Trick-or-treating take one

We spent the morning waddling through downtown Dexter collecting candy from the participating businesses along the main drag (read: the one street in town), and the afternoon waddling around the rec room at our homeschoolers group Halloween party.

Waddling is what penguins do.

A doughnut for lunch?

Cookie decorating (and eating) for snack...

spooky searches...

making salt dough ghosts and pumpkins and gluey and sparkly crafts plus a plethora of homemade munchies warm fall drinks...Halloween party homeschooler style.

And when we got home Calvin dove right into his candy, but not to eat it. We pay him ten cents per piece that he turns in to us, so the candy sparked an hour of learning about money and counting up his earnings. He opted to keep only one piece to snack on (tomorrow, since we'd had enough sweets today), and earned $3.50 for the rest. After all that excitement we were too tired to carve pumpkins after dinner tonight, so that has been postponed, but still, the Halloween weekend has begun.

A birthday for the zoo, and Oma, too

Oh my goodness, the weather over the weekend was glorious to say the least. I love a pretty summer days, but they're nothing compared to a pretty day in fall. Saturday was all outside and we did the same yesterday, too, starting with the zoo first thing in the morning because they were celebrating their 100th birthday with treats for the animals and crafts for the kids. The animals are so much happier in the cooler weather.

We were outside in the afternoon, too, shuffling through leaves, and I fit in a long outdoor run, perhaps the last for he season, before Jon's parents came over to celebrate their birthdays with a walk at our favorite metro park and pizza. We went to sleep to the sounds of a thunderstorm.

Today we weren't quite so lucky, "stuck" inside sorting books and working on that Halloween costume while the winds raged around us, but inside days are fun, too, with books, and chores, and cuddling, and we did a lot of all of that. Calvin's dino diorama is coming along nicely, and Halloween is starting to pop up all over the house, as with the five pumpkins on the porch, and the spooky books he's suddenly reading. Whatever plans I'd had to study American and U.S. history before Thanksgiving have definitely come and gone, but I don't think any of us could be happier with the new plans, or lack thereof, that have taken their place.

Autumn splendor hike

After days upon days of chilly rain we woke this morning to a thin layer of white frost sparkling in bright sunlight. One couldn't ask for better fall hiking weather, there just isn't any better to have. We had breakfast, we layered on the clothing and donned hats and mittens, then we joined in another county park naturalist guided hike. The find of the day was a multitude of fungi—here there and everywhere—but my favorite moment was spending time with a little spring peeper. He may sing his best in the spring, but he is one beautiful frog in the fall when his color is in style. The rest of the day was less exciting, filled with winterizing the yard and gardens and getting started on a Halloween costume (which may seem late, but it's still earlier than last year).

Bracket or shelf fungus

Puffball fungus

Bracket or shelf fungus

Northern Spring Peeper (Pseudacris crucifer)

Fall glory

Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

-Robert Frost

Fall celebration at Parker Mill

Making our tax dollars work for us—we've certainly gotten our allotment of fun out of the county parks service this year. We've always enjoyed hiking the area parks, and we've attended a handful of their events in the past, but this is the first year that we've participated quite so heavily. Or maybe they are offering more events this year, because we've enjoyed guided hikes and naturalist education programs almost once a week since mid summer.

The other amazing thing about is that there are still parks we have never visited. Today was fall celebration day at Parker Mill Park, a new one on us. It started chilly and a little damp, but the sun finally came out while we were making bird houses and fall crafts. We shelled corn, ran the mill stones, and watched a heron fish on our way to the head race. It was a good day.