::out my kitchen window::

I was feeding the boys breakfast a few mornings ago, and when I looked out the little window over my sink, the sun was shining into my little tree there. I realized it had finally changed color, and it was just as orange as could be. Gorgeous. And with the angle of the sun, the leaves were glowing like fire.
So of course I grabbed my camera and tried to capture it. I mean, 1. it was so gorgeous I couldn't help it and 2. I wanted to prove to all you skeptics out there that not only do we have leaves and trees and stuff out here in the desert, but we have fall and pretty changing colors!

But the window screen kept getting in my way when I was shooting from the window.

Argh.
And it didn't look quite right when I stepped outside to try to shoot it--besides my feet got freezing cold on the bricks.

So if these photos look pretty to you, imagine them glowing with a lovely morning light, and then know what I was trying to show you.
Happy end of fall!

::::

Fall is coming. It's coming quickly and I'm afraid I'm going to blink and it'll be gone.
And, as you can see, we do have lovely trees to enjoy. Hooray!

::found::

I found the coolest leaf ever on our camping trip.  I picked it up because of it's amazing colors and then I realized it had a hidden surprise.

Can you see it?

I've never seen a heart that's grown a leaf before, have you? It made me happy.
The fallen leaves were so amazing and colorful on our trip. I had a hard time tearing my eyes from the ground to look up. Yellow, orange, red, brown, and all of those mixed together. Just amazing. It's such a blessing to have such beauty in our lives!

::more dog park--not gross::

I hope nobody is bored with the dog park yet.
We go there a lot. It's close to our house, and poor Sultan needs a place to have fun.
When funny things happen there, sometimes they get to show up here.

The other day (a while ago, when it wasn't so cold outside that your ears would fall off--and when there were some leaves on the trees) we headed off for some dog park.

Sultan found some cousins to hang out with.

He was pretty excited about it.

And some lady in the background wore some weird socks. But that's not actually part of the story.

Max and Kris went off to play catch, as usual. And as usual some dogs tried to catch the ball when it was thrown to Max.

That gets on Max's nerves a little bit, so he quit the catch game when he saw a fun and exciting stick lying on the ground.

Wow. Sticks are fun. If you're four.

This dog was hanging around him, salivating over that stick.  Kris and I told him to throw it. So he did.

(this is actually a photo of him just before he threw the stick at ME, but that's another story altogether.)
Well guess what happened after he threw the stick for the dog?

This cute dog ended up with the stick. Max was very upset. He kept telling the dog that he hadn't meant to do it, and that's not what he wanted to happen!!
Eventually the dog gave up on the stick.

Ewww.
And boy with stick headed back out into the wild.

He's just not experienced enough to realize how dogs feel about sticks I guess. Sultan doesn't care about sticks at all, so I guess he has no reason to know.

that dogs love sticks!

I love how the tiny dog is chasing him so confidently, like he could actually do something, while the big guy who could just grab it straight out of his hands is just watching.
It was pretty hilarious.

But then evidently Max smelled something "stinky" (big shock at the dog park, right?) and so he went to do something else.
(check out the crazy dog in the background of that last picture. All four feet are way above the ground!)

He went to play in the shot put cage. Or whatever that is.

"Sultan, come! Sultan come! Sultan come!" Sultan does a bad job listening to Max and I. We're working on that currently.

Other dogs show up of course, but no Sul. He's kind of a butt that way.

He finally showed up. Then Max pretended to be a sad puppy in a cage.

Cute! Sad!

Then we went home.
And since there were still leaves on the trees I took a picture of one.

And here we are again at the end of one of my loooooooooooooong photo essays. If you made it to the end I hope you enjoyed it. Can't go wrong with the dog park (unless of course a dog mistakes you for a fire hydrant.)

::for rachel part 2::

Remember my friend Rachel who was in the hospital? Well she's out and at home and doing much better I hear! But she says she's been enjoying my fall foliage fotos, and since I can't stop myself from taking them, like ALL the time here are some more fun ones, just for her--and you too if you want to look.

Lately if I leave the house without the camera I really regret it. And if I have it I just can't stop taking pictures. It's fun. Soon enough the trees will be all bare and I'll really miss the leaves. So I'm enjoying them while I can.


The tree a couple of doors down.

The contrast of green and yellow is really fun.



Look familiar? It's the header right now. This is just some little bush. Who knew it was going to turn into a rainbow.

Here's that dark black trunk against gorgeous gold that I love again. I could look at it all day.

I love this one. That's about all I can say for it. Except that I walked by this tree today and realized most of the leaves were gone. Then I almost cried. I miss them.

This last one is a tree right by Max's school. I have no idea what the berries are, but they're beautiful. And the leaves, I love them for being so colorful.
Sending fall love to Rachel from the good old north east!

::november::

I can't believe it's already November. Seems like it was just yesterday we were hanging out at the beach.
I can't believe that Murphy has already served almost a quarter of his mission. Wow.

We found out a couple of days ago that our poor red Land Rover didn't make it through the accident. The insurance company declared it a total loss. It looked like there wasn't really that much damage in the pictures, but there was some underlying non-obvious stuff that wasn't in good shape. And the cost of Rover repairs is high, and since our "value" was relatively low because of tons of miles and the age of the car it was a lost cause.

So we're car shopping. Against our wills. We loved that car and we didn't want to have to get rid of it. But oh well. C'est la vie, right? What happens happens, and at least we were ok. That's the important stuff.

The bummer is in all this is that we only have our rental car for a very limited period of time--through this weekend. So our car shopping is very rushed. But hopefully we can find something that works, and not completely stress ourselves out in the process.

In other news, we now have a:

not too far from our house. Can you read that? If not it says Trader Joe's. For those of you that don't know, Trader Joe's is a well priced grocery store with a lot of healthy food. Max likes it. We've been a couple of times and gotten some yummy frozen dinners that were pretty easy to cook up.
Do you see the little sad faces there in the drawing? Those are there to represent how Max acted at Trader Joe's today. Yeah, he was bad. Bad enough that he knew he was being bad. Anyway, I thought those little sad faces were pretty funny. He copied the letters from the bag in the car. He's getting really good at writing his letters.

And to finish off tonight, I have a little teaser. Melissa and I took the boys out on a walk yesterday and parked them in somebody's leaves to take some fall pictures. They turned out awesome.
Like this:

and this:

and this:

I have lots of other good ones. Tons. I'll show you all some later. But that's all for now.
Happy thursday!

::en flambe::

So which of these fall beauties looks more like it's on fire?

These?

This tree right next to Max's school?

Or these incredible leaves that look to me like they're slowly smoldering from the outside in?
You tell me.

All I know is that they're lovely.