Voting and other important work

Baby went with me to vote:

Coop borrowed the "future voter" sticker for a photo op:

Using Halloween candy to bribe himself to do his math homework:

Cryptograms for fun:

Actual Halloween

The kids:  Marilyn Monroe and Joe Dimaggio!

 John Lennon (circa 1974):

Compare:

The cat pumpkin Cooper carved at school:

Baby Joe DiMaggio enjoying a Kit-Kat from Cooper's stash:

Halloween Prep

Coop practicing twirling in his Marilyn Monroe dress:

Baby's turn in a lion costume!!

To see Cooper in his lion costume ten years ago, click here.

Fall

Maple Leaf Parade:

And leaf pictures!

More Beatles love

An art installation in downtown Lawrence:

Coop and Juliette at a Beatles music show:

Coop won a prize (a CD) for the best request of a song:

 Not Beatles, but at least music.  Practicing his flute.  Each week, students have to record and then upload a short song for homework.  Nice way to make sure they're practicing!

Baby again

This was a surprisingly fun game for me.  It took a while for him to figure out how to get socks off of his hands.  Parenting win!

Crawling around at Raintree, watching the big kids.

Breakfast -- sausage and blueberries:

At KU Late Night!!!  He stayed with a sitter one night, and she took him to late night -- the first basketball practice at KU.  He's cooler than I am!

Cooper

Coop got accepted to be a junior volunteer at Pet World.  He goes in one hour a week and, as far as I can tell, his primary responsibility is to hold the cute fuzzy animals so they're used to people.  Not a bad gig!

New kicks:

Putting together a wooden model of a Da Vinci design:

Baby

Reading:

Loves the smell of new tennis balls:

Entertaining himself in the bathroom:

With a new sock monkey quilt made by Aunt Kathy!

And a first word:

Monarch Tagging

Grandma Joan came up one Saturday and we spent an hour catching and tagging monarch butterflies in the Baker wetlands:

In the fields:

Even baby got in on the action:

Recreating a photo of Grandma Farm and a butterfly:

Cooper:

And Cooper a bunch of years ago!

More hiking pictures

Finished!  And tired!

Bridge-building

We came to one area of the trial with lots of water, enough so that we didn't want the kids all sloshing through.  So we rounded up as many logs as we could to build a make-shift bridge.

I made it across and then had to go find another log on that side to add to our bridge:

Success!