It is getting brisk out there.

Today was the 4th day in a school free 4 day weekend....hmm, 4 day weekends seem to have lost their edge LOL. The kids and I got out of the house this morning, it was a brisk 40 degrees brrrr. I was hoping to find some leaves, shouldn't be too hard in Oregon right?, and get some fun fall pictures. The kiddos were super excited...until the wind started blowing. Thankfully in the trees the wind can't get at you quite as much.

Please Momma, lets forget the photos and go get back in the warm car Hahaha.

Xan is not impressed either.
If y'all have noticed, Xander has asked to grow his hair longer and have a longer style. He has had short hair for so long, he looks so different to me. Still such a handsome boy.

I told them to huddle up for warmth.

I love these 4...they keep my world turning.

The kiddos found a lot of treasures on our walk

We headed in to the nature center for a bit, got to warm up and have fun checking some more stuff out.

I had never been in here before, it was a pretty cool spot to kill some time and get warm.

They looked through cards on different plants and flowers.

They saw some stuffed birds...which they thought was both cool and sad.

Read a couple books.

Got warm by the fire...and began talk of having hot cocoa later.

This was a cool piece. It was carved into the wood, then painted.

The nature center had a great little science area...with microscopes and lots of slides to check out.

The kids all loved working with the microscopes, couldn't drag them away LOL.

A live specimen presented itself for our study. Keeping its little 8 legged butt in the right spot was hard, but it was cool looking at him under the microscope.

My little scientists.

This one I thought was funny...
Xander said "I've got my eyes on you Mom."

Back into the cold...in search of more leaves.

Targets acquired...ready, set....

Leaf toss! These turned out so awesome...I love them all, I had a hard time picking and choosing which ones to share.

Too much fun!!

And that's a wrap on the leaves LOL.

Some cute bro pics...my wild boys slowed down just long enough.

Time to go.

We had a little meetup at the park with Lily's BFF Kalaya. I finally broke the news to Lily that her bestie is moving away soon, my poor Bug was in tears. I hope she can recover pretty quick.

We played for a good hour...thank goodness I dressed warm.

Home and ready for that hot cocoa!

We have some sort of sad news. We said good bye to our ratties, Remy and Star, last night. Remy came down with a tumor...I thought he would need to be put down and since rats need a buddy I wanted Star to go to a new home with rats to play with...we don't plan to get any more small critters until the kids are older. My rat friend offered to take both boys and get Remy to her vet to see if surgery would be an option. Good news is it looks like they will be able to save Remy with surgery...bad news is the girls are missing their pets. They covered my fridge with these drawings in a matter of 30 minutes LOL. Remy and Star are in the best home a rattie could ever hope for, we look forward to lots of pics and updates on how they are doing.