November: leaves, more leaves and a hawk!

November feels like it flew by. Honestly, it seems like Halloween just happened and here we are at the beginning of December already. Crazy.

November was a pretty quiet month. I've spent a few hours every day working on the quilts I'm making for the kids, Lance was in school and Jude and Cole played a lot with their buddies Cameron and Jake. We did enjoy the last couple weeks of leaves on the ground and took advantage of the unseasonably warm weather to play outside as often as we could.

Cole LOVES to be outside and thinks he's one of the big kids. He'll open up our back door and just wander over to the park to play whenever he feels like it. Such a stinker!

This is the look on his face most of the day:

 He is usually the happiest kid and runs around smiling and laughing. I love it. If you ask him if he's happy, he'll throw his hands in the air and yell, "HAPPY!" It makes my heart sing.

 Such a funny kid!

Our Halloween pumpkins turned out well, but they didn't last two nights before the tenant of our local oak trees decided they made a good feast.

 It was fun to watch the squirrels come and eat away at the pumpkins and carry off the tops to their nests. 

We have huge trees behind our apartment and the leaves the drop provide hours of entertainment. I know I've posted tons of pictures of the boys playing in the leaves, but I couldn't help posting some more. The smiles on their faces just make me so happy!

Lance came home from school and joined in the fun, too!

Lance is still missing his good buddies Killian and Kendall, but he has found a few boys his age that he plays with occasionally.

 It always makes me happy to see him outside being a boy. :)

Every year after most of the leaves have dropped, Family Housing sends out several workers to blow all the leaves into one gigantic leaf pile. They usually bring a truck and suck up the pile fairly quickly, but this year they left the glorious pile of leaves for several days. The boys were in heaven! I mean, this pile of leaves is at least 300 feet long!

 What made it even better was Daddy got to come play one day when he was off work!

 (Can you see how huge this pile is? It stretches from one side of the yard to the other, about three feet deep and 10 feet wide. Awesome.)

 Oh, how I love the fall!

And finally, Lance has acquired a new pet! Well, it's actually Scott's pet. George and I watched the Elmers for a week while their parents were out of town and one day I took the twins and Jude with Lance to meet Scott at the Zobrist's farm so they could see the new addition to Lance's family.

Of course we had to first ride the Polaris around the farm, chasing all the geese and trying to out-run Falcon.

And then they fed the ducks:

And then it was time to meet...

Fawkes!

Scott is being apprenticed in Falconry and he and Lance (with the help of their sponsor) snared a female juvenile red-tailed hawk at the end of October. She is currently living in Scott's basement while she learns to come when called and adjusts to life with humans. (Props to Abby for being okay with a huge bird of prey living in her house!) It's quite the hunting sport and is heavily regulated--Scott will have to be apprenticed for two years before he can officially Falcon on his own and he has to register his birds with the government since they are an endangered species.

 While at the farm, Scott and Lance did some training while the rest of the kiddos and I watched from a distance. 

 It was pretty cool to see his bird fly to Scott when he called her. 

Her colors will change a bit--I think Scott said she'll lose her brown and white mottling and will get the "red tail" of her breed. I think she's beautiful!

After the short training period, Scott let all the kids hold her.

I love these pictures of Jude holding Fawkes:

My favorite picture:

 I love the look on Fawkes' face, Jude's smile and Lance's thumbs-up. This picture makes me laugh every time.

While she'll allow people touch her, she's not a dog and doesn't get a thrill from being petted.

 "Don't touch me."

And Falcon was such a good boy. He just hung out and stayed with the kids. He and Fawkes have an understanding and basically leave each other alone, although if Falcon gets a little too close, Fawkes has no qualms reaching out a foot to smack him.

So cool! 

I think that brings Lance's tally of pets up to a whopping three! A dog, a snake and now a hawk. Is he not the luckiest kid in the world?