The Arkansas Leaves

We went to Arkansas a few weeks ago to visit Brian's grandfather, who was not in good health. Brian's aunt and uncle live in north Arkansas and the colors were just beautiful. Piper kept saying "Mommy this place is awesome." They had a huge backyard that backed up to a forest and lake.  The kids explored and loved that there were no fences in the backyards. They got to play with toys that their daddy probably played with that aunt Paula keeps for her grandkids when they come up. When we were at the nursing home, visiting Brian's grandfather, the kids got restless and we decided to go in their courtyard and collect leaves. We found some beautiful ones and some that we not the beautiful. This started a whole leaf collecting expedition between Grandma Dog, who is a elementary school teacher, and Piper. We collected a bag full of leaves and Piper suggested the we put together a scrapbook of all the leaves. So when we got home we put the leaves in books and flattened them. Today, we got all the stuff to make a book out of them. It was fun-we even made them look a little better with glitter glue(some of the brillant colors had faded). She is shining star this week at morning kindergarten (i.e. preschool)and wants to make sure she can take all her leaves to be able to show all the Iguanas in her class. 

It was cold and rainy otherwise I would have gotten a lot more pictures, but here are a few.  I wish I could have gotten some of the kids playing in the leaves, which uncle Harry was nice enough to blow into a pile for them, but it only lasted a few minutes after we got there when the rain starting pouring.    I do love the one of Christian though because it looks like he is ready for some football.