Octoberfest

Young Women in Excellence was this month. I had this great idea to make silhouettes of each of the young women with a quote written on them. I didn't know how to actually do it though. It was a group effort with the other leaders but we got them done. My contribution was to put them in the frames. I think they turned out so great. It was fun to see the young women try to find their own. They were better at spotting others than their own profile.

 As part of ribbon week, they had camo day at school. Justin has tons of camo but nothing that would fit the kids. Sarah rolled up his sweatshirt and called it good.

This is a slap bracelet on Erica's nose. She's pretty much always goofy. Her latest thing is to follow up any answer to her question with "How do you know?"  It goes something like this:

Erica: Is this made from wood or glass?
Me: Your spoon is made from metal.
Erica (all judgy and irritated): How do you know?

James is kind of cruising. I remember Sarah just going around and around the perimeter of living room and into the kitchen but he doesn't do that. James likes to pull himself up to things to see what he can pull down then he crawls to a new spot and tries again.

I borrowed my mom's button tin to finish Sarah's Halloween costume. She had so much fun looking through all the funny buttons.

 She especially liked these fancy things although we have no idea what they're for.

Erica got "ready for the dance" which means putting on tons of elastics as bracelets and headbands as necklaces and sweatbands. She looks ready for something. She didn't want me to take her picture so this is the best I could get.

Sarah got the closest guess for where my nephew Tyler is going on his mission. She guessed England and he got called to Scotland and Ireland. He brought her doughnuts for winning. We are all so excited for him! No one is more excited than Sarah.

Here at the library James is taking a break from pulling books off the shelf and is playing with toys.

 Erica loves her some tablet games. I don't have games on mine so she is all about it at the library. I told her she looked fancy in her scarf.

 We went to the park one day during fall break. We were so excited to play in the leaves.

 Erica liked to throw them.

 James liked to do yoga in them.

 Sarah and I made a leaf house. I did this all the time as a kid---making a floor plan with the leaves.

 Sarah is lying in her leaf bedroom.

 I don't know if I made this up or if my older sisters did but it was so fun to do again after 25+ years.

 On Saturday Sarah had a piano recital. She wasn't too nervous and she did great!

She loves the piano and it's hard to get her to stop practicing some days. It's fun to hear her teach herself songs now that she's pretty good at reading notes.

 Henry's selfie of his feet.

 Henry finally finished his all about me poster back to school. He got this on the first day. Oops. I don't think the teacher uses it until their birthday so I guess it's okay.

I have no idea why he put peanuts as his favorite food. He doesn't know why either. "I guess hamburgers and chicken nuggets are really my favorite." He wants to be a dad when he grows up. So sweet.

I don't know if it was the smartest thing or the dumbest thing for me to show him how ask google about sports scores. Every morning he says "okay google, who won the game last night?" and then he spends forever looking at sports scores and telling Sarah and I all about them. And he's found links to video highlights. Sigh. At least I don't have to look them up for him anymore. I also hear him say things like "Okay google, what kind of dog should I get?" or "What should I have for lunch?"

James and Erica having fun with their shadows one morning.

I love me some October weather. I hope these super sunny, high of 60 days never end.

 So my next door neighbor unloaded about 60 tires between his house and mine. They were stacked neatly but tall and wide and were there for a few weeks. Who wants to see that everyday? Not me. What do you do with a bunch of old tires?? It was ugly and I was afraid of the vermin that would soon take up residence.

And then this morning, this beautiful truck rolled up.

 Here I am stalking them a little more discreetly.

 And now from upstairs. I've never been so excited to see a semi before. B-bye old tires!

Now if they'll do something with the appliance graveyard in their backyard.