I love Fall!

Fall is my favorite season in Vermont. Unfortunately, it is also the shortest season. I thought I would do a picture post recapping our busy fall. We have had amazingly clear warm weather, but winter is in the air.

I took Joshua to the park by our house to capture some of the fall foliage. He honestly would not sit still for a minute. He is so active, today at church one of the women asked me if he ever settled down as we watched him walk around and around and around the piano, and then run and steal all the other kids snacks. I had to honestly answer no. He is always on the move even when he is asleep.

Playing in the fall leaves, they were gorgeous this year.

Joshua loved our cat Figaro. He is always wanting to hold her even though she is as big as he is. The other day I set her in his lap and he would not let her go...

even when he toppled over with her. He sat there for like 15 minutes laughing and giggling while the cat just purred away.

Caleb's mom came into town and we had so much fun with her. Joshua loved her and was excited to have another playmate. While she was here she taught me how to make and bottle apple sauce. We went apple picking and made 14 quarts of apple sauce, we also froze, juiced, and dried a ton more apples. I was so happy to finally learn how to bottle.

Joshua's new favorite pass time is cooking. We did a lot of cooking with Kathy and he loved standing on a chair and helping. Now anytime I am doing anything in the kitchen he starts pulling starts grunting and painting while he pulls a chair across the kitchen to the counter.

We also went to see the Barre granite quarry. It was really interesting to see. It is a gigantic pit of granite. At first it didn't look that deep but then we saw a guy working in the bottom and he was tiny.

Joshua has to read a pile of books every night before bed, and he only wants Daddy to read them. He loves Caleb, especially in the morning and at night when he doesn't want to go to bed. The other night he was saying night night and giving hugs to Grandma and Caleb and he actually started to say nigh- nigh. Now he says night nigh daden (daddy) pretty clear. He is starting to pick up quite a few little words.

We loved having Caleb's mom here. Joshua just really loved having her here, and it was great to be able to spend some time together.

Our friend Vanessa is an amazing photographer and was wonderful enough to take some family pictures of us. These are just a few of the unedited ones I will post the real ones when we get them. I thought they were great and the fall colors were amazing.





Joshua was squirmy and moving all over the place, as usual, so we tried to give him a break and let him play with this wheel barrel. He would not give it up. She ended up getting a ton of cute pictures of him with it.

On Friday we had a little community Halloween party. Joshua is a lion this year. Before I put him in the costume I used the lion as a puppet and was playing with him. Then I put it on him and showed him himself in the mirror and he got all excited. He left the hood and even the mittens on the entire party. Usually it is impossible to leave hoods or hats on him, but he liked being a lion.

At the party there were all sorts of cute crafts and activities. This one was to make spiders out of Oreos. He didn't really no what to do with it but enjoyed crumbling it to bits. I tried to give him a piece but he only like to pull it all apart.

When my mom was in town we went to the science center down by the lake. This is from one of the interactive exhibits. It's totally random, but I figured, where else to put this if not on the blog...

The Pumpkin Patch

Today we went to the Pumpkin Festival at one of the local farms. They had a petting zoo, hay rides, and fun fall foods.
Here they are waiting for the hay ride to the pumpkin patch.

Riding to the pumpkin patch. Joshua loved the tractor, and kept pointing at it going vroom vroom.

Joshua loved the pumpkins and wanted to roll them like balls...

...and pick them up like balls. Luckily they were to heavy to throw.

Daddy and Joshua

Joshua loves animals especially horses. He thinks anything big with four legs is a horsey and will make his horsey noise.

Almost everyday we play on the play set across the street.

Joshua loves the slide and just barely learned to go down all my himself. He is always so proud of himself when he does.

His new thing he wants to conquer is the curved ladder. He is really good at it but we still spot him.

Meet Ducky... it is Joshua's favorite toy. He loves to roll it everywhere he goes, he also loves to pound it on the ground. Joshua's favorite thing to do is stand on my make-up box and watch all the buses and trucks go by out the window.

Fall has Come

The weather is changing and all the leaves are bursting out in bright colors. The whole month of September was pretty sunny and warm so everyday we have been spending as much time outside as possible. We have gone to Shelburne Farms a lot. The other day was the Fall Harvest festival, and we all went together. They had fall foods, crafts, and activities.

Joshua loves trucks and tractors, every time we go to the farm he has to ride on them. He also loves the chickens and will go ba-ba-ba to them.



At the harvest festival they had a Blue Grass band playing which Joshua loved. He loves to dance and loved the beat of the blue grass music.



Joshua's new favorite pass time is reading books. I think I have red him the Little Golden Book Tootle, The little Red Caboose, and The Fire Engine Book at least a hundred times. Anytime I sit down to do anything he comes running with a book to read.

New Pictures of Joshua

I have not taken pictures of Joshua since his 12 month pictures so I thought I need to take some updated ones. He is 15 months now and getting so big. The other day he was getting all Caleb's BBQ tools out. They are one of his favorite things to play with. He brought them all out on the back walk and was working really hard at it. Then he brought down Caleb's chimney, for starting coals. He set it down on the sidewalk and squatted next to. Then he started to blow in, just like he saw his daddy do a month ago when he was starting to get the coals going. It was really cute he kept doing it and working really hard trying to get a "fire" started.

Here are some of my favorite pictures that I just took of Joshua.

Mt. Mansfield

On Labor day Caleb and I decided we wanted to go on an adventure. We decided to hike Mount Mansfield, the highest mountain in Vermont. The Park ranger told us that is was totally do-able with a baby and it was only a 2.7 mile hike to the top, so we figured that would be fun and easy. It was not nearly as easy as we thought. It was the steepest rockiest trail I have ever hiked. It was basically 2.7 miles of stairs made of huge boulders. The entire trail was like these huge rocks we had to crawl up. Some parts were actually spots were we had to look for hand and foot holds and climb up a face or a chute. Joshua was a good little trooper through it all.

I was getting really nervous and almost made Caleb turn around.



We stopped at Taft's lodge and had lunch before we climbed the last .6 miles to the summit. We really needed the break.



We finally made it to the top and were exhausted. Joshua didn't like the summit because it was really windy. I wasn't prepared for how cold that wind was, so had to put his shirt on him as pants. The view was spectacular and worth most (OK, all) of the effort.





We tried to take the easiest way down so hiked down to the Stowe Ski resort and went down along some of the runs. We are still pretty sore from the hike, but we have at least hiked to the top.

California

I am finally getting around to writing a post about the California part of our trip. Unfortunately I did not take too many pictures, I guess I was just too busy and kept forgetting. For a lot of the trip we helped my parents move. My brothers and nephews and nieces all came up and helped and we got it down really fast. Joshua and Ezra loved playing in the boxes and trying to "help" us put things away. My niece from Utah Ali was there the whole time we were, and it was so great to see her. She is at BYU Idaho now and we don't see her much so it was great to spend lots of time with her. Joshua loved her and she was a huge help playing with him and all the little ones.

We went to the beach and my Dad loves Boogie boarding and we grew up doing it. So my mom and Ali watched Joshua for me so I could spend some time out with my Dad and Sister. It was so much fun, I haven't gotten to go since before Joshua was born and it my favorite thing to do at the beach, especially with my dad.



I could not keep Joshua out of the waves. He would just walk right into them head on so I had to keep a hold of him the whole time. He would laugh and laugh when the waves would crash all around him. The water was really warm so he loved it.



We mainly spent lots of time hanging out together. It was a really fun relaxing trip, and Joshua really misses all the little cousins.