Megan surprised us by bringing home some critters from school. She was one of the lucky ones who got to bring home beetles that they had been observing. And she got to bring it home in this big plastic container – with NO TOP. She said they don’t climb out. Uh huh, Beth was not convinced. And it was fun that the more we looked in there, the more bugs we saw that weren’t part of their experiment. Look how cute they are snuggling in the corner. They lasted indoors for a week longer than Beth wanted, and now I hope they have dug deep in the ground outside because the cold and snow is a comin’.
Not only do we have bugs, we also have an infestation of pumpkin-squirrels! What else do you do with a monster pumpkin besides put it just beyond your back porch and sprinkle with bird seed every so often.
Ever see a pumpkin with a tail?
Ok, while I’ve got the pumpkin theme going I’ll include just a few more.
Here we are visiting our friend’s monster pumpkin (he is the one that gave us the seeds this year). His pumpkin ended up over 1400 lbs this year and was his largest ever!
This is the smaller of his two pumpkins in his truck in our parking garage at work. He had people guess the weight of the largest pumpkin that they could see from our office windows.
I had a few more pictures from the races last month. Here Colleen and I are right after the color run. What? You say there is something on my nose? Huh? Mind your own business.
And here we are at 6:30 a.m. waiting to start the Minneapolis Marathon’s “short-cut-to-the capitol” 10-mile run. Insane how many people get up so early to make this such a fun day!
Colleen has been absolutely loving her painting class this year. And her projects have been turning out amazing. Here is her “warm-cold” (or hot-cold? something like that) – it got chosen for a big display at school.
She did such a good job painting that I took her out for donuts 😉 Colleen and I have been going to church (she needs to take notes during a dozen sermons this year as part of confirmation). Every several months I take each of the kids out one-on-one to talk about dreams and how the year is going. Colleen and I went to Yo-Yo Donuts recently. Yummy – check out the s’more donut!
As if the donut wasn’t enough, we got a box of pumpkin cookies from St. Louis too. The kids’ first guess was Halloween socks or shirts. Nope. It’s hard to beat getting a box filled with cookies! Grandpa has it all figured out – cookies are awesome!
Would you give these two candy? Or would you scream and run?
Here’s Orca’s costume. I had nothing to do with this. I think I’m the only person who owns a “Purdue football” (footall?) shirt. It was on sale at the Purdue bookstore. Wonder why? There’s no way anyone would buy one of these (or want to be seen buying one of them), and of the people who buy them, I can’t imagine there are many who don’t soon burn it! Basketball season should be fun this year – the team is looking good!
We finally went to our first men’s gopher hockey game. They won the game we went to, but our favorite part was watching six kids all jammed in the penalty boxes. Boys will be boys. It was fun to watch.
I love this picture of Megan in the fall. She’s not a fan of having pictures taken of just her that will be shared. She was helping me a ton this day – taking care of my fall chores outside. She’s an awesome helper and good at keeping me company. We gathered a bunch of sticks and built a nice camp fire too!
Warm fire. Check. Legs up. Check. Beer on table. Check. Book in hand. Check. Loving a beautiful fall day. Check.
We kept the trampoline up until they could jump in a bit of snow. And then I rushed to take it down the next weekend (forecast is calling for 7-10″ of snow now – not sure when I’d get another good chance to get the trampoline in before winter!)
Winter is coming! Boo!
a