Autumn Leaves & Other Fun

Today, I decided to take Gabriella, Isabella, Connor and our dog Mercury on a long walk through the fields to go and visit the library. On the way, we passed a lot of trees, where the leaves had darkened and fallen and carpeted the ground in a blanket of yellows, oranges, reds and browns.

I decided to take some portrait photos of the children in the leaves.















Mercury decided that he loved playing leaves, especially when the children kept throwing the leaves in the air or letting him play tug of war with the leaves. (In some of the photos of him jumping, he is out of focus. I didn't have my camera set for action photos as I wasn't expecting his exuberance at finding leaves to play in.)















The benefit of all of Mercury's running around was that he did, eventually, tire enough that I was able to take a couple of good portraits of him in the Autumn leaves.





Then the kids decided to climb a nearby tree. (Bella was not quite as brave about climbing the tree as Connor and Gabby were. And please keep in mind as you view the photos that I did not choose Isabella's outfit!)









Once we got to the library, I let the three of them choose a book each and I sat on the floor beside their child-sized table and read the stories aloud to them. After we visited the library, we went into the store that was next door to it to buy the kids some drinks. They found a Dolmio display and were quick to ask me to take their photos in it.



All in all, it was a fun day. Next time, I'll bring Cameron too. (He had been napping, so we left him home with his two teenage sisters during our walk.)





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Happy 4th Of July 2010!!!

Happy Independence Day!

Here in England, as you can imagine, there is not much celebrating going on for Independence Day. But I think it is important to keep certain traditions alive for my children, so I try and find ways to make the day special for them.

Usually, we buy fireworks at another time of year when they are available here and save them for today, but we didn't do that this year. There isn't really anywhere that sells fireworks at this time of year. Robert bought some red, white and blue streamers though, and I had to think of a way to use them.

I am not a very craft-y person, but I did my best. I used the streamers to make a ribbon that I hung on the front door. It wasn't very good, but I tried to make it look good, and the children seemed to like it.



I also tied some streamer-ribbons on our stairway.



Then I remembered that I had four bamboo sticks, so I tied (and used some tape to make sure they stayed on) streamers to the ends of the bamboo sticks. When the children came home from visiting their grandparents with their daddy, I showed them the streamer-sticks and told them that they were going to get to "decorate the dog" and have a little parade at the park. They didn't really understand the idea of a parade, but they had fun waving the streamers around and Gabby even made up a song to sing which repeated the phrase, "We're having an American Independence Day parade!"











Mercury kept trying to eat the ribbon of streamers that was tied around his collar, so it started to look scruffy very quickly.

















One really cute thing was that our cat Pagan followed us to the park and tried to join in with the "parade."





When we got home, Kayla put some of the streamers on Pagan and then held him for some photos.







We also gave the children some red, white and blue glow sticks to play with when it got dark.

I hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July. I know my family did!

More Photos Of Our Border Collie (Plus Some Of His Friends)

Today was not as sunny as yesterday, but we still took our dog Mercury out for some fun in the sun. He loves playing fetch, and really enjoyed getting to meet lots of other dogs who were out with their own owners.








Here are some of the friends Mercury met along the way.





This little sheltie was a real sweety! He was more interested in making sure that he got plenty of attention and petting from Robert and me than he was in playing with Mercury.