Autumn leaves

Every fall, we make it a point to drive to one of our favorite places,our family mountain property, to see the Autumn leaves. It takes about 40 minutes to make the drive, and every mile is filled with beautiful variations of reds, oranges, yellows and rusts. As we were driving this year, we looked back and could see Rome pointing his chubby finger at the leaves as they passed and we concluded that his favorites must be the yellow leaves. I told everyone that my favorite were the red pops of color. David loves the bright orange. McKinley said her favorites are " red AND oranges." Not wanting be left out Dolce said in her cute little voice, "Kinley, my favorites are the green ones." I thought this was so cute and it made me want to look closer to see the extraordinary in the ordinary:)

Thinking inside the box

David and I recently went sort of crazy as a result of trying to keep our children safely contained together in the house. The house we are renting has a backyard that is so nice and shaded. However, before now, it wasn't a fenced in backyard. This meant that whenever we let the kids play outside, they split in 3 different directions and each ended up at the most unsafe destination they could find: the ditch for Rome, the road for Dolly and the neighbors dog pen for Mckinley. After a summer of this craziness, we strung a terribly ugly row of chain link fence across the opening that wasn't fenced and I don't think I've been so proud of anything we've made in my whole life! Our back yard is now a fully fenced playen!Our kids now can play in the back yard without David and I feeling like we have to guard the entrance. It has become everyone's favorite place to be, including a squirrel who we've been watching collect fallen walnuts. The kids spend hours on end back there and it's so nice to have the house a little quieter while David is sleeping after working all night. These are pictures mostly of Romee and Dolly's adventures while Kinleys at school. As I was going through these pictures this quote from an unknown author came to mind: Little Girls, like butterflies, require no explanation.

However, The quote doesn't have any disclaimer for Rome, so I'll just clarify that in a moment of supervisory weakness, he found a muddy little snack:)