Backyard Buddies

This is such a glorious Fall!!  After sending Koen and Tav off to school this morning, my big goal was to spend as much time outside as possible.  This amazing weather is bound to break eventually!  Penn and I headed out to the backyard as soon as I laid Janse down for his morning nap.  Penn kept busy doing a varied number of things while I weeded, raked, cleaned up the mess the sandbox made all summer, etc.  Penn asked that I make a leaf pile.  Now, this is no leaf pile to brag about.  We only have Bradford Pear trees in the backyard and their leaves often don't completely fall off until after the first snow, but there were enough leaves to gather a pile big enough for a Penn Rye to jump in.  He was so excited!

This video is hilarious.  He thought the little pile was such a blast.  The jumping is so lame, but he thinks it's the bast thing ever!

After Jansen woke up from his nap, we took a walk together down into Bloomfied to run an errand.  When we returned it was lunchtime, then it was back out to the backyard.  Penn had gotten really involved in a project in the sandbox that required A LOT of concentration (note the tongue out)...

...(and here it's out even more!).

Jansen and I stayed out of his way and had a little photo shoot on the grass.  Prepare yourself, he's pretty cute!

Before heading in for nap, Penn and I played a little pretend baseball.  I tried pitching to him, but he actually does awesome pitching to himself.  When he hits it and it goes far, he yells, "home run!"  And then, when he gets back to where he started, he says, "fireworks!" and then proceeds to make the sound effects (the Pirates shoot off fireworks with every home run).  It was quite entertaining to watch!  I should've taken a video, but here's a pic of the batter!

We didn't end up getting out in the afternoon/evening after naptime.  Jansen has been fighting a virus and he was a wreck.  And it gets dark so early now, that I didn't even get Penn back out to his outdoor project before the sun was setting.  Thankfully Koen and Tavin got some outdoor time after school at a friend's house.  And I was very satisfied with my morning outdoors in the backyard with my little buddies.