Gathering our Pumpkins

Today we went to Benson's Farm, our favorite local farm, to get the girls their carving pumpkins for this Halloween.

They are much more familiar with the idea this year than in the two years past, and so were excited to get pumpkins before we even got to the farm. Once there, they went straight to selection. But Elena was waylaid early on:

Not a big fan of this scarecrow:

Neither was Clara, really - she wouldn't even go on the same side of the wagon!

Elena looks like she's turning her nose up at these poor pumpkins, but really it's because Christina was trying to get her to look at the silly scarecrow again:

Enough distractions, parents! Back to the serious business of picking a pumpkin:

They examined carefully, and each picked their favorite one. Then, there were other fun sights to see. Clara found some little gourds she loved:

And she commenced a hilarious dance with them - very much like yesterday's leaf dance!

Dancing done, she tried to sneak a few more pumpkins on to our wagon. We convinced her we didn't need more of these, but we bought several squash and pie pumpkins to eat in the coming months and the bounty made her happy.

Back home, we played some in our meager leaf piles. Truly - what fun are green and brown leaves without the vibrant oranges and reds that were stolen from us this early-snow year?

Apparently to one little girl, they are fun enough as is. Elena had such a great time in the leaf pile. Note we said "one girl" - Clara is adamantly NOT a fan of the leaves if she is horizontal!

Daydreamin'......

Tomorrow we hope to go to the hay-bale maze. More pictures should follow!

Sick day?

There has been some version of THIS going on for the last few days here:

By and large, Clara has been quite sick (we think it's a virus) and has wanted to lay low. Steve got the bug, too, and laid low himself today. Elena was pretending (we think) to be sick because Clara kept telling us she felt sick. So Christina was up and around and fetching juice and LOTS of toast. Do everyone else's kids eat bread like mad when they don't feel well??

Anyway - all in all, we didn't do much yesterday or today. But tonight it was beautiful out, and Clara was dosed up on Motrin and eager to do something, and we decided to go play in the yard for a bit. What a dose of medicine that was to our weary group - we had so much fun!

First, the girls stopped to smell the rosemary (the only thing still alive in our garden thanks to our early snow):

Then it was a rousing game of jump-from-the-chairs:

But when Clara started in on the leaves, Elena forgot everything else:

The two of them made up some kind of crazy dance you would not believe - we really should have gotten it on video. It was hilarious!

Steve put a "coat" on our young pear tree to protect it this winter, and the girls can't get enough of talking about how the tree wears a coat. They took this to mean the tree needed a little extra affection, so they gave it:

Then, for the big event of the night, they made up a new game in the house that Nana Rose and G-Daddy got them this spring. It's hard to tell here what's going on:

Okay, it probably won't be clear from ANY of these pictures what was going on:

But the game was modeled after "The Three Little Pigs" with a lot of huffing, puffing, and blowing the house down - except that generally that involved PULLING the house down and around they yard at the end to simulate the level of blowing they thought should be occurring:

Checking to see if a "wolf" is coming to get her:

Keep our good health in your thoughts, as we'll do for you! So far, no flu here, although the rest of the town seems to have been entirely taken over with it. We hope this is the worst of it for us!

And once again, snowily...

We had a little confusion in our household over whether we have the chocolate-chip pancakes the first day we SEE snow at our house, or the first day we WAKE UP to snow at our house. Nature very kindly gave us a do-over just today, when we woke up to snow blanketing the outdoors!

Clara and Elena could not wait to go out and stomp in the snow, so we bundled them up even before breakfast and headed out into the white stuff:

We thought the girls would have fun playing in the yard, but it quickly became apparent that their real interest was in being "rescuers" of all the things that had gotten snow on them. Here they are pointing to the poor snow-covered car:

And they quickly went over to remedy what they saw as a major problem for the car:

They implored Christina to help, too. Sadly, we didn't have the scraper around so we all went at it with our mittens:

Then, Clara found the flower pot, with the last of our pansies:

And, oh no, then they saw their watering cans had been snowed on!

And, the poor ornamental frog got hit, too:

The girls dusted him off, too.

Soon, it got too cold to be outside much longer, so we went inside for left-over chocolate chip pancakes and fresh scrambled eggs. The snow really made Elena hungry - she proceeded to eat eggs, pancake, and four pieces of toast!!

Here are the "rescued" pansies that Clara wanted to save. The loss of summer is so sad, even though we know we'll try to make the most of winter (guess we skipped fall this year!).

First snow = chocolate chip pancake day

Since the year the girls were born, we started a tradition where the first snowfall of the season that we saw at our house would be chocolate-chip pancake day. For the past two years, we've seen the snow in the morning, and pancakes fit well there. Today, it wasn't until we went out and about driving that we saw snow flurries all around us. The girls were excited about the snow, so we came home and had chocolate chip pancakes for lunch:

Now tell me that Clara doesn't look like a girl who needs some pancakes -she's about to take a chomp out of her sister she's so hungry!

Not that Elena seems to mind:

Stirring, stirring:

Blowing on the pancakes to cool them off:

Look who went from a sister-chomping monster to a totally refined pancake-eating girl?

Are you making any more of these, Mom? (of course, yes).

Bliss.

Happy first day of snow! May real snow and actual accumulation be far, far in the future.

No truth in advertising today

Christina and the girls were out doing errands today, and made a stop at Joann's. Christina had recently cleaned out a bunch of her stamping materials so the girls could use some, but just wanted to get some washable ink for them to use instead of the permanent kind.

So we bought this - looks perfect, yes?

And oh, the fun we had! We stamped all over the paper:

And then we started stamping our fingers and hands all over the paper too, because hey, it's washable, right?

Smurfy-Clara:

Green-thumb (and fingers and palms) Lena:

And how cute are these sweet handprints?

What fun:

Then, time to wash up - often a favorite part for Elena and Clara, because they love "getting soapy." Except, as you've all guessed by now, no amount of soap nor water got that ink off. Those little hands still look pretty much like they did in the pictures above, even after scrubbing and soaping and rinsing as long as the girls could stand it (which is quite a long time!).

So, these inks are going straight back to the store. And the girls will be, um, "colorful" for a few days, I suspect.