Annual Fall Photo Shoot

Each Fall we go to a park and take pictures of Emma.  We went last Saturday in between watching General Conference sessions.  I always love the pictures we get.  She is a very lovely subject to shoot.  And I love snapping a few of Emma with Eric too.  Here are a few of my favorites along with proof that Emma loves being an oddball no matter what we're doing.  =)

Fall Camping

September is great month to go camping here.  There usually aren't as many bugs, and if it was a humid summer, the humidity has usually gone down a bit.  This year, however, it seemed like every weekend was either raining or had something else planned that prevented us from going.  We finally managed to find a night that worked, and to help work around another activity that evening that we went to first, we just camped really close to home.  In fact, we camped on a friend's property.  It's a great bit of property, so it still felt like we were far away from everyone.  We did have a fire and enjoyed watching the stars.  And in the morning we had pancakes and bacon.  In Eric's opinion, if there's bacon involved, anything can be considered a success.





The following weekend we went with some friends to another campground and cooked dinner and enjoyed a nice fire.  We didn't actually campout that night because it was going to get too cold, but in the evening it was great.  I didn't get any pictures of all the kids because they were too busy running around playing and having fun.  We've gone several times before with these friends and it never fails to be entertaining and relaxing.  I always leave looking forward to the next time.

Autumn Activities

I love all the different Fall activities there are to do each year.  I really wanted to go to a corn maze this year, and found one about an hour away that sounded good.  We went out to the farm and discovered several different things to do.

They had a huge area with several mini-buildings for kids to climb in, on, and around.  I was impressed by the variety, but also how fun everything looked.  I would have loved this area as a kid.  And the coolest part was that it wasn't just the outside you could climb on.  You could be inside all the structures, some of them with multiple levels inside.  The pirate ship had a hull underneath and a staircase inside from the hull to the helm area.  The bard had a spiral staircase leading up to the silo slide and several levels inside.  Really neat.  There was also a tractor with a trailer structure that I didn't take a picture of.

Pirate Ship

Barn and Silo

Back of the barn where the slide was

A Fort

School Bus.  Emma didn't appreciate what Eric was doing when she saw the picture later.

There was another area with a bunch of rocking horses, but designed after different animals, not just horses.  Emma wanted to try all of them.  The pig was her favorite.  They had a chicken, a pig, a horse, a sheep, a goat, and a cow.  

You could also "pick" a pumpkin from a pumpkin patch.  They had a little mock race track for kids where they'd ride tricycles, but alas, Emma was too big for it.  It probably wouldn't have captured her imagination as much as little kids anyway.   There was also a water pump rubber duck racing area, as well as a pumpkin cannon and sling-shot.  We had fun doing the canon and sling-shot, but I forgot to get any pictures of it.  We hit the target though, so we won a pumpkin to bring home.  Score!

Not a very good angle, but this is the rubber ducky water pump race.  You'd pump water
into the chute and try to float your duck to the other side faster than your opponent.

But what we really went there for was the corn maze.  The maze covered six acres.  We got a map when we entered, and Emma navigated us through.  It took us about 45 minutes to finish.  I loved watching Emma lead us around the place.  She did a pretty good job too!  

Emma was trying look anxious as if she were trapped in a corn jail.

This bridge was at the half way point.

Annual Apple Picking

This year's apple picking was a little rushed compared to years past.  We went out bright and early, waited in line until they opened, and then hurried to pick our apples.  They didn't seem to have as many honey crisps as in the past - I don't know why.   Perhaps it was just my perception, or maybe the crop wasn't as plentiful this year, but regardless, we got the apples we wanted.  We then quickly drove down the road another mile to pick up some delicious donuts at another farm.  So warm and yummy!

We then hurried up to the church so we could make it for the primary program practice.  It was just bad timing that these activities happened on the same day, but we did our best to make it work.  Since I'm in the primary presidency I really wanted to be there to help with the practice.  I'm not just a super dedicated mom who wanted to kill myself to get my kid there for it.  =)  Amazingly we made it in time.  I love apple picking, so there was no way I was going to miss it completely.  It's all about compromising sometimes.  But it's always worth the early morning!