Goodbye Fall

I'm not sure where the time went this fall! We were busy busy busy. Both Lily and I are in school a bit more this year, which she loves and I have mixed feelings about. I enjoy my job very much and the people I work with, but I miss spending time with Lily.

We try to make up for it on the weekends. This fall we visited multiple pumpkin patches, but the outing of the season was one Lily requested - apple picking! I don't know the first thing about different kinds of apples, but I do enjoy a good apple pie, so away we went to the apple orchard - just Lily, Jeremy and I - Jeremy to lug the bucket of apples around and me to take the pictures.
We picked a beautiful sunny fall day to go and were lucky to get several good pictures, and a lot more apples than I bargained for, out of the trip.

If Lily had her way we would have also left with one of these sleepy fellas - brown lab puppies for sale at the farm. She was so sweet snuggling with them, they kept falling asleep in her lap. We went back to their box several times to see them.

Luckily, we were saved by the draw of the hay-bale maze to distract her away from the puppies.

The fall zipped by. We spent Friday mornings with our favorite boys:

... Friday afternoons were Mommy and Lily time - my favorite part of the week!!

In big Lily news this fall:

Lily started pre-K this year! She's attending the same school she attended preschool last year, and is in the pre-K/K class. The pre-K students spend most of their day in the pre-K/K class and some of the day in the preschool class. She has had an amazing year so far - she has grown emotionally, academically, in all areas! We love her teacher and so many things about how school has gone this year. Before the end of the summer, Lily had no interest in writing/drawing/coloring/art. Late in the summer she got interested in mazes and she has exploded into her writing skills lately. She's known how to write her name for several months now, but check out the word she wrote about a month ago (and now I'm bragging - no one taught her to do this; she decided in her head to write the word "mom," and figured it out all by herself, she didn't even tell me she was writing it until she'd finished)! It's an example of how her innate desire for learning, coupled with the guidance of her teachers and activities in school, have come together to make a true learner. If you can handle the bragging, I'll share more stories later of what she's been up to in her reading skills lately...

And so we close up fall. It certainly seems to have moved on in terms of weather. We're taking less walks outside and spending more time cuddling up with a good book. Fall was fun, but we're having fun moving into winter too.

Someone's been hanging around our place lately...

Hope you all had a great fall. Stay tuned for more fun!