Fall colors

this is a long exposure of the photo I posted last time. I was trying to smooth out the waterfall. Alas I must not have had a steady hand but it looks sort of cool

The park in Shanna's neighborhood is surrounded by baby crimson maples

The hard frost caused many of the leaves to fall overnight. Oliver was fascinated with the sun catching the dew crystals on the leaves..like diamonds. Alas, not evident in this photo

It has not been a good year for fall colors. An extended Indian Summer, which I was very happy to experience, must have delayed the color change. And now the cold and the winds have knocked the leaves down. It was 27 degrees this morning as I waited with Oliver for his bus. Fortunately it was more on time today versus very late on Monday. There is an app which tracks the school buses (Where in the F  is the bus???) but I don't have it. The other mother did the other day but it only said the bus was delayed without telling how delayed. My favorite was Shanna finding the missing bus once at a Starbucks. Then I run home to get the other two ready to get on their bus in the opposite direction. And then we get to return to our house for the day.

So it is an experience dealing with 3 kids, 4 yesterday. Finding missing clothes at the last minute, begging kids to get dressed with them thinking they are doing me a huge favor by complying. I brought them all over to our house yesterday as Daniel needed my computer to order photos for this big project we are going to be working on later today. We got a lot of it done yesterday. Lot of my motivation consists of dangling tablet time in front of them and taking it away for various sins such as Daniel biting his sister. When I ask Oliver to do something, he always cheerfully agrees to do it but I come back and find the task undone and him affixed to the tablet. As it was chilly yesterday, the only kid who wanted to go outside was Maya. She rode Oliver's bike while I rode Shanna's. They are putting up yet another subdivision nearby that has a lot of paved streets and no traffic, perfect for Maya.

Their parents return tomorrow night. They had not contacted us in two days until I finally texted them last night to see if they had been kidnapped or something. Usually I go to my cooking class today but it is right when the buses return and I don't think I could get Steve to do bus duty (won't be able to find the stops, too cold, getting a cold). And I will miss next month because I will be in Spain. We had bought a packaged deal for a change instead of me making lots of arrangements. But right before we left to New York, we were informed that they ran out of their allotment of train tickets so we were on our own to get from Sevilla to Barcelona. They will give us back the money they took but tough luck to us. Fortunately intracountry flights are quite cheap so that's what we will do.