Just a couple of things...

It's no secret that Lily's a crafty girl - she loves to color and draw and paint and cut and tape.  And lately, she's wild about origami!  In this picture, you can see her family of paper cranes.  The largest one of made of an 8-1/2 x 11" sheet of paper, squared by removing a strip from the bottom.  The smaller and smaller ones are made from the trimmed-off strip, and the strips trimmed to make THOSE pieces square.  The tiniest one is a real feat of folding, since it's almost too tiny to SEE all its details!  And, it's worth noting that I showed Lily ONE TIME how to fold a paper crane, and then she was off and folding!

And take a look at these monster loaves of bread!  I was following a recipe I haven't used before, and I was thinking... Isn't that too much salt? Isn't that way too much flour for that amount of liquid?  Won't this recipe need a little more sugar to taste right?  And goodness, shouldn't a recipe this large be split into at least 3, maybe 4 loaves?  Well, as you can plainly see, the loaves were waaaaaaaaay too huge, so the recipe should be split into 3-4 loaves.  And yes, it was too much salt, it needed more sugar, and it was way too much flour.  I think we'll try this recipe again because it's cheerfully seasonal (Pumpkin Yeast Bread, from "The Victory Garden" cookbook, in case you're tempted to try it ... just take my word for it and make the alterations the FIRST time around, OK?). 

Fun in the Fall!

It is a very lovely late-fall day here in Michigan, and the big kids are taking advantage of that with some bike riding (while in the background of this photo, Grandpa does leaf removal at the farmhouse).  Lily's heavy coat isn't really needed for the actual weather out there; she was just in such a hurry to get outside that she didn't want to bother finding a sweater or jacket.  She knew where the heavy coat was and that was the quickest way to get out there!!

A pair of happy kids have been riding all over this place - including the yard.  This late in the year, we can't count on many more gorgeous days like this before things turn all white and frozen.  If we're really lucky, maybe this pretty weather will hold through the long school Thanksgiving break so the kids and their fun cousins can play outside a lot!

Don't you just love Gregory's bike riding outfit?  He was wearing perfectly normal clothes to go to church today, but he didn't want to wear long pants for bike riding, because he was afraid his pant leg would get caught in the bike chain.  And shoes... they would have taken too long!  Dragon-face rain boots were much quicker. 

They're off!  They struggled up the grassy hill, so that they could zoooooooom down the driveway once again.  Thank heaven for bikes, and for kids who know how to ride them and have fun.  And three cheers for unseasonably great weather.

While the big kids were zipping and zooming outside, Henry was upstairs in his room, lounging in a brilliant sunbeam that was pouring in through the window, resting against a gigantic panda bear stuffed animal, and serenely looking at books.  He was just the cutest, most peaceful little thing.  I took pictures, but since he's potty training (and potty training at our house means a bare behind), the photos are not postable.  Take my word for it, he was adorable.

The Big Apple, and I don't mean NYC

Sometimes when people refer to "The Big Apple", they mean New York City ... but in this case, I really am talking about an oversized piece of fruit. Do you think Henry managed to eat that entire apple? Does it even seem remotely possible? Or even like it's much of a good idea for someone so small to eat such a large serving of fruit? Well, he ate it. Entirely. He eats a whole apple most days, actually (we just don't always have such huge apples). I keep apples in the wire drawers that you can see behind him, in the pantry. He helps himself.

Henry says "I going night-night. I very tired." This cute little nap lasted ... oh ... about 30 seconds. Then he was rested and ready to go again.

Photo Overload! We've been busy.

This will be a lot of pictures from several larger and smaller happenings in our busy little family. I'm posting the pictures at small size, but you can click each picture to see it enlarged.



For starters, we went to the Grand Rapids Public Museum again this weekend, specifically to see an exhibit on Leonardo DaVinci. It was spectacularly cool! It was a room full of working models of machines and devices designed by DaVinci, built to his specifications, using his recommended materials, and meant for people to touch and manipulate! An entirely "Please Touch" exhibit, filled with nifty gadgets!!



Below, you can see a pillar-lifting machine, a mechanical man, and a crane.

There were lots of activities based on DaVinci's ideas too - a bridge-building set, a gear kit (they were supposed to make it so that a crank on one gear board would turn something on the other board), and other gadget-building sets.

Here's a nifty thing used to measure distance. If you click on the middle photo, you can see how it works. Henry is demonstrating how to set it up and Lily is showing how it works once it's ready for use.












After we had seen the DaVinci exhibit, we were on our way back to the car when the most astonishingly gorgeous weather enticed us to take a stroll across the Grand River on this nifty, artistically decorated foot bridge.













Astonishingly, I was able to make dinner straight from the garden this weekend. We were doing some fall garden clean-out and I found these things out there waiting to be gathered. I had planted carrots, but thought that none had grown. I was wrong. We had ONE carrot. And some beets, a couple very small cabbages, and some onions. We had borscht (as you can see from Henry's red chin)!








Also this weekend, we did a little house decoration. In an attempt to dampen some of the gymnasium-like echoing that happens in our (oh-so-noisy) house, we got some area rugs and some window shades. The shades are so far only installed in one room, since we weren't sure that they would work or that we would like them... but room by room we will get additional shades. And in these pictures, you can see the area rug in the living room. I didn't have paint chips with me, but the color match between the green and blue swoops in the rug and the green and blue paint on the wall is exceptional!



We have been having AMAZING weather for the past few days. The kids have been taking full advantage of the nice days. In these photos, you can see Gregory giving Henry a wagon ride. He pulled Henry from our house down to the farm house and back again, then AAALLLLL the way to the end of the driveway and back again. That adds up to the better part of a mile! Henry was a little pre-nap drowsy and just sat all glazey and mellow for the entire long ride.

With the weather being so unseasonably lovely, Henry and I made a morning trip to the zoo yesterday while the big kids were at school. We had SUCH a nice time. I just followed Henry around and let him look at what he was interested in. We spent a long, long time looking at this bronze bear, a good long while watching the chimpanzees, quite some time watching some construction men making rennovations to one section of the zoo (don't YOU go to the zoo to see the bulldozers and bobcat tractors?).




This picture is for you, Baby Miles! Henry gave it a few good whacks for you, little guy.


Henry wanted to go look at the lions. We saw them, then he was done with them. Off to bigger and better things.

We never get tired of looking at this grounchy-looking eel.

Love Those Fall Leaves!!

Every year we take pictures in the fall leaves under the maple trees at the farmhouse. It's always such a cheerful backdrop, and a yearly reminder to sit everyone down together and take a few pictures that don't have distracting things going on in the background. Here are a few from this year's attempt.

Costumes and Chilly People

The Force is strong with these ones ... well ... not with ALL of them. Some of them are just half asleep.

We went shop-to-shop trick-or-treating in downtown Grand Haven for the first time. It was COLD! We only hit about half the shops before we all decided we had definitely gotten enough candy collected.
Once we had all gotten sufficiently cold trick-or-treating, we went to Culver's for dinner. Our kids were three among MANY costumed people having a dinner stop.