Flying Through Fall
Too much to do and just not enough time to do it all. Ever feel that way? Well that is why my blog posting has been sparse lately. Happy late Halloween to all! As you may have seen from Dan’s post we had a wonderful time carving pumpkins, trick or treating and doing everything Halloween entails. I figured out the boys’ costumes early this year and it was so nice not to keep thinking of what they should be. The costume Michael wore from Halloween pasts was too big for David so I had to find something new for him. Luckily the little bear costume I pulled out of some box fit perfectly. The boys were troopers and Mikey actually crashed before David, that is Mikey wanted to be held and sit in the stroller long before David. But of coarse each house we past he said, “Oh, just this one too, we haven’t been here, right?. Just one more.” David was all about walking and walking. Of coarse he is still to young to know where to walk though- into the streets, into the bushes, where ever was great for him. Nothing like spending the night chasing after a little dressed up bear. But no, we had a fun time as a family in the neighborhood behind the house. David now loves to go up to our neighbor’s door and knock, and Mikey is an expert at ringing doorbells where ever we go. The cutest thing was when a day or two after Halloween Michael was talking on the phone to Grandma Chan (Nai Nai) and he asked her, “What were you for Halloween, Nai Nai. Where did you go trick-or-treating?”
Thinking back to September. Wow, let’s see. Michael started preschool with a little group of friends. He has been so loving it and bringing home all kinds of art projects and worksheets. They recently have been learning about bears hibernating, squirrels preparing for the winter, and something with bugs in logs. I’ll be teaching sometime early next year and am looking forward to it. We are doing the curriculum from Funshine Express and it seems to be working out really well. Their first field trip was to Apple Ridge Orchard, about a 15 minute drive from our home. They grow apples, pumpkins and grapes. We rode the big tractor/wagon ride up to the apple orchard and picked a nice big bag full. They were so nice and let us eat while we picked. If you’ve never tried our locally grown Minnesota Honey Crisp Apples you are missing out. Dan was even consider selling them the other day. They are really crisp and sweet. You can see both Mikey and Davey downed one or two while we were there. They also had a fun corn maze, which lasted a little too long, farm animals and hay stacks. Michael’s teacher had them fill out a cute picture of things they had to find around the orchard. You can see him in one of the pictures with the paper circling the picture of the llama. 
With all the siblings of the seven students and a few friends we had quite a group. 
Michael is so dramatic eating his apple in these pictures. We even captured his characteristic trait of picking his belly button in the picture on the right. After entering the corn maze I began having flashbacks of when I ran through a cornfield in Navoo, Illinois as a teenager and had an allergic reaction that lasted like 2 days. Miserable- red, puffy, itchy eyes. Thankfully I survived this corn maze with no reaction. I was so nervous. 
David had a wonderful time. This kid is always happy when he has food in his hands. :) He was playing in all the pumpkins, but wouldn’t look at me for the life of him. I finally got a few shots of him looking at me right before he had a nervous breakdown (he missed his morning nap). Feel free to browse our photo gallery for more orchard photos. 
I can’t overlook Dan’s birthday in September. Dan did manage to have the day off and in between running all his errands and studying he and Mikey put together his birthday present. There just seems to be some part of childhood brought out in each of us as we relive our childhood through our children. After finding an awesome deal on Lego City Dan decided it was just what he wanted for his birthday. He and Michael spent most of the afternoon together building this awesome Lego kit with a garage, 3 trucks and lots of other cool stuff that I really am not an expert at. I do think Legos are an amazing toy and fascinated how they are made- did you know their whole factory is run by machines 24/7? They have the whole floor wired mechanically and these robots package everything. Watched something with it with Dan on TV the other night- just fascinating! No wonder they never leave out pieces and even put in several extras of the little ones. Dan and I are impressed by their efficiency. So he and Mikey had fun putting legos together all day. Here’s the finished product.
Totally amazing. I spent most of the day cooking up some tasty Indian food that I’d recently gotten recipes for. I cannot believe how long it took me to make. But we sure had a wonderful home cooked birthday meal. Dan’s not much for sweets so he left it up to me to make something I and the boys would enjoy eating for his cake. I thought Mikey would have fun making a dirt cake with me. The gummy worms were fun for him to put into the oreo dirt, but his favorite part was putting on the candles. He didn’t seem to intrigued with the concept of the dirt cake. Maybe he didn’t get what we were doing, or really wasn’t interested. He loved the cake though. 
David enjoyed eating the gummy worms. I love his face in this picture and the little spikey hair on the right. What a character.
After we put the candles on, Dan was recording with the camera and passed it over to me and we sung to him video recording the whole time. It didn’t even dawn on me to turn the video off and snap a picture of him and his cake. Guess I tend to forget these things with 2 little kiddos demanding attention. We do love you Dan. Happy Birthday!
October 12th brought with it our first snowfall of the year. Michael was in heaven and ran outside to eat a snowball, catch the snow in his mouth, and enjoy the first magical moments of winter. He’s so excited for snow…takes after his Daddy.
Two days prior to this snowfall our friends invited us to go hiking with them at Carley State Park (like 20 minutes away). I’d been out painting our deck (which by the way is finally finished! Yea!) and so I realized how cold it was, but decided that a hike would be fun. I bundled the kids up in 2 layers, winter coats, hats and gloves. Somehow it feels like I just put those away not to long ago. Hmm. When the sun was out it was beautiful, but most of the time it was overcast. We were hoping for lots of pretty fall colors, and were a little disappointed that the park didn’t have too many colors to offer. Seemed like most of the leaves had already fallen. I do miss our hikes up the canyon in Provo- there’s nothing else like a scenic view from the top of a mountain hike. But the boys had a blast, Michael especially when there was water and stepping stones to jump across. He has to do everything himself these days. I could just see him slipping and falling into the frozen spring water, screaming and having no other clothes to put on. I love the top left picture here below of Mikey grabbing David in a huge bear hug. He’s learning to be a good older brother with all kinds of hugs and tackles these days. 
We got a few fun shots of David who happens to be in that stage of life where he looks anywhere but the camera for a picture. Dan did get some cute ones here of him smiling. He was so bundled up and excited to be out of the backpack. He really is such a sweet and fun boy. 
Towards the end of the hike there was a little park bench to rest on. David and Meghan who were on the hike with us grabbed a picture of our family and it actually turned out. Dan posted a gallery of all the pictures from the hike if you want to see the complete collection.
I really do love fall. This early crazy snow and cold seems to have tapered off a bit now and the coats are back in the closet. Boys have been wearing jackets for most of the past month. We’ve had a few warm days to play out in the leaves and I’ll post up some pictures of that soon. I hear the high is supposed to be 64 degrees tomorrow. We might just have to go on a bike ride.
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Gorgeous pictures… and beautiful family – I love the last photo. It all makes me miss the north a lot. Went hiking today in our cool fall weather (high of 81F) through the swamp… it just isn’t the same.
Such beautiful pictures! You’ve had a very eventful fall.