Looks delicious, right? We frankly never considered what a drumstick collection might look like, nor did we ever imagine such a collection would appear so...anatomical.
Tyler's in bed right now, but I expect we might have a conversation with our oldest about art and how his latest piece might be interpreted. 
...(the mascot for the high school, middle school, and elementary school in Dilley is the wolf, so the daycare expanded on the theme and calls itself 'Li'l Pups.') There's nothing 'Li'l' about this 5-foot tall ravenous wolf head.Go DJ! It's your birfday!
Here are my lettuce and broccoli plants. The big tomato plant actually planted itself there. One of the cherry tomatos fell off a plant that I had there during the summer and sprouted. Then it survived the attack of the spider mites and virus toting leaf hoppers (without any help from me) and is growing like crazy. We are going to have some super yummy salads in a month if everything goes well. Which I'm sure it won't...
This is my herb garden. The giant plants are basil and some sort of flowering thing that takes 265 days to bloom. It's getting kind of big and I'm not sure I'm going to keep it - not there at least. I have oregano, chives, green onions, parsley, cilantro, mexican oregano, sage and thyme. The green onions are plants that I bought at the grocery store too.
I actually have a better picture where everyone is smiling and looking at the camera but it's blurry. Oh well, you just can't win when you're taking pictures of kids who are waiting to get candy.
A-dore-a-ble!!!!!!
Derek got 3 or 4 of these worms cause he kept using his hands. I didn't stop him cause I needed to take pictures ;)
Tyler isn't sad in this picture. He's trying to be creepy.
Same with this one.
Again: candy excitement = blurry pumpkin bucket.
That's me and the boys carving pumpkins in the background. The big bubble-bowl in the foreground is part of Jared's Halloween Dry Ice Science Lab extravaganza.
This is Tyler's pumpkin. He wants to make sure that everyone knows that it just had a lobotomy (he recently learned that word from Calvin and Hobbes).
This is Derek's pumpkin. It's a happy vampy.
The night shots.
Pump-kin bar-mitzvah, spooky scary. 
Our first activity was scarecrow building. We were supposed to stuff the clothes with the hay. Derek pulled out one handful, got poked with a sticker, and then left the rest of the job to me and Jared.
Grandma and Tyler were on the other end setting the scarecrow up on the stand.
Tyler was adamant that our scarecrow have a head so we made one out of a t-shirt. Grandma made his eyes out of balls of weeds from the grass. Tyler was so proud.
A scenic pond.
The pumpkin patch was actually not a pumpkin patch at all. They had lots of pumpkins there but they were all just shipped in and piled up on the lawn. The farm was actually an apple orchard. They grow cute little sweet Texas apples and sell them to HEB stores. We got some at the HEB later in the week and they were really really good. They are super fresh and don't have any preservatives so you have to keep them in the fridge, but it's worth it.
At the petting zoo we saw all kinds of farm animals. Tyler got to hold the new baby chick - it was only a week old.
Holly cornered an old turkey and poked it a lot.
Derek and Holly were super excited to go into this tee-pee. Tyler saw it and said, "It's probably just big and empty inside." This is him telling me that he was right.
Here is Holly.
Taking a break on the pumpkin stairs after Grandma got a little tipsy on 'Pumpkin Juice.'
The hay maze. Um...it wasn't really a maze. It was more like a hay corral with hay obstacles. Tyler walked in the entrance and out the exit in about 10 seconds. Derek ran around inside for at least 15 minutes pretending that he couldn't figure out where to go.
Yay for family fun!!
Later on it turned into this. We were suprised at how terribly scary it is. Um....oh well. The deed is done and we already took the ladder back to the neighbor. Hee hee. I love this time of year!
Then, further down, when Tyler sees the trampoline rubberband thing, it's hard to tell him no when I just let Derek ride the train. He wanted to do it at first, then he got scared and then he really liked it. Actually, I think it looked kind of fun.
Here is a video I took of Holly on the beach. I couldn't get one of her in the waves because I need both hands to catch her and my camera isn't waterproof :P Enjoy!
As it turns out, Holly LUVA-LUV-LOVES the beach. As soon as we got there she ran out into the waves and wouldn't come back. She would just keep going deeper and deeper and laughing her head off when a wave knocked her down. When the waves got to be too much for her to stand up she would crawl. It was all we could do to keep her from just washing out to sea. I dubbed her "The Salty Sea Baby".
Tyler had a really fun time playing in the waves too. Out in the surf, there are series of sandbars that run parallel to the beach. They are under the water but make it possible for people to go way out into the water to play in really big waves (you can see the tiny people in the first picture.) Tyler really wanted to go out there so Jared went with him and he had a really fun time. Derek not so much. He liked staying on the shore and building sand castles.
This is my photo tribute to Josh and Sydney Christiansen.
What a super day!
After lunch we met some more staff and then went out behind the district building to learn how to put out fires with fire extinguishers. The janitor built a BIG fire using two-by-fours and gasoline. Most of the extinguishers he had for us to use worked pretty good. The one I got wouldn't shut off so I put my fire out really really good. I wish I could say more....jpg)
Dash board resembling the bridge of the starship Enterprise. No key here. Just make sure you have the remote with you in your pocket or your purse and push the button that says 'Start.' Don't worry if you don't hear anything actually start. The engine doesn't come on until you push the gas pedal..jpg)
Squishy kid land. Poor Derek - I think he might end up relegated to the hump in the middle. Perhaps I can find a way to install Holly's car seat there so that she can keep the boys separated and .jpg)
Derek and I were taking a walk and our conversation went like this: