Raking Leaves

The leaves fall and we rake them up.  And when they're gone, they're gone, which is sad because the kids love raking and fight over who gets to do it.  We only have two rakes and Superdad has to use one of them some something actually gets done, so they have to take turns.

Foothills Festival

Black Rock, AR has something it calls the Foothills Festival.  Let us tell you, this event had it all.  The kids pose behind an old army jeep.  They weren't really Mr. and Mrs. Foothills - we saw the real couple and they were about 80 years old.  Something to work toward.

Pony rides.

Plastic barrel train rides.

A 10 year old boy scout is driving the lawnmower pulling the train. The kids didn't seem too worried about it.

Delicious food concessions.  Frito Pie!

Lawnmower races.

The kids liked the racer with the raccoon on his head.

Lots of people getting thrown from the mechanical bull.

And the main attraction was some good old fashioned wrasslin.  The crimson is about to flow in the cowbell match:

Like most good wrestling, lots of pandemonium outside the ring.
 

It was a miracle - the woman confined to the wheelchair spent most of the time on her feet heckling the wrestlers. 

Frankie in the front row (bottom right) with a bag of kettle corn and taking in all the action.

Phoebe's Solo

S'mores

Lots of fires this time of year which means lots of s'mores. Lately we've been using a little Nutella instead of a Hershey bar.

Fall

Not much going on now that fall is here.  Just doing as much as we can before it gets too cold to stay outside for hours at a time.

Investigating stuff.

Too cold to swim.

The boot store.

The kids argue about this boot all the time.  They both claim it as their boot.

Walking on the hill.

Frankie pretending that he found a snake.

Putt Putt

Phoebe signed up for some book reading club at the Memphis library this summer.  The idea was that if she read enough books she could earn cool stuff.  She read enough to get the prize she most wanted: a free round of putt putt!

Frankie celebrating after a hole-in-twenty.

We hit the arcade after the golf.  Skee-ball!  Like mother like daughter.

Brother-sister teamwork.

Prize tickets!

Chattanooga Pt. 3

Playing the cabin piano before saying goodbye to Mimi and Pop Pop and heading home.

On the way out of town, we decided to check out some of the sights on Lookout Mountain.  Rock City Gnome sighting:

Chattanooga in the background.

The entrance to the old Fairyland neighborhood that Phoebe declared she want to move to immediately.  With street names like "Elf Lane" and "Peter Pan Way" who can blame her?

Chattanooga Pt. 2

We stayed at a cabin on a lake outside of the city.

Phoebe uses the dock as a runway to strike a pose.

Hustling across the bridge to the aquarium.

We encountered some pre-Halloween ghouls on the bridge and Frankie turned the table on them with some scary moves of his own.

At the aquarium... Popsy holds back Phoebe's hair while she touches the stingray.

On the old carousel.

On some big metal chair mede out of old tools.

At Clumpie's eating ice cream.