Fall Leaves 2018

Every year we love to take some family photos in the fall leaves. This year it seemed like the leaves fell later but that meant they were colorful longer! So we got a little color in this year, even if there wasn't quite as many leaves to jump in. It was also a little warmer day, so no coats! I'll let the pictures speak for themselves!

Fall Festival & Picking Apples

Some friends of ours' from our Homeschool Group go to a different local church that always hosts a really great Fall Festival. This is our second year going and the kids had a blast! This year they even got to ride ponies. Leah went off on her own with her friends so I didn't see her much but she said she rode the horses several times!

Jacob wasn't a big fan, but I stood beside him long enough to go around once and Abi took the picture!

The giant slide bounce house is always a hit. Jacob climbed all the way up with Andrew's help but was too scared to come down on the slide. So he stuck to the other bounce house that was for smaller kids.

Of course Jacob loved the playground even more than the activities set up for the Fall Festival. It was a fairly nice day, although overcast. 

I caught Leah hula hooping with her friends.

We had hot dogs, cotton candy, apple cider, and doughnuts all for free before playing some games and going home with balloons.

Later that week, we decided to go pick apples. It was a super warm day, so it didn't feel quite like fall, but we took advantage of the nice day before all the apples were picked! Really we didn't need any apples, but I just like taking pictures and having the experience. Jacob was being three and was not happy about the walking he had to do, so he was not really excited about the photo taking.

He of course doesn't actually eat apples, because they're a fruit, but he did carry one in each hand the whole time.

Jacob's 3rd Birthday

There is no longer a little baby in our house! I can hardly believe this little "stinkpot" is already 3 years old. He brings so much laughter and joy to our house. He is funny and so smart, not to mention brave and stubborn and tough. He is generally a pretty happy kid, although he does have his share of tantrums. He likes things a specific way (especially when it comes to clothes, or that yellow cup you see in the first picture), and if they don't happen that way, he has been known to collapse in a heap on the floor. Still, he's super cuddly and loves to sit with me while I'm reading or watching TV, and always wants to sit on the counter when I'm cooking-- a constant companion. He loves to play cars or dinosaurs or stack blocks. He especially loves playing with "his" Andrew and Abi.

He's not too easy to buy gifts for, because he really just likes to stack and sort things, or dump things 

out for other people to clean up, but he got a little coloring book and a big dump truck for Duplo blocks for his birthday. He had no specific requests for his cake except that it was chocolate with white frosting, so I decided to decorate with blocks & ABC's, two of his favorite things.

He normally has no problem being the star of the show, but he was being a little bit shy about being sung to. And stubborn, like usual. He definitely "gets" birthdays this year and was walking around singing "Happy Birthday to Jacob" most of the day.

Finally, we got that infamous cheese grin! He still didn't want to eat at the table, so he took his cake to the floor to eat. Whatever!