Pumpkins with our pumpkin

ooooh how I LOVE this time of year! There's just something in the air. Fall seems to engage all of your senses from the beauty of the colors, to the way it smells. I just get giddy thinking about it.

One of the chairman in Dave's department, Dr. Argenta, has his own farm in a town nearby. He told Dave we could go to the farm today and pick out some pumpkins from his pumpkin patch with Anna. Oh boy, did we take him up on his offer! I've never seen such a variety of pumpkins in all shades and sizes. Anna was in heaven.

She found a couple that were just the right size and some that were not, but she tried to carry anyway. She was giggling and leaping around the pumpkins nonstop.

I love this picture because it takes a second to find her.


She even carried her pumpkins back to the car herself. Of course.
Little Miss Independent.

Thank you Dr. Argenta!

Now on to carving! (or painting in Anna's case!)

Happy Fall!

The Dixie Classic

I have never met anyone who didn't love fall. What's not to love? It seems to bring an abundance of change to each of our senses. So much to look, feel, hear, smell, and taste (pumpkin anything! yum!) Fall always seems to have an energy about it that is contagious. It's that change everyone craves, but it's a comfortable, good change. It's a big cozy sweater kind of change. That's why everyone loves it. Our family certainly does. And it hasn't taken Anna long to figure out how fun this time of year can be too.


Every time we pass the pumpkin displays at the store, Anna can't help yelling out, "Punkins, Punkins!" which eventually gets shortened to "Punkie, Punkie!" She was disappointed to find out how heavy they are, but as soon as she found the pumpkin pie size pumpkins, she was so excited to carry her very own "punkie" around. And I am grateful pumpkins don't break easy, because once we got home, she wanted to see if her pumpkin would bounce. multiple times.

Pumpkins make good benches too. Just watch out for the stem!

We wanted to find something here similar to the Thanksgiving Point corn maze and Halloween festivities. We did find a corn maze at a little farm nearby and as you can tell from the picture, Anna did a good job of leading us through the maze. She was most excited to ride on the tractor hayride with the other kids and play in the hay. Oh, and stamp her body a million times with the stamp at each station in the maze. The owner thought it was funny she liked this so much and so he gave Anna her very own stamp. Which then ended up all over her face on the ride home. The ink was RED so it freaked me out at first because I thought she was bleeding everywhere. Glad it was just ink, hopefully the non-toxic kind. Shoulda taken a picture of that!

And now on to the Dixie Classic Fair. Fairs are funny I think. They're fun, but just random. and kinda expensive. Someone is getting rich off all of the carnival games, corn on the cobs and turkey legs. We took Anna to see the cute lambs and above their innocent heads is a sign of how much a pound of lamb costs. Sad! Anna must have thought so too, because she wasn't a fan of seeing the animals in cages. She did love the pig racing and swimming though. And of course the rides. Anna had to go in the fun house because it was the MONKEY maze. We didn't find Curious George, but she still thought it was fun.

Especially since the only way out was a twisty slide

Anna begged to go on the Wiggly Worm, but once we got on, she wanted out.

This is me distracting her so she wouldn't jump off the ride before it started. It takes some serious strength to hold this girl down when she's in one of her determined squirms.

And once the ride started, she was all smiles. She's still talking about going round in "serculls"

This girl loves to drive. She had no trepidation at all jumping behind the wheel of the truck.

Thank you for the fun day, Dixie Classic Fair! See you next year!

All of that fun eventually led to one exhausted girl. Zonked out within minutes. Don't tell her she slept through an ice cream run for Mommy and Daddy!

all in a day's work

I love all of our trees, I really do. We have a gigantor one in front, 3 along the side, and then one more in the back. They give us so much shade in the summer and add so much color to our street in the spring, summer, and fall. But today, I do not love them. Today was the day I finally decided to tackle the task of cleaning up our leaves. They haven't even all fallen yet, but it was such a nice day, and it's supposed to storm tomorrow, so it was as good as time as any. With Dave being gone, I needed some help, so I recruited my family and friends. My mom and dad, Wes, and Amy, and Jill all came to pitch in. I am so lucky they did! I could have never done it on my own! I would still be out there raking! You guys are awesome! THANK YOU!!! It was seriously so nice of them to take time out their days to help me. I think this is one day that Dave is probably glad to be gone. We did about 30 bags of leaves! And I'm not talking about those fluffy bags of leaves, these are FULL compact bags. It can be kind of a fun thing to do, but my problem is that I always think I'm almost done, and then every time I turn around, there's another pile of leaves. Five bags would be fun. After that, it gets old.

And look how much more are still to come! Ugh! This tree is a little "special." I think he's slower than the other trees. It's always the last to bloom in the spring, and the last to drop its leaves in the Fall. It's always about a month behind the others. But we love it anyway, and maybe one day with lots of hard work and practice, it will catch up with the rest of the trees on the street. We really do love our trees, so I shouldn't complain.

After a long day's work, Anna and I went to the library. We got some good books and rented a few DVDs. Anna and I needed a good chick flick for tonight, so we got Annie. I love that little orphan! And Anna was really into it too. Must be all the singing, dancing, the doggie, and that cool guy that can make stuff float in the air. Looks like this is going to be a DVD to purchase! And remember...you're never fully dressed without a smile! And the sun will come out tomorrow! Oh boy, I'm totally going to be singing these songs the rest of the week. Another reason for Dave to be glad he's gone.