Steam engine

This pulled into town this afternoon, so cool to hear it, even cooler to see it. Two of the pics are of the train arriving in town, love the picture of Betty with the kids, and a pic of old meets new. Here is a portion of the article that appeared in the local paper: Union Pacific Railroad's Challenger No. 3985, the world's largest operating steam locomotive, will be on a five-state, 1,750-mile tour from Cheyenne, Wyoming to St. Paul, Minnesota to celebrate railroad heritage.

just cause

her pj's make me grin every time I look at her...love the color's and mix of polka dots and stripes.
this would be a peek into this morning's routine. She is trying to convince me that M&M's are a perfectly wonderful thing to have for breakfast, they match her outfit you see. and yes that would be how my refrigerator looks most of the time, the door wide open of course.

Buddy walk

Sunday was the 3rd annual Buddy walk. We have attended each year since it began. Linette got us started she had a little guy in her daycare with Downs Sydrome and she organized the first team to walk in his honor. This year we weren't part of a team but just went to walk and support the organization. (although they thought we were a team, apparently my family qualifies as a team with all it's members :) The girls were excited to have their hair colored Anthony's color just ran down his neck and dripped on his shirt making it look as tho he were bleeding, he thought that look was awesome.

Fall Fesitval

This weekend was a family weekend at Cassandra's college. Saturday was Arts on the Green, which had a lot of activities aimed at children. The girls were all over the painting areas, Anthony headed to the inflated bouncy activities. Later in the afternoon we watched Cassandra's soccer game. It was great to visit and spend time on her campus, usually we are picking her up or dropping her off.

Homecoming 2008

Rosie waiting for the parade to begin...
Kevin, Linda and I walked to the parade route with the daycare kids...who were super excited to be watching a parade in the middle of a daycare day. We had a wonderfully, windy day to watch. No kids were blown away due to the wind I am happy to say.
Yahaira just noticing the beginning of the parade waaaayyyy down the street.
meeting two of the Minnesota Vikings cheerleaders.
Last week the danceline team attended a camp with the Vikings cheerleaders and were able to perform during the Vikings game on Sunday, in return two of their cheerleaders attended last nights homecoming game. When Yahaira first saw them her dance teacher was talking to her and Yahaira was a bit shy and wouldn't go with her to meet them... a bit later one of my daycare kids Olivia convinced Yahaira to go with her to say hi. So she did meet them earlier in the game. At half time grandpa came to sit by us and knowing he might be a bit wowed that she had met the cheerleaders I asked Yahaira to tell grandpa who she saw. She turns to grandpa with her eyes all big and smiling and says in almost a whisper "Grandpa, I saw my dance teacher!!" (a note she loves her dance teacher, a lot!:) So then I filled grandpa in on who else she had met, which left him duly impressed. As we were leaving the game once again we ran into Yahaira's dance teacher, (big happy night for Yahaira seeing her dance teacher 3 times was the best!) who happened to be standing by the cheerleaders thus the pictures I did get, with my camera phone, I know what kind of scrapbooker am I to not even bring my camera along, in defense it was a football game what was I going to take pictures of?
and here is Anthony who was cool with asking for their autographs but almost passed out when I suggested a picture, he of course recovered quite well, as we walked away he said to me "well that was weird" The mom in me is quite ok that at this point in his life he still thinks girls are weird :)

more homecoming pictures

I love the picture of yahaira and olivia watching the band perform at halftime, she was so excited about going to the game.
the daycare kids were simply ecxited to be seeing a parade!

time for me to go to bed

but I'll leave you with these last three layouts I completed tonight.

a few digital layouts...

apple on a stick

this is what Rosie did while the rest of us picked apples from the trees.
She spent enormous amounts of time putting them on a stick....Perhaps she has a career at the State Fair?

bean fields

As we were driving to Mankato, I noticed that the corn and soybean fields were beginning to turn. It struck me that soon the farmers would be in the fields and fall would be upon us in full force. I couldn't believe how colorful the fields were yesterday...with the sun shining on them they almost looked golden. Just earlier I had mentioned to Donna (hi Donna) that I wanted to take the kids out in the country and capture some pics of them. After passing a few more fields I realized that now was as good of time as any...so I asked Kevin to pull over...which he did, rather quickly. In fairness I suppose my request was a bit unusual, rarely if ever have I made such a request. I am truly a get where we are going with little delay type of person, so he imagined all sorts of things, like say I was going to be sick :)
So I hop out with my camera and usher the kids out and walk past Linda and Larry who had also pulled over...commenting that we were heading to that bean field over there to take pictures....One could think that it's pretty amazing that not a single person in either vehicles uttered crazy lady.
So my little people were perhaps not as excited about my spontaneous photo shoot...actually they were downright reluctant...sigh.
When I suggested they stand next to the field they actually looked horrified...couldn't miss taking a photo of all the people watching me take photos... I definitely can draw a crowd. :)

a visit to

a pick your own apple farm.
A first for the kids, who were completely wowed!
A perfect day, warm and sunny.
A few too many people, I imagine expecting it to be empty just for us would have been a bit much :)
A very full day, with three very tired kids on the ride home.
Life is good.

Apple Orchard

and a few more

views by the lake

I have wanted to take the kids to the walking path by the lake all summer, noticed on Friday that the leaves were beginning to change, and if I didn't get going on that summer would certainly be gone. So Saturday morning we made time for pictures.