The kids built birdhouses today…

We had to bundle up to hang the bird feeders.

A picture, drawn by Violet, of our family.

Notice Violet’s new found butterfly drawing skills.  This picture has the “morning sky.”  She drew three pictures that night, each with a sky from a different time of the day.

They just clearcut about twenty acres of trees near our house and this is the mess they left…

A random house (with chickens) on my drive home from work:

Our day at the park last Sunday:

We’re at a stand still. We’re already wondering if I’m going to be able to go to work on Monday. There’s about 6 inches of snow on the ground and underneath that a sheet of ice. It’s not supposed to warm up around here until Monday. I do not like being stuck in the house for days straight.

On the other hand, it is quite beautiful outside.

This is really just a test post to make sure everything is working. I will come back later to post the VIDEO FROM THE CHRISTMAS CONCERT from earlier today.

It’s autumn in North Carolina. We know by several different reasons:

the constant shotgun shots that we can hear from our entirely closed up house signifying the slaughter of those obnoxious deer that like to run into the side of my car, the turning of the leaves (supposedly rather beautiful in the “mountains” of North Carolina), the turkey shoot at the “Concerned Bikers of North Carolina” club, the fun we had trick-or-treating last night, the subsequent crash from the sugar rush from last night, the changing of our clocks (which to most of you is a blessing, but for me it’s another hour of trying to entertain a four year old and a two year old), and, it gets dark at 5 o’clock…

We had a really fun time trick-or-treating last night. We went to my (soon-to-be-ex) boss’s neighborhood last night. Yeah, he’s leaving me after six years, I’m not happy about that. But, the neighborhood was nice. Literally, hundreds of children in costume wandering from house to house. One house played “Thriller” on a loop, an entire cul-de-sac decorated their section, handing out candy and adult beverages (to the adults, we hope), scary movies played from projectors on to the sides of houses, and men on stilts dressed as larger-than-life scary monsters. It was a lot of fun. Once again, Violet got that overwhelmed look on her face and Mason just took it all in.

The leaves turning around here really is spectacular. There are millions of trees around so there is quite a bit of color. I really enjoy this time of year around here. I really enjoy my yard this time of year.

Violet’s artwork is getting more complex by the day. She’s broken in to using numerous colors on the page instead of keeping it monotone. She sees more about the picture than she used to, like the picture I put up here: notice the dirt. We got her an Ed Emberly book from the library the other day. I remember those books from my childhood, how incredibly cool they were. She thinks they are just as cool. She’s drawing giraffes, lions, cats, pigs, the list goes on and on. We’re getting several of them from Amazon for Christmas for the kids.

We discovered this new (to us) band a few weeks ago, the Avett Brothers. They’re local to North Carolina, from Charlotte to be more precise. So, we’ve been listening to them a lot. We’ve got a performance tivo’d from David Letterman where they sing a really pretty song. The kids are pictured here playing along to the song.

The picture makes it look the wall isn’t perfectly straight up and down, but it is. We haven’t nailed it up at the top yet, so we have room to wiggle. I tell you what, I have a tremendous sense of accomplishment today. Makes me want to keep working up there, I just have to figure out what to do next. Last Wednesday we (at work) volunteered with Habitat for Humanity, that really got my carpenter blood pumping. I want to do more and more and more…

Dad saw a bluebird go in to the mailbox/birdhouse tonight. That solves the mystery of what the little babies are that I see everyday when I pick up the mail.

Those bluebirds sure are blue.

We all went for a walk tonight. Without Violet holding me back, we made it all the way down to the end of the cul-de-sac and back. She gets bored about 1/3 of the way down the street most of the time and is begging to go back and ride her bike. When we got back Mason did a little yard work.