I love this time of year - the leaves changing colors, the brisk fall air, and the fun times to be had during the fall! In addition fall means that Halloween is almost here and I love Halloween. The best thing for us recently was our one year anniversary on Sept 29 - we celebrated "Gotcha Day" - the day A-man joined our family.
Gotcha Day
We have been having a great time with A-man this fall doing all kinds of fun things. We started the month off by spending the day at Starved Rock State Park hiking and enjoying the day with family and friends. The next weekend we went to a pumpkin patch/apple farm. It was wonderful! A-man loved it. They had a kids barn area with tons of stuff for the kids to do. A-man's favorite was the tractors, the big slide with dad, and the apple train.
A-man in the corn silo with mom & with dad in the tractor
He had such a great time. Then we went on a hay ride out to the pumpkin patch and picked our pumpkins out. A-man was cracking us up - he would try to pick up a pumpkin and even with the little ones he would make it sound like he was lifting weights. He would huff and pull a funny face. It was so funny and cute. We had such a wonderful day at the farm and wore A-man out completely. He barely made it out of the parking lot before he was sound asleep.
Pumpkin Fun!
This past weekend we joined with other families and were part of the Walk For Adoption. It was a walk to promote adoption. It was a lot of fun and we met so many other people who had adopted their children or were hoping to adopt. I love being around others who understand adoption because it will help A-man as he gets older. He will know others who are adopted and will have friends who are also adopted. It will be a great support system. And it was a beautiful day to go on a nice walk.
We are gearing up for Halloween and are so excited - well some of us are, A-man has no idea what Halloween is. All he knows is that our house has lots of pumpkins, bats, and spiders all around it for decorations. Once he starts getting candy he will LOVE the holiday. He is now officially a toddler - he walks, tries to run, and jumps everywhere. He is talking a lot and is full of energy. He will bring us our shoes and say "Go, Go" and walk over to the front door ready to go out on another adventure. I'm worried about how we will survive winter since A-man loves playing outside.
At the end of September we took our family vacation and Jason's parents joined us on the trip. We had a great time and A-man was a trooper and an amazing traveller. First we went to Niagara Falls - the Canada side - so A-man is now an international traveller. He loved the mist until we took a boat ride to the base of the falls - that was a little too windy and wet and so he hid underneath mom's poncho. Then we went to Palmyra, NY and visited some church history sites - A-man's favorite was the apples at the Smith Farm. Then we drove down to NYC. We visited the Statue of Liberty, Ground Zero,
Times Square (A-man loved the huge ferris wheel at Toys R Us in Times Square, Chinatown, and visited lots of other fun stuff. The next day we hit Philadelphia, PA and all the historical stuff there. He was able to ring a bell that rang in Philadelphia when the Declaration of INdependence was first read - super cool. The next day we went to Lancaster, PA and visited Hershey, PA and Amish Country. A-man loved the pillows at the Hershey stores and eating chocolate (Can you blame him?). Then we spend a day in Gettysburg, PA. That wasn't A-man's favorite place since we did a lot of driving and the scenery meant nothing to him but the rest of us loved it. Our last day of the trip we stopped at the Flight 93 memorial (A-man found a caterpillar and that was a huge hit) and then we drove home. It was a long drive but as long as we had Baby Signing Time A-man was a happy camper. It was a wonderful trip and we took almost 1000 pictures (thank goodness for digital cameras).
