We have no trees in our backyard anymore. Eric had to cut down our last Bradford Pear tree because it kept splitting. He has made the stump into a fire pit for the time being. Here are some pictures of one of our cookouts this fall. The girls love cooking hotdogs and marshmellows over the fire. Joni and Reesi came one night. We cracked up at Reesi roasting her marshmellow. She wouldn't get close enough to even warm up her marshmellow, much less roast it. 
I went to Gentry's Farm with Lyla and her class in October. We've been there so many times, but it's still such a great place. I love to take pictures there. I think it would be a great place to have family pictures taken. Anyhoo...it was a good field trip. They did the hay maze, saw the animals, played in the Fruits of the Spirit barn, had a "hay" ride, saw the cows, picked out a pumpkin and had a picnic. The pumpkins were really small this year. Lyla was not happy about that. Then she got mad that she couldn't climb up onto the wagon where the pumpkins were piled up. She had a little melt down but finally got over it. Then after the picnic the kids had a quick game of duck, duck, goose. Another mini-meltdown came due to not getting as many turns as she wanted. Games always end with someone mad, that's why I've never been into sports. ha! Overall, it was a good time and I'm very blessed to be able to go on field trips with my girls. I would be very sad if I was not able to go. The girls absolutely love it when we see them at school too. I don't want to miss any opportunity like that while they still want us there! Here are the many pictures from the trip. 
I think it's time to do some fall wardrobe shopping!!! Lyla loves those brown corduroy pants!
Gotta love the pic with a kid diggin' for gold! ha ha I had to include this one!
This is the wagon Lyla wanted to climb in to find a pumpkin.
Every fall Grace and Lyla have a blast jumping in a big leaf pile with our neighbors. We've been blessed to have very friendly neighbors that almost all have girls. They love to play in the street with them after school on days when the weather is nice. Every fall there is always one day where the girls make a big pile of leaves and have a ball jumping in them and throwing them. This year it was in our yard. Our neighbor across the street also has a nice tree in her front yard so the girls carried buckets of leaves from her yard to our yard to make an extra big pile. They worked hard to get the pile as big as they could. We finally had to stop them and tell them to go ahead and jump. I love fall-leaf-pile-jumping pictures. I wished I had gotten a good one of Grace and Lyla together. Maybe next year. The girls in the pictures below from left to right are: Lyla, Reesi, Lola, Emma, Ryan (the only boy), Rachel, Ailey and Grace.
One weekend this past fall, my mom planned to take the girls to spend the night with my sister, Julie, that lives in Hendersonville. Then they were going to go on to Indiana with my mom for fall break. They went on to Julie's house that Friday evening. I got a frantic call my sister around 7pm saying Lyla just threw up but she says she feels better now. I said, let me know if she does it again. Somehow I knew I would be getting another call very soon, and I did. She was sick. Eric and I drove up to Hendersonville to pick her up. She was pitiful. I sat in the back of the van with her holding her bowl just waiting for the next time, which came about every 30 minutes. I "slept" with her all night doing the same thing. Needless to say, I did not get much sleep. I washed that bowl many, many times! The next day she seemed to be done throwing up but she definitely didn't feel good. Around lunchtime though she thought she could eat something. That didn't sit well on her stomach and she got sick again. She actually slept on the couch that afternoon for almost 2 hours! I think it's been about 3 1/2 years since she's taken an afternoon nap! Fortunately, no one else caught the virus. The next week I was on a field trip with her class and her teacher said that the virus had been making it's way through almost every child in her class the week before the break. Lucky us!
This picture shows the paintings that the girls did hanging above the fireplace. Grace's is the one on the left. Lyla's is on the right. Her vase shows the water inside of it. She thinks "outside the box".
Last spring I got the urge to redecorate my downstairs. The dark colors that I have used for the last 12 years were suddenly closing in on me. I desperately needed lighter, brighter, more airy surroundings. Well, we have finally begun to make a few changes. The first thing we did was paint over the red walls in the family room and foyer and the green walls in the kitchen. Eric and I stayed up late on a Friday night to do the prep work. I did the edging. On the next day Eric did the rolling. The girls were home and wanted to paint too. So I had them paint some canvases I've had under my bed for oh, about 4 years. I painted the background and then guided them on what to paint. I wanted to hang them over the fireplace so I didn't really want to give them complete control over what they painted. Looking back, I probably should have just let them do whatever they want. Maybe we'll do that one weekend we need something to do. Anyway, at the time, I wanted them to look similar. They ended up painting a vase with flowers in it. I helped them center the vase and make them the same size. They decided everything regarding the flowers in the vases. They turned out pretty cute. I also had my couch and chair recovered. They were slipcovered to begin with so I just had someone make new covers for them. I found the fabric at Wal-Mart, believe it or not, so it was really cheap, as far as slipcovers go. The picture I have above of the wall with their paintings on it is really dark. I need to take a different picture. I will also take pictures of the other things we've updated at some point. For now, this shows the first step in my mini-makeover. 
