happy fall!

Paul took these pictures a couple of weeks ago on his phone when we went to a local pumpkin patch to pick out some pumpkins. The kids have so much fun running around the patch trying to find just the right pumpkin. We think we found three great ones. The plan is to carve them later this week right before Halloween.
As you can see, it was still nice and warm then. The last few days it's been much cooler.

leaves

It finally feels like fall! We were at the park yesterday and Kestrel found some leaves she could make into a leaf pile (we don't know the other girl in the picture).

Today it was about 30 degrees cooler. The kids and I bundled up in coats and hats and took a long walk around the neighborhood late afternoon. Actually Cooper road his bike but Kestrel and I walked. Kestrel was having fun searching for colorful leaves.

roller kids 2

We went back to Skateland Wednesday evening. When we were there Saturday afternoon the kids each won a free family pass for Wednesday evening and were excited to go back. It was nice because there were only a few people there so the rink was pretty empty. Cooper was definitely getting better with his skating!

Both of the kids entered the race. They stop the skating and have a race for anyone who wants to participate. Kestrel has been wanting to enter the last several times she's been there, but keeps missing it. This time she went right out there and so did Cooper. Usually they separate the girls and boys, and have them race within their age group. However, there were only 2 young girls, so Kestrel raced against a girl who looked about 5 (but could skate pretty well). Kestrel won, and they gave her a card for a free soda. After the race Kestrel noticed that the other girl looked sad, and Kestrel felt badly for her. She said to me "I would be sad too if I was little and had to race against a big kid like me. I'd think it wasn't fair." So then Kestrel went up to the girl and gave her the prize for a free soda, and told the girl "you deserve it". The girl looked happy after that!

Cooper was the littlest boy there, so he had to race against a boy who looked about 10. The other boy won of course, but Cooper did great and didn't even fall! They gave Cooper a free soda prize anyway, for doing such a good job trying. We were so proud of him, and he brought the free soda card home to show daddy.

After the race we were skating a little more, and the girl who raced against Kestrel came up and asked Cooper if she could give him a hand, and the two of them skated around the rink together holding hands. So cute!

I decided that Skateland is one of the hardest places to take a picture with my phone, but I thought these were cute anyway.

This is Cooper when he came back from racing. He was so proud of himself!

And speaking of skating, I was rollerblading yesterday morning and it was such a beautiful day! It is still hot here, high in the 80's this week, but not such a miserable hot like it was in the summer. It stays cooler in the morning, and was such a nice blue sky morning while I was skating. Here's a prairie picture for you. I've decided my phone definitely takes better pictures outside! Or perhaps the big blue sky is more forgiving.

leaves

Right around dusk we went outside so the kids could rake leaves (Kestrel's idea, of course). It looks darker in these pictures than it really was. They each wanted to make a big leaf pile to jump in. They never actually got a pile big enough, though Cooper did make a valiant effort and jumped in his anyway. After all, we only have 1 tree, and it still has a lot of leaves left. They had fun raking, though! By the way, Kestrel has an orange braid clipped in her hair.

kite

Cooper is holding Kestrel down so she doesn't blow away with the kite.

the kite

When we picked Kestrel up from school she said she wanted to go fly a kite today, so we did! Quick stop at home so they could put on their gymnastics clothes and have a little snack, and we went right out to Millage park (in our neighborhood). We had about a half hour to fly the kite before gymnastics. It went right up there, and Kestrel and Cooper kept switching off holding the string. When Cooper had the string for the first time he cried, "don't let it take me away!"

photo shoot

My friend Joanna took these pictures just over a week ago (as well as the two pictures at the top and bottom of this blog). She is starting up as a photographer and wanted a family she could practice on. Aren't they great? She had this big red chair she put out on our front lawn. After some shots in front of the house we took the chair to a cornfield. They loved playing around with the chair and the corn!