Fall

This fall has been really warm in terms of the temperature.  It has made it nearly impossible to actually get into the spirit of the season.  But we are finally experiencing some cool weather.  Hallelujah!  I say that and today is in the mid-70s.  But I will take what I can get. 

Obviously I have fallen delinquent on updating the blog again.  I will blame the several weekends of work that I have had in a row.  However, in between work and our normal schedules, we have hit up multiple fall festivals. So many that Liam has become accustomed to asking when we are going to the next bounce house. Being the "Mother of the Year" that I am, I have forgotten to take my camera to many a festival, but here are a few things that we have done the past few weekends.

Pumpkin patch near our old home.  We took Liam to go pick out his own pumpkins.  Until we saw the prices.  Yikes!  A medium sized pumpkin was like $35.  We opted for a cute little gourd that was about the size of my fist instead. 



They had a kid friendly hay maze.  Liam had a great time following Eric around in their attempts to get out. 

 

Success!  Cue Chariots of Fire music.

 

Liam picking out his favorite pumpkin and touching every other one along the way.



Dress rehearsal for Halloween.  Who knew how difficult it would be to find an age appropriate Halloween costume for a toddler boy!  The ones I found were either too mature or too cutesy.  And I can't be ruining my boy's street cred.

 Eric and I have really settled into our new digs (although we still have a lot of stuff to do around the house).  But we are loving our new neighborhood.  I think Eric said it best, "It is a little piece of Americana that I didn't know still existed."  A few weeks back we had National Night Out and a lot of neighbors gathered outside to meet and eat popsicles (temps in the 90s).  We have been enjoying going to the several parks around and playing with Liam.  It is great to see all these kids playing in soccer games and meeting other parents around our age. 

Our neighborhood has a flag program where the HOA lines the streets with large American flags for every patriotic holiday.  For the 4th of July they have a parade where kids ride their bikes and wagons, and dress up their pets in red, white and blue.  It is just really fun to be part of such an active neighborhood. 

One of our favorite things to do this fall has been to go to the Creek II Creek festival in our neighborhood.  Our neighborhood is technically made up of three "creeks." So they started this yearly party where they bring in live bands, food vendors, bounce houses, etc.  The afternoon that it was held, the temperature was perfect and we took the opportunity to go walk around, sample some goodies and play with Liam.  

The Creek II Creek Fall Festival in our neighborhood.

The boy loves his bouncey toys.

If I weren't almost 9 months pregnant I would have been right behind him!

Sheer joy! We went back in the line for this one about 5 times.

Enjoying the view from above.

Liam's school had a trunk-or-treat where he was able to get his feet wet on practicing what he needed to do for the big night.  This is been the first of his three Halloweens that he has actually gotten the concept of what he needed to say in order to get candy.  Heck, last year he wanted nothing to do with candy that was put in his basket and would promptly empty out his plastic jack-o-lantern when anyone would try to put treats in there. This year was much different.

Finally! Halloween night!

Cat and the Hat

"Daddy, are you sure about this?"



"Don't mind if I do..."



Victorious return, hopped up with sugar and none to happy to take a bath and go to bed.

This has been a really fun season and we have been trying to make a real effort to expose Liam to new traditions like watching Charlie Brown's Great Pumpkin and having popcorn and drinking hot chocolate on those rare cool Texas nights.  It makes me excited for the next few sets of holidays that we are going to have and getting to build memories as a family!