The day of October 18th, 2007

The day started rainy and cool. As the clouds moved away the wind began to whip. At about 2pm I went out to watch as the maple trees began to lose all of their leaves along with those really cool "helicopter" seeds. It's one thing to throw a "helicopter" seed into the air and watch it spin down to the ground but it is yet an entirely new experience to stand and watch while hundreds of them come spinning down at you from the tops of the trees. The first picture below doesn't do it justice but you get the idea of how many were spinning down at me. It was so cool. We didn't dare go too near the forest as we many times heard branches crack and fall to the ground. One even made it's way down to the goats and they braved it to go eat the pine needles.
(Be sure to click on pics to enlarge) The power went out just as I was getting ready to put a pot of chicken soup on the stove. I was thankful that the menu was soup so that I could get a fire going in the wood stove to cook upon. We had chicken and rice soup that Charissa decided to add broken up spaghetti noodles too. It was quite delicious, although could have used some more seasoning as I didn't attempt to saute those before adding the broth and whatnot.
Here are the children enjoying their dinner. It's amazing what they'll eat when the lights are out. Usually I serve salad AND bread or biscuits with soup to bribe them to eat the soup, but tonight it was JUST soup. And they all gobbled it up, there wasn't even enough left for dad's lunch.

These are just some fun candle pictures I enjoyed taking. If you look closely you'll see Nicholas in the 2nd one.

Here is my little Charissa. This is how you'll often find her when she is tired or cranky. She looks quite contemplative and peaceful here so I'm guessing she's tired not cranky. I like this picture as it captures her well.


The one above is just one I took of Mina during the day. She did that cute little puppy thing where they cock their head when they hear a funny noise.

And I just love this picture of the boys. Joseph on the left and Nicholas on the right. They are growing up too quickly.