fall ya'll

Levi is doing well in school, I would say. I think he pretty much loves it. He has a few friends he talks about by name. Surprisingly none of them are girls! As far as I can tell he is learning allot. Every day he's sounding out words. "listen to this mama! Ball. B-b-b-b-b-ball. There's a b in ball!" And on it goes with all words all day. There are even starting to be small words that he can sound out each letter and spell it.

Here are a few pictures of Papa helping him with homework one evening.

This is one of the everyday practice assignments. The parent reads a list of single words and the student gives a thumbs up if it starts with the letter of the week or a thumbs down if not.

It's that time again....pumpkin time! Excellent.

This year it was so bright and delightful as we walked through the patch picking out our perfect pumpkins. And Gracie is SO much bigger this year than last. She was enjoying being allowed to leisurely walk and perhaps trip, over the plants.
The boys had to go at their own pace. Girls are too slow.
Such a cutie little pumpkin princess

Gracie decided she was a tad bit too dainty for a big pumpkin. 2 tiny pumpkins it is.
That little ducky is her new bff. She switches it up every few months. Right now she has 2 duckies that she sleeps with, carries around all day, talks about constantly, and kisses and cuddles with 24/7. She's in love with all things with faces.

Gracie is in the middle of scolding this "hulk" scarecrow. His offense was being ugly, I'm pretty sure. Well, ugly in a "rude face" sort of way. You can't see her face, but trust me, she was scowling and getting her reprimand on.

yeah...she's fierce.

Sometimes you've just got to sit and take it all in. Especially if you're sulking about being told not to run off into a corn maze by your little ol' self.

We're pretty into painting outside objects around here. Our sidewalk in lined with rocks painted by each of us. So, we carried that on into pumpkin tradition instead of carving. Carving is kind of a hard thing that everyone is just expected to be able to do well. I think Nathan pulls it off, but not me!

Gracie is being eased into the painting tradition. Obviously she can't be trusted yet! Good thing marker companies know not to put toxic chemicals in their products these days!

Nathan is pretty into this painting thing. He takes it seriously and is quite meticulous about his work. I like to just sit down and paint something, which means I make mistakes and just have to come up with new plans as I go along. But Nathan plans exactly what he wants to do, gets a model of some sort, and takes it step by step. And, he's crazy handsome while he does it, just to raise the bar further.

It probably helps that he had our very own friendly neighborhood Spider Man as his model.

Gracie's little pumpkins were transformed (by papa) into Dora and Boots! She's in love.

oh, and Nathan's pumpkin is a grenade. yeah.
That's the extent of our fall decoration. We store up all the holiday spirit for Christmas! You know...in a few weeks. ;)