One Fine Fall Day Up North

 One of the gigantic piles of leaves we raked that day.  I think we had 5 rakers going and the wind to help us ;-)

 A little boy loving the pile of leaves

 Girls in the pile

 The 3 boys---buried

 Then, come eve we had 3 big leaf piles burning.  It took a little over 2 hours to burn all the leaves, so it was quite a bit of fun =)

 Getting it burning

Jael stirring the fire, Luke getting a head start on marshmallows!

Maria roasting marshmallows 

 Yep, I was there, mostly taking pictures and keeping baby out of the fires

 Erika and the s'more station!

"I just need 1 more" and so on

 This was just ONE big leaf pile.  We dragged tarp after tarp of these to the fires to burn

Luke & Seth roasting some mallows.

All in all it was a great time together!

Meredith Jane

Happy Birthday to our sunshine, silly girl Meri.  There is always a sparkle in her eye, and mischief and fun where she is involved!
She is 5!!!  It's hard to believe.
Happy Birthday RillaRae ;-)

CAT work

Joe did some work on the Cat for a few days.  The kids loved it.  I was slightly surprised James wasn't a bit scared.  He stayed on there for QUITE a while (30ish minutes) and would have stayed on longer if he could have!

Bye bye Curlie-Q

 Before!

After...aww...

I realized it was past time to cut James curls when the older kids & I were sitting at the table doing school the other day and in walked James followed by a proud Meri.  He had his hair nice and slicked back with a ponytail in a clip.  hahaha =)  He thought he was something!  So when I do the girl's hair in the a.m. they sit on the edge of the couch and he had taken to climbing up to take his turn on getting his hair combed.  So, he was all too glad to sit up there when I cut his hair.  Well, that and the mini marshmallows may have helped a bit ;-) 
So, I miss his curls but he's still a cutie I think!

A past Summer's eve

 And then there was FIRE!

 silly girl

chubby bunny boy

We're still here.  Just bogged down a bit.  We've been busy with end of summer stuff--garden/canning, homeschooling, a bit of sewing, yard/driveway work.   Just life, really.

Looking forward to the cooler days, we already have a tree changing to bright red leaves in our yard!  This summer just vanished! 

The kids are enjoying school so far.  Jacob- 3rd, Emily- 2nd, Meri- 4K/K, James-Trouble.  I'll post new
"school" pics of them soon hopefully. 

Hope things are fine in your corner of the world!