a painting crew that only put on one coat of paint (the previous owners weren't thrilled with the job at all according to our neighbor). So, we decided it was time to do something about it before winter set in and possible further damage occurred.) Here's the after:

The boys were pretty disappointed initially that we opted to go with another green, as they were lobbying heavily for blue. (We'd gone through the process of getting a couple different options approved by our home owner's association a month ago.) When we tried the blue sample on the house, though, it was just a little too bright for us. The boys have mostly come around now. :)

And the other thing, and the final thing for this post that's already too long, was that Asher and Micah had their first "official" karate pictures taken:

Aren't they freakin' adorable?! (These were taken by Eathan's Photography at the Karate West studio but I bought the copyright and images on CD.) There are a bunch of other shots, too, but I'll bring this post to a close for now. :) How's your October going?