I have decided it's Fall even though it's still hot outside and I have big purple and white flowers blooming in my flower bed (surrounded by lush, green grass). I waited as long as I could.

I picked up some cheap-o crap at Wal-Mart (with the help of my SIL, Amanda) and put together my lame idea of Fall decor.



I also put some fake Fall leaves above the door. Adrian happily pointed out that I hung them crooked. Ok, I'm pregnant and I was standing on a chair putting these leaves up. That is as good as it's going to get.



That was last weekend. Yesterday I made a Halloween Chex Mix. It's NOT too early. It's the middle of September. And what comes after September? See!!



While the Chex Mix was drying and I was helping Xavier with some homework, Isabella snagged the container filled with the remaining candy corn. Orian started chasing her, which I told him not to do because if you chase her, she will be hell bent on destroying whatever you were chasing her to get. It's just one of her little quirks, LOL.

Sure enough, she dumped all the candy corn on the floor and then threw it into the air like confetti. She also threw some in my face with spite and glee. Take that, mommy! I wasn't even chasing her! I don't know why I got candy-corn'ed.



Orian was amused by her antics, but Xavier...not so much.



He was trying to finish up his big project for class. He is in a TAG class this year, so he gets fun projects and subject matter. This assignment was creating a working board game. It needed to not too closely resemble a real game, hopefully be laminated, have real game pieces instead of paper ones, etc.



He had planned his game out ahead of time, and originally had about a week and a half to work on it. We finished it last night...the night before it was due. Bad mommy.



We covered an old game board with a couple layers of butcher's paper and he figured out what he wanted for the spaces. His game is a math game, called Freaky/Geeky. The premise is that the players move their game pieces (Hero Scape Zombies, LOL) around the game board by answering math questions. The freaky questions are typical for his math class. The geeky ones, which are fewer in spaces on the board, are more difficult. At the four corners are comic book stores. As a player passes a comic book store, s/he gets a comic book (Tribond pie pieces that fit into the Tribond pie shell) and the goal is to be the first to fill the pie shell with all your comic books. One random square makes you lose a comic book.

Unfortunately, I ran out of laminating paper, so only the top of the board and the game directions are laminated (his choice as to what to laminate).



He also had to have a box, so we took a game box and covered it with butcher's paper as well.



He was really proud of his work and frequently commented that he thought he would have the best game of his entire class and that he thought he would get a 100. The project did make him thing a lot of about logistics and spacing, theme, and of course, the math problems. I did some of the harder ones and made him figure out the answers, haha, instead of just supplying the answers to him.

I can't wait 'til he gets home from school to report back on how his game was received.