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.)





Tweet

Connor & Isabella

Isabella turned 5 part-way through August and her little brother Connor turned 4 at the end of August. With just one year between them, they can sometimes be the best of friends and other times they can be each other's worst enemies. Today was one of the good days when they were happy to be brother and sister.

Toddling

Cameron is toddling all over the place now, but usually not more than 5 steps at a time. He still prefers the speed and stability of his crawling. It isn't going to be much longer though before he'll be running around with his brothers and sisters on his little chubby legs.

Patty Cake

Gabriella, Isabella and Connor all sang "Patty Cake" to Cameron because he loves it when people sing the "Patty Cake" song. (He looks a bit serious at the end, but you can hear him laughing during the singing.)

Connor & Sportacus

Connor is a huge fan of the character Sportacus from the Lazytown tv show. He tries to do handstands (with the result of him actually just putting his hands on the floor and only lifting one leg up). He even mimics the arm movements that Sportacus does before running to someones rescue.

Today in town, a Sportacus impersonator came to entertain the children, so we went to town. Isabella hid her face in my side, too scared because of the small crowd around Sportacus. Gabriella, being six years old, could tell that he wasn't the real Sportacus. Connor wanted to see him but was feeling shy, so Robert had to hold him by Sportacus for the photo.




Connor is really pleased about having his photo taken with Sportacus. The three of them also rode on one of those kid-rides (a horse), and enjoyed that too.

Learning from His Big Sister

Gabby (6 years old) decided to teach Connor (2 years old) how to draw some simple drawings.

First, she showed him how to draw a flower.

Here's Gabby's flower:


Here's Connor's attempt to draw a flower:


Then, she showed him how to draw a dinosaur.

Here's Gabby's dinosaur:


Here's Connor's attempt to draw the same dinosaur:


The really cute thing about this "lesson" is that, when Gabby was showing it all to me, she was pointing out which parts of Connor's flower picture were the leaves, stem and petals and which parts of his dinosaur picture were the teeth, spikes and tail. Can you see those things in his drawings?

Sisters Portraits 2009

The photographer took some sister photos. Some were of all of the girls together, and some were of two at a time.

January 31st, 2009