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During Melanie’s visit here last weekend, we enjoyed a walk at the Aldo Leopold Nature Center.  We had two fearless trail leaders to blaze the way.  One of them was sporting a new princess dress made by Granny as her Halloween costume.

Here Sylvie is jumping from stump to stump in a circle…a favorite and long-enjoyed activity.

Love this blue sky.  Still lots of leaves on trees, but we’re seeing more and more bare brances.

Melanie’s hair is so petty in the sunshine.  It shines like copper!Here’s our crew (minus me!).

There’s Bryan and Mel on a pier on the pond.

I just love the way that the dried flowers glow when back-lit by the sun.  Such a different look from their summer blooms, but really just as striking.

New favorite picture of Melanie and Bryan in the woods.

She wasn’t really taller than him…just standing on a rock:)

I love the energy in the look that Andrew and Sylvie are giving each other.  Wonder what they were talking about:)

Other new favorite picture!

Melanie with her niece and nephew.

Princess Sylvie running down the path.

Here’s Sylvia and Andrew sitting on the dock……and a few minutes later, Melanie and Bryan.  Sibling mirrors.

Such beautiful color!

Pensive princess examining the foliage.

Leaping and running!

Getting a lift from Aunt Mel

Spinning!!!  Sylvie’s hair is really quite long when it’s not all bouncing up in curls:)

Mel and Sylvie under a red maple.

Melanie taking a picture of Bryan and Sylvie.That’s what I’ve got for photos of our time with Melanie.  We’ll see her again at Christmas, which in some ways feels like a long time, but those two months of November and December are probably going to fly by!  Thanks for coming up, Mel! We love you. xoxo

Hello, and Happy Halloween!

It’s been over a month since I last wrote a post, but all that’s about to change.  I’ve got 17 posts cued up, so throughout November, you’ll get to see all the things we did in September and October!  I usually post pictures on Flickr as-they-happen, so you can always check out my Flickr stream to get a sneak peek when there’s a posting drought.  My plate has been wonderfully…almost overwhelmingly full on the photography front this last month, and work gets priority over the blog:)  But Bryan’s sister, Melanie, visited us last weekend, and I want to share pictures from that visit.  So you’ll get a peek at our last few days before jumping back to see the colors of September.

As I type, I’m looking out my window at our beautiful maple.  It’s a deep golden.  The leaves are damp, and the sky is gray, and somehow that seems to deepen and enhance the saturation of the colors.  It almost takes my breath away, it’s so deeply beautiful:)

We were all delighted to have Melanie fly up to Wisconsin to visit us last weekend, and as always, we had a great time playing together.  We watched the last game of the World Series, played Quirkle Cubed, went to a Badger Women’s hockey game, joined some hordes of costumed kids on State Street and saw Wayne the Wizard do his Halloween magic show, went for a hike at the Aldo Leopold Nature Center, and in general, just enjoyed being together.

Since today is Halloween, I thought I’d share some photos of yesterday’s pumpkin carving…

Here’s Bryan and Andrew working on a little pumpkin.  They’re pounding golf tees in it.

Here’s our work station.

Andrew’s carving a pumpkin face for the first time.

Cute little triangle nose.

So proud of his handiwork!

Now Sylvie gets a turn.

Andrew and Melanie carve a detailed witch scene into this big guy.

Sylv with the finished pumpkin product.

Mel worked hard on this one, and it looks great!

Photo-taking

Our 2011 Jack-O-Lanterns.  The one on the right Andrew designed (see his picture), and I cut.

Here’s Bryan and his sister.  ❤

It’ll be fun to put lights in the Jack-O-Lanterns tonight and to see them decorating the front porch as we do our neighborhood trick-or-treating rounds!

Sylvia had a solo visit to Texas with Granny and Grandad over Labor Day weekend.  Boy, oh, boy did she have fun!  While she was enjoying some one-on-one time with her grandparents, we decided to take Andrew on an overnight canoeing trip – something we don’t yet feel would be wise with Miss Sylv.

We packed up on Sunday and headed west from Madison.  Bryan’s friends loaned us their canoe.  We left the canoe at Tom’s place in Lone Rock, and then we shuttled the van downsteam to Blue River and left it at the Blue River bridge.  We drove the other car back up to Tom’s, and put in to the lovely Wisconsin River in the mid-afternoon.

It’s so beautiful out there.  So peaceful and gentle and serene.  I ♥ the Wisconsin River!!

Andrew sat in the middle of the canoe on a milk crate, and he read Charlotte’s Web or helped paddle or snacked or chatted with us.  A couple hours later, we found a nice sand bar and stopped for the night.

Andrew helped us gather up kindling for our fire, set up the tent, and get our food all ready.

He also ran races with himself up and down the sandbar to that clump of willows below.

The sunset was so beautiful!

Photo by Andrew:)

Here’s the three of us.  Love.

Bryan got a good fire going, and he cooked up hamburgers.

This fire made some of the best marshmallow-roasting coals I’ve experienced in many-a-year.  We sat up late together and watched the fire until it went out.  Then we all snuggled in to the 2.5 person tent for a good night’s sleep. At least, Andrew and I slept well:)

The next day, we loaded up and headed back down the river.  We played lots of “In my father’s grocery store” and “I’m going on a picnic and I’m going to bring…” games.  We sang a little and snacked.  Mid-morning, we stopped at this sandbar for a little running, cartwheeling, and snacking.

Is there a prettier landscape in all the world?

There’s the boys with the canoe!

Happy kid!

Andrew finished Charlotte’s Web in the mid-afternoon.  We’d planned the trip to take us until about 1:30pm.  And sure enough, at 1:30pm, we got to the Blue River bridge.  But there wasn’t a parking area where we thought there should be.  Confused, we decided to press on, hoping that there was a second (??) Blue River bridge just around the next corner.  Three hours of heavy paddling later, we made it to the next boat landing in Boscobel.  It turns out that there’s a big island in the middle of the Blue River bridge.  We were only seeing one span, and what we thought was the shore was the island.

So we’d paddling an extra 12 miles or so to a place where our car was not.  Fortunately, a nice retired police officer drove Bryan back to our van in Blue River while Andrew and I waited at the canoe.  It ended up being a four-hour detour, but it all ended up just fine.

We got home around dark…tired and feeling good.  Can’t wait for more adventures like these with my family!

<Click on the map below for a bigger view of the route we paddled.>

On a beautiful evening in late August, we took the kids to Tenney Park.  Our first stop was to New Orleans Take Out to get shrimp po’boys.  We ate them on a picnic table and then took a walk out on the pier.  That combo has been a Babler summer evening tradition for decades.  And the warm light of the sunset was so beautiful on my boy as he froliced on the rocks.

Sun drenched, with blond hair and bronzed skin…it was a great summer!