Elmwood

Today was a gorgeous day. The children and I did story time at the bookstore this morning -- a selection of Sandra Boynton books -- and afterward it was just too nice to stay inside.

We've been doing leaf rubbings lately. We have an abundance of leaves on our land, and it's become quite a favorite way to pass the time. Because of this, I decided to take the children to Elmwood Cemetery. We've been before, several times, but it's been more than a year. We've always enjoyed doing gravestone rubbings, so that's what we did today.

Spyder remembers doing them before, so he set to work straightaway, choosing a pink crayon because "it's a happy color."


Sass started out doing leaves, since that's what we've done at home, but she got the hang of it pretty quickly. She chose a black crayon because "we're surrounded by dead people." Ah yes, the dichotomy.


And, as hard as I tried, I couldn't convince them to do their rubbings near each other, so I could get a shot of the two of them together. This was the best I could get.

While they did the rubbings, I went in search of interesting carvings. That's my favorite part of old cemeteries. They're just as much outdoor museums as they are a final resting place.




And the trees were gorgeous. Normally they've lost all of their leaves by now, but with the unseasonably warm weather, they were still just as lovely.



We were there for an hour and a half, and none of us was particularly ready to leave until


Sass fell and scraped her knee. Oh the horror! The blood! She suddenly became unable to walk, and Spyder helped her limp back to the car. We'll go back soon though, before it gets too cold and the leaves are gone.

After we left, Sass insisted that she would never feel better without ice cream. Neither would Spyder, since she knew he felt so bad for her, with her knee tragedy and all.

We went for ice cream. There are worse ways to see the sunset, sitting outside, eating ice cream, talking about the great day we'd had.