Fire in the woods.

There are a whole lot of different kinds of mushrooms in the woods here. Here are four kinds that I found on a walk of about 2.5 minutes. (Okay, actually I think the second picture might be the same kind as the third picture, just older, but I don’t know.)

Is that a mushroom, or is it a little Child of the Forest?

(My kids and I both love that book – Children of the Forest, by Elsa Beskow, and my kids love that there are two boys and two girls and in the end she has a baby boy, so it’s just like our family! And look, when I see this picture:

It reminds me of these ones from a year ago:

End of tangent.

Anyway, so way back when, when the kids were still out of school, Jethro convinced me to go have a fire in the woods. Usually I wait for Brett to do fires, but Jethro and I got the fire going just fine, and everyone was good and careful, and it helps that Orrin is still immobile so he was content to just sit and eat leaves and dirt and rocks and bug. Love that. :)

Love love this picture of Hazel.

We ate lots of marshmallows. Because hot sticky gooey marshmallows are good.

Talmage soon tired of trying to roast, and he just manned the bag of marshmallows and ate them raw, and gave them out when we wanted another one.

Fires in the fall are the best.

Halloweenies

I have a bunch of stuff to catch up on, I almost don’t know where to start.  But, I’d better show off our pretty impressive- if I do say so myself- Halloween costumes.  Mine was the best.

And Brett was a good partner.  (Although he’s wearing Jethro’s hat, so it’s just perched on the very top of his head which is kindof funny.)

Some cool photo-editing effects.  I really like how it works with this picture.
 
Brett did my makeup, and he did a very excellent job, I think.  Unfortunately, the pictures don’t show how cool my sparkly, sequined black shirt was, nor my long black gloves.  This was a pretty easy costume to pull together, with pretty impressive results, in my opinion.  I found the black sequin shirt at the second-hand store (pulled it tight with safety pins since it was several sizes too big), wore my black skirt, bought flowers for my hair, necklaces, black gloves, and the little fringed shawl-thing at the second hand store and added a necklace and earrings of my own, and the makeup and voila!  Dead Skeleton Person a la Dia de Los Muertos. 
 
We were invited to a party by our friends Karin and Josh, so that’s why we all dressed up (no one trick-or-treats here).  My kids wore their costumes from last year (which there are many wonderful pictures of here, so I didn’t take more (that and we didn’t have any time)) which luckily are so awesome that I wasn’t TOO sad that we didn’t get different ones (because I love love love costumes and dressing up) :

Except of course, Orrin had to be part of the Merry Men since he wasn’t around last year, so we scrambled around and came up with brown tights, his green sweatshirt put on inside out, and I quick-quick crocheted a little cowl-thingee to go around his shoulders.  I would have LOVED to make him a Robin-Hood style hat, but alas, we had no felt or anything at all to make one with (yes, I left it to the last day, so there was no time to go to the store), so we put on his brown one just for good measure.  The pictures are awful (taken at the party in a dark house with a tiny little lamp), but here he is, so you can get the idea. 
Little John:
 
He’s soooo cute!

And a few more scary pictures. 
Muppet:
 


Happy Halloween!!

Friday Night Excitement.

So on Friday night we had a bit of fun. The kids were downstairs playing in the basement and Jethro and Hazel came up escorting a bleeding, crying Talmage.  He had been riding his bike and crashed into Jethro who was riding a scooter and hit the wall or the floor with his cute little head.
So I hugged him and got a rag and cleaned him up a bit and took a picture.  Then I fed him some dinner because I thought he probably needed stitches so he should have some dinner in him before he had to be gone all evening, and I called Brett and told him to come home to look and see what he thought.

So we decided he should go get stitches and I decided I wanted to take him, so off to the hospital we went.  As soon as the nurse took a glance at it she said, “Yep, it needs stitches.”  So we waited for the doctor and I told Talmage if he was brave I would let him have a ride on the carousel that’s outside our grocery store at the moment.
So he lies down, and I sit besides him on the bed and hold both of his hands, the doctor and nurse come in and wash his cut, he says in the saddest little voice, “That hurt!”  And then they give him the shot to make him numb, and he cries, but only a bit and he’s really good.  Then she takes a couple syringes full of probably saline and spray it into his cut to wash it really well, and then she says, “Now I’ll just check to make sure the bone is okay,” and starts pulling open the cut to look inside.  And I think, egh.  Just a bit, but then I feel a little warm  so I take off my sweater.  And both the doctor and nurse immediately say, “Are you okay?  Do you want to lie down?  Once we get started stitching we won’t have any hands to help you if you faint, so you should lie down!” 
And I think, no, no, I’m just fine.  This is okay—I wanted to watch.  That’s why I came instead of Brett.  But then I decide to pull over the chair and sit on it instead of stand.  And then I’m still not feeling entirely right, so I just lay my head down for a second, sure that I’ll feel just fine in a moment.  And then I really start to feel woozy and light-headed and although my head is still down, and I’m just sure that I’ll be fine, it still gets worse and things are going a bit dark and I figure I’d rather lie down than fall down.  So I lie down on the floor and poor little Talmage says, “Hold my hands Mommy!”  Ahhhh- worst mom ever!  Just kidding.
So anyway, then they had someone bring me some orange juice, which I drank, they finished stitching him, and by the time they were done I was fine again.  And Talmage got some stickers and we went home.  The end. 
p.s. I was going to post the above pictures sooner, but then I thought it wasn’t right to post them without some pictures of him looking not quite so ghastly.  So here he is.  It still looks worse than it really is, since there’s some blood along the top that is just dried where the bandage was, but anyway he’s a cute stitches-head.

Pictures in the backyard.

Golly gee I think I have two of the cutest little boys ever to exist.

Orrin’s face.  Hilarious.

Oh!!!!!!  The sweetness of that baby kills me!!!

Again, Orrin’s face!!  Oh my gosh!  Looooove it.

This kid’s getting way too big.

 

Another cutie-head. 

My favorite picture of Ethne for the day:

My favorite picture of Orrin for the day:

Or maybe this one:

Another awesome Orrin face.  The kid’s a facial contortion genius.  (Plus, he has pretty good reason to be scared when Talmage is too near.)

Orrin has a cowlick in the back of his hair that makes his hair always stick up and to the side like this.  Always.  Like he’s a cartoon.  It’s funny.

Talmage and Ethne.  They need a little help with the whole NATURAL expression idea.  A little better on the bike, though.

And the following pictures, well, these pictures are just proof that these kids genetically stem from their Grandpa Rasmussen.