October pictures

I always like to post some of the extra pictures from each month that weren't really worthy of a post all by themselves.

Here are Rachel, Lizza, and Henry at Crowe's Nest farm (a fun place to go and see farm animals).  We got to see a cow being milked, and Henry about died with excitement.  I guess this outing could have qualified for its own blog post, except most of my pictures turned out like this (I have awesome photography skills!):

They also had some wild and exotic animals there, like ostriches!  We went on a little hayride behind a tractor, and stopped to check them out.  There was a little baby ostrich that was so cute.  I guess the dad ostriches are the responsible caretakers of the bunch - at one point all the grown-up ostriches took off running really fast across the field, and the baby was trying hard to follow them, but got a little lost and was left way behind.  The dad noticed and went back to find the little guy, and then we all cheered as they came running up together.  It was very funny to watch:

Henry is really lucky to have a lot of high-end toys.  Here he is with one of his favorites, called, "Try to stick the little popsicle sticks through the slot in the cashew can lid!"   What fun!

Oliver catches some sort of creature pretty much every day as he walks home from school.  Here he is with a little teeny frog (on top of a penny, which he also found on the way home):

He wanted a picture of both the frog and the penny, so we could see just how little it really was:

Pancakes - a Saturday morning favorite:

Lizza loves breaking hers up into little tiny pieces:

Henry noticed that none of the other kids were having plain pancakes, so I let him try dipping his in grape syrup.  He was thrilled with the idea, and started out with such careful little dips, I really thought he'd make it through with no mess:

Haha!:

Tristan and Oliver always have grand after-school projects that they come up with.  One of Tristan's was to make Rachel a "Super-girl" costume, completely out of cardstock:

She even had a jet-pack on back:

Henry loves helping me vacuum.  He feels he works better with a toilet seat around his neck:

What is it with my kids and toilet seats? (flashback picture, July 2007):

Me and the kids on my 29th birthday.  I decided to skip the cake, and made myself a key lime pie:

King Henry with his two loves - a book and a dog:

He is all about books these days:

Rachel and Lizza playing the Memory game.  I've started playing it with them in the evenings when the boys are gone with Daniel at football practice, and it's become something they really look forward to.  Lizza caught on a little too quickly, and can now beat all of us (seriously):