Raking leaves- Junie.

Yesterday was a beautiful fall day, and despite mama's insistence that we get some cleaning done in anticipation of the Parsons Thanksgiving Invasion, we all headed outside to enjoy the weather. (It should be noted that we consider it beautiful because it was only 60 degrees.)

Papa started raking and I helped out by stuffing some leaves into this pitcher.

Henry jumped into the big pile and promptly lost his shoe. Mama and papa had to spread all the leaves out and it took 10 minutes to find it.

The strong man in action.

Mama wanted a picture of us in the leaves, but I didn't like it.

I prefer a cuddle instead.

Mama and her kids.

Hey, stop taking my picture.

What? You'll give me candy if I smile?

This shot cost papa two tootsie rolls. And it should be noted that after raking yesterday, the front yard is totally covered in leaves again.

This week in pictures- Juner.

Well, you got to see this week in videos yesterday. Now here are the pictures.

Mama cleaned out the glass cupboard and now we can actually close it. (Mama and papa used to collect glasses when they traveled. Now they just collect sippy cups.) This is for you, Miss Susan.

Grams Cracker made a bargain with Henry. She told him if he could go three days without yelling inside, she'd send him a matchbox car. It took two weeks, but Henry finally made it to three days (non-consecutive) with no screeches. Here's his chart. He has discovered the satisfaction of coloring with a permanent marker. Mama let him color this then told him he wasn't allowed to use it anymore because it bleeds through the paper on to her white counter tops.

At the last minute, one of papa colleagues offered him tickets to the Clemson-Virginia game. Our awesome neighbors agreed to watch Buster and I, and mama and papa took off for Death Valley.

If you watched the game on the TV, it was easy to spot them- they were the ones in orange.

Saturday was Military Appreciation Day. The band lined up in this formation and it took papa a minute to figure out that it was America upside-down.

This spells Clemson, papa.

Looks like everyone had fun.

Here's a video of the first Clemson touchdown. Everyone was pumped until the officials threw a flag for unsportsmanlike conduct. Then everyone booed, which mama doesn't think is very sportsmanlike either.

Clemson has a good way to weed out fake fans. During the fight song, you have two opportunities to spell out "CLEMSON." But there's a pause after the O, during which you pretend to wave your imaginary cap around in tribute to Clemson's military school past. It always takes mama a few times to remember the pause and not look like an idiot yelling out the N too soon. But by the end of the game, she had it down.

Saturday video jackpot!

This video captures June taunting Henry, her propensity to wear rain boots in the house (because they are the only shoes she can get on herself), and the total cuteness of June saying "Dinosaur." And Henry's in the background yelling about missing puzzle pieces.


Here's June orchestrating T. Rex attacks on the whole family by pointing at who the T. Rex should attack next.


As usual, papa got everyone wound up, so Henry decided to fight the T.Rex with Curious George, which promptly landed him in time out.


June carried this step stool in the kitchen and was trying to get the baking stone off the counter. More importantly, she looks ridiculously cute in this mini skirt (emphasis on ridiculous). Later, she runs into the living room and thinks she's getting chased- with adorable results.


June loves her cars and the big deal this week with both kids is hauling this guy around on the national guard trailer. This turned into a big story with Henry because the guy was carrying one leg to a Lego man. Apparently, he was headed to a leg party to try and find the rest of the lego man. And don't worry, we found him, though both of his hands are missing now.


It's widely known that Sadie loves her some Dora the Explorer (or Doo-ra). It looks like June might be a fan too. I think it's on at the gym day care every morning when we go work out. Last night, she found this book and spent a good 20 minutes entertaining herself. And by the end, she was imitating some of the sounds. I love it when she says "We did it!" (And for extra cute bonus points, she just heard me playing the video and came running into the room with her Dora book in tow.)


Part of our nightly routine involves putting one of June's babies to bed. She covers it up with her blankie then spends some time sharing nuks.

Finally, we didn't forget about Henry. I think it is safe to say that "Dinosaur Days" is his all time favorite book. It is a book that we found at Grandma Cooper's that used to belong to papa when he was a boy. We've read it so much that Henry can recite the entire book from memory. Usually, he can get it word for word. Last night, he was pretty tired, so some of the word are wrong, but the results are still pretty cute. (My favorite page is the one with the giant crocodiles where "SNAP! SNAP!" are underlined. I knew we were destined to be together when even as a child, Brandon was channeling the Wagner family tradition of underlining words for emphasis.)

Sunday morning and Poison Control- Henry.

Mama was lucky enough to get Sunday morning early duty with us kids while papa got to sleep in. It was actually a very nice and quiet morning.

June decided to skip breakfast so she could play with her cars. This little girl is officially obsessed, just like her big brother. All she wants to do is line up cars and park them. She got her finger on her favorite little orange car. We have a few of those little cars and June is always carrying at least one of them with her. (She likes carrying little things all the time. Papa took her to the park on Thursday and she carried a single pony bead for over 2 hours- even while she climbed the climbing wall and went down the slide.)

While Buggy parked her cars, I did some painting.

I painted for an hour and a half before I broke into a very goofy mood.

Mama wanted to go outside to rake, so she said I had to get dressed. I got halfway there (jammies off) when I had to show off my muscles.

We don't know what muscular pose this is, but it shows off my tattoos well.

We spent the morning outside blowing and raking leaves. We were lucky enough to inherit a yard full of wonderful shade trees that hasn't been raked in at least three years. And under the danse collection of leaves is a heavy layer of acorns. Mama blew leaves for three hours on Friday morning and another 3 hours today and she estimates that she's got about 1/6 of the backyard finished. It's a little depressing because only about half the leaves in backyard have fallen. Right now she blows them into piles, rakes them onto the big 10 foot by 20 foot tarp, then pulls the tarp over the back wall and down the driveway. Luckily, there's an empty wooded lot across the street where we dump our leaves. It's a lot of work, but hopefully it won't be so bad next year.

After a superbly awesome Bengals win over the Steelers (yea!!!!), mama headed back outside to continue blowing leaves and raking acorns. She had about 5 minutes of work in when papa came running out asking if paint was poisonous. Seems like Juner climbed up to the table and opened up the black paint and really went at it. We got to make out first call to Poison Control and were assured that this paint kit was non-toxic and June would live to terrorize another day.

After supper, mama was trying out some new accessories for her camera. She got this picture of me (and my supper).

And this picture of Buggy. Can you tell we're related?

Her new flash diffuser kit has an orange flash diffuser.

And a blue one too. We don't think they are for indoor use.

Saturday in Ye Olde Charlotte- Henry.

We were lamenting the passing of fall without a visit to a single Renaissance Festival. Then we realized that the big festival (faire) in Charlotte runs though the middle of November. We packed a quick lunch and jumped in the minivan.

There was a ton of traffic to get in, and it was really crowded because the weather was beautiful (75 and sunny).

Mama and papa were getting a little discouraged because we only wanted to play on the playground.

We visited a booth where kids could make our own magic fairy wands. (Papa said I could call mine a wizard's wand because I didn't want anything girlie.)

Junie's holding her finished wand.

We got to see some shows including "Hey Nunny, Nunny." There were lots of funny Catholic jokes that most people didn't get which were followed by plenty of jokes about the south being full of protestants.

June wasn't interested in religious comedy, so she headed back to the playground to play in the sand. It was going well until she got some sand in her mouth and tried to wipe it out with her sandy hands. Disaster.

We were on our way to the pirate show when mama spotted her cousins, Miss Christina and Mister Andy! We were very happy to see them at the festival and surprised that we spotted them in the crowd.

We were extra pleased to see our cousin, Nick, who was in visiting Andy and Christina from Boulder, Colorado.

We all scored good seats to the jousting match. The final joust of the day was a joust to the death. They put on a good show and I had plenty of questions. I asked mama why they put those big sticks in each others necks (cutting throats with swords). Mama assured me that it was all pretend. June just liked seeing the horses.

Mister Nick must have friends with kids out in Colorado, because he really took us in stride. He let me stand on his lap during the joust and he chased Juner (who was in quite the mood).

Before we left, I got to take a ride on the "carousel" or "Da Vinci's Hand-Powered Flying Machine."

Then we really started going fast.

This is mama's favorite shot. My bright orange "spot me in a crowd" shirt really popped.

After the faire, we rounded out an awesome day with a stop at Trader Joe's and Ikea. We stocked up on our favorite "Two-Buck Chuck" wine and got a new side table for papa.

Friday night is movie night- Juner.

Mama's not feeling good, so she declared tonight movie night.

Netflix started streaming HD movies through PlayStation3. This not only means that mama and papa can watch movies at night, but that netflix also has a great selection of Bob the Builder and Thomas the Tank Engine videos! We put on our jammies and I found one rain boot and we settled in.

I'm going to major in cute when I get to college.

Soonafter, Henry told us to that we were being too loud and would we please be quiet, he's trying to watch his movie.

Mason's Birthday- Henry.

After th ezoo on Sunday, we didn't have any time for naps because we had to head next door for Mason's birthday party.

We wrapped Mason's present in my old coloring pages and I wrote his name all by myself.Mason's mom and dad threw an awesome party with a superhero theme and great games.

There was a rousing game of Red Rover.

But I didn't want to play.

Mason's Iron Man was unstoppable.

This is one happy 4-year-old.

We all ate big pieces of cake.

And I chose to sit out the next game...

...Spiderman's web.

Looks like they caught Iron Man!

Next, they opened up presents. It was the fastest present opening we've ever seen. The whole stack was gone in about 4 seconds.

Soon after, June showed up straight from her nap. She busted up the cornhole game and terrorized all the four-year-olds.

We had to leave when she started grabbing handfuls of cake. Who invited this kid?

Here's a good video of Juner. She's actually starting to say some things. This week, she started imitating the mouthy shark and his creepy laugh.