Kobayashi Park

I had never even heard of Kobayashi Park till this year. Jessica Beecher has been posting some great pictures from there, so I had to look it up.  It's pretty close to our new house.  Doug and the kids had Monday off for Veteran's Day, so we went to check it out.



"Take a picture of me being a nature dragon!"



(This amused me.)





I love the Asian details. Apparently this used to be a private house. The city bought the property in 2004, and they're still trying to figure out what to do with the building. 




It's a gorgeous park! We'll have to go back in the summer (with water shoes!)

Preschool Pumpkins

Andy's preschool class took a field trip to Spooner Farms in Puyallup, and I got to go along. It was a chilly day! Drippy, and muddy.





There's a barn with some animals to look at and some activities for the little kids. Andy liked the chicks. We all liked getting in out of the cold for a while.



Andy was walking around these crayons and reading the labels, but the green one was facing the wrong way, so I had to help him fix it.



Andy got a kick out of riding the bus with Mom. On the way back we were having fun writing on the foggy windows. 

We had a pretty dry summer but now that autumn has hit we're getting pretty steady rain.  I'm not sure if I'll be able to do playing-in-the-leaves picture this year.  (Wet leaves are just not pleasant to play in!)

Autumn Leaves and Pumpkin Hats (2011 edition)

(Crochet pumpkin hat directions here)

We've had a very rainy fall.  Lots of chilly overcast and drizzle.  (It's hard to appreciate that crisp autumn weather without the "crisp" part.)  When we finally got a nice sunny day, I figured we'd better seize the moment and get some pictures of the kids in their pumpkin hats.  Andy was not too keen on the hat at first and kept pulling his off.




"Help!" says Andy.



Kate had to bring along a dinosaur.



Poser!



Andy finally decided he was okay with keeping his hat on.  (Yay!)






Aren't my little pumpkins cute?





Our apartment complex, magically transformed into a golden wonderland!

Golden Autumn

The trees are all nearly bare now, with a few straggler leaves hanging on here and there. We enjoyed the color and the nice crisp weather while it lasted. Today we had our first snowfall. I did get some pictures, but I thought I should post some autumn pictures first. These were taken a couple of weeks ago.



When we passed this tree on the way to school one morning, I said, "Look, Kate, it's like a yellow sea!" and she said, "Quick, let's run through it before the yellow shark gets us!"

Our complex has such a great variety of leaves--islands of gold under some trees and red under others, and great big maple leaves that cover the sidewalk along the street.

We had some fun with the camera at our favorite picture corner:











Doesn't this make it look like my kids actually get along and enjoy playing together? It's an illusion. (Yeah, they're doing better... some!)

Andy at 43 weeks

Taken October 24.



I have titled this sequence, "Small boy with large leaf."




This jacket is supposedly a nine-months size. He's nearly swimming in it.





The leaf gets the edibility test.




People sometimes ask me how many pictures I take to get these. This time I spent ten minutes and took 167 pictures. Generally I don't take quite that many.