Make a Smilebox photobook

A Little Buzzy Bee

If you ask Emily "what is mommy's favorite flower", she will tell you "tulips" and she would be right. But my favorite flower of the fall season is always a mum. I love the vibrant colors of the flower: golds, oranges, burnt reds and even the yellow (not so much the purples, just not "fall" to me). So, during the months of October and November I like to place mums on my porch steps to offset the colors of the house and the vibrant red of our Japanese maple tree. The search for the perfect mums is always fun but sometimes unprofitable - I still don't have any on my porch to date. One thing that always comes from our "mum search" is great pictures of the kids checking out the flowers. Matt got very adventurous and went in among the flowers to give them a "smell". He looked like a little worker bee among all the yellow mums. Will I get mums for the porch? You bet I will, it is my mission and tradition.

Our Little Pumpkin

One of our favorite things to do this time of year is to go and purchase pumpkins and mums to decorate the outside of the house for the fall season. This year was no different. We headed out to a farm here in NJ close to the NY border. We don't go into the pumpkin patch to pick them...just not enough time or energy to do it. This is one of my main photo opportunities for my favorite season. For some reason, Matt was more of the pumpkin "poser" this year than Emily. We left with 3 pumpkins, apple cider, mulling spices, several oatmeal raisin cookies and last but certainly not least or forgotten - apple cider doughnuts. Yum! It was a great day and a tradition we will continue to do until the kids get tired of participating. Then, I'll just go get the pumpkins and mums alone.....what a sad and lonely day that will be. I'm sure we have a few more years of this tradition ahead of us.

Giddy Up Horsey!

This weekend we went to a fall festival in Ridgewood, NJ. The day started out a little cold and rainy but by the afternoon it got quite warm. One of the attractions at the fall festival was a pony ride. Emily and Matt enjoyed "riding" at the Meadowlands Fair this summer so we tried it again and they loved it. Matt went first on the smaller pony named "Chocolate" (today he still remembers the name of that horse) Emily went second on the larger pony named "Brooklyn" (she is not very good at remembering names, not even people names). Emily and Matt also got to play in the bounce houses, did a turkey hunt (toy rubber turkeys) for prizes and both got tattoos: Emily - Cinderella and Matt - a race car (this was Matt's first tattoo, Emily's second). They had food and tables with items for sale, so we did a little eating and shopping (one book each and jibitz for their crocs). It was a very nice family morning.

Art 101

This is a picture Emily drew for homework one night. She was suppose to draw a picture of something her family has fun doing and write a sentence about it. Of course the day is bright and sunny because that is how it is at Disney. Matt is holding his future pet fish (no name) in it's bowl. I'm in a lovely yellow dress (my hair is longer than it is and I'm made of triangles) holding Emily's hand. Emily is dressed in pink, of course, with her pink purse and future pet cat, pettyball (don't ask), in tow. I'm not quite sure what the orange square is next to Dave but he does have the honor of holding Emily's juice box. I tell you her drawings get more and more interesting every day. Good job Emily.... we did have a lot of fun on the rides at Disney.