And then we bathed in paint...

Happy September! So a couple of days ago we were in the throws of weather so hot that the girls and I had to slip off to the park at 8 am, right after breakfast, in order to play for a couple of hours before it hit 90 degrees. And today...today fall was in the air. We had an awesome thunderstorm last night, and I guess it blew in some changes. It was really chilly as the girls and I headed out for a playdate this morning, and as we stopped at Starbucks on our way (hey, we were going to see my friend Holly, whose name means "coffee"...or, well, it should!), it felt like we should be picking up pumpkin spice lattes and going to take autumn pictures of our five kids jumping around in piles of crunchy fallen leaves. I'm still hoping for more lovely summer days before fall is really truly here, but the momentary glimpse into the coming crisp fall mornings was kind of fun.

And this afternoon, my mom superpowers were feeling strong, so I decided we should make a giant mess. Funny, the paints looked so innocent right before we got started...



I'm not sure that Bethany looks one little tiny bit innocent here though!

Here is a beautiful flower, by Ashley:

And pumpkin #1, by Bethany:

Followed by pumpkin #2, by Hannah (see, fall was on everyone's mind today!):

And Ashley's artistic interpretation of the birthday cake she hopes I'll make for her next month:

The finished paint-laden masterpieces!

And I really, really wish I could show you a picture of how equally paint-laden my children were at the end of all this, but they were (thankfully!) not dressed, so the picture stays offline. But...there was a lot of soap and water involved in the clean up process. A LOT of soap and water. ;-)