. little boys just being cute .

. so . having my nephews each monday provides me with opportunity to have even more fun with my camera . this week i had their mom send 'cowboy' get-up for them . we used it for some real cowboy looking photos that i'm sure they're going to love . but these photos, which aren't so 'cowboy' looking, and more 'little boys just being cute' are my favorite .

. think i'm going to have to frame this one .

. this laugh of ryan's reminds me of when he was a little guy . where did the time go !?!

. sand art spice tea .

. a favorite wintertime drink at our house is spice tea (or tang tea) . ryan has come to love it and i told him we'd make some to send home with him .

. i've always had the idea to make this as gifts and mix it like sand art so we gave it a try . we worked with what we had, which was old fruit and olive jars .

. separated out the ingredients and tried to evenly distribute into jars .

. kind of cool looking, huh .

. well, except for the tops, so we decorated them .

. added a tag and...

. there you have it, sand art spice tea .

. fun thanksgiving activity .

. i'm so thankful to have kiddos at my house every now and then just so we can do fun projects together :) . monday reed and i did a little window painting . we took a leaf template printed off the interent onto card stock, cut it out, put rolled up masking tape on the back and stuck it to a window .

. using tempra paint, sponge paint over the stencil . after it's dry remove the stencil and you've got a really cool leaf pattern on your window pane . the best part is that you can do this with any shape, for any holiday or just for fun . oh and this just washes right off with window cleaner .

. got this idea from our 'great idea book' . this book is great for keeping little ones busy with fun activities that use very basic project supplies .

. happy thanksgiving to you all .

. i'm thankful for blog readers .

:)

. the last few days .

. i've still been enjoying the sunshine and the temps that haven't been too cold (i know it'll be cold soon) . elsie's had this thing with corn since she came here, the other dogs like it too, but she's obsessed .

. she's getting nippy about it . in this photo below she's giving ryan what-for because he's acting like he's going to take it away from her .

. the little lady even nipped at me . a warning nip like 'don't mess with me' . but still !

. ryan and reed were able to stay the night last night . when they are here during the day we never have time to do much fun stuff because ryan has school, anything we do we have to schedule in between school and there just isn't enough time ! so they came and stayed the night and did one of their favorite things, watched movies . we watched up, which i had been wanting to see, very good . and their favorite, alvin and the chipmunks . then this morning we had a little outdoor scavenger hunt .

. found paw prints in the dirt, the hard part was figuring out what animal made it :) .

. our finds .

. 'something prickly' was dangerous, it got us all .

. burned some leaves . love that smell .

. another ideal fall day and so glad to finish it off with newborn baby photos .

. there's a few things we do once a year at aunt sarah's .

. and carving pumpkins is one of them . although reed's ready to move onto ginger bread houses now, thankfully it's not very far away .

. this is a favorite tradition of mine, although i've only done it for what, like 3 years now .

. it's gooey and kinda gross .

. but it really doesn't bother me, i actually love picking out the seeds .

. the boys got into the gooey part too . and they loved the end result .

. jack .

. i had so much fun making jack with the boys, and since they were going to take it home i was feeling like we needed to do one for my place . so we did, or i did, ryan had to get back to his school work and reed was kinda over it by then .

. and probably my favorite part . the roasted seeds .

? have i mentioned i love fall ?

. it warms my heart .

. if i'm ever in need of a smile this'll do it for me .

. september day . from Sarah Nebel on Vimeo.

. coralville lake .

. i had ryan and reed again on tuesday . since i had them an extra day i decided we should get out and do something fun . i hadn't been to the coralville lake to just hang out and play in a few years and thought we should go check it out . we first ate our sandwiches on some rocks down by the dam, then headed out to the beach area . this was their favorite part of the day, they loved swimming in the lake .

. we left there and headed to the other side of the spillway where the boys could run around and get dry . last year during the flooding this was full of water . i can't remember how high it was, but i do remember it was high .

. they had so much fun here but i quickly realized it was a place they should come play with someone else, i kept getting scared they were going to fall over the other side or roll down the big concrete hill . after my heart stopped a few times i made them get down . bummer, i know . i felt like such a party pooper .

. here's reed getting down after i said no more climbing up top .

. oh well, on to more fun things like wading .

. then we noticed when we went to sit on the dock that a crane had come back to the shore, he had flown off when we first got there .

. he had been looking for his lunch .

. see it in his throat .

. as we were leaving we noticed a doe and her fawns .

. only this fawn came out of the trees but there were two . i didn't get the best picture of this little one but it's better than none .

. i loved spending a few days with these guys .

. although i have to say i was pretty tired by tuesday night .