Reynolds Farm Trip

On Thursday, October 14th, we headed up to Pennsylvania to visit Reynolds Farm with Abby's preschool group. We have visited a lot of different pumpkin patches around these parts and Reynolds Farm is my favorite. Probably because the kids can have a lot of fun and unless you buy a pumpkin, everything is FREE!!!

Diggin' for gold...

Riding a "John Deere" tractor bike...

Landon tried the bikes too, but his little legs weren't quite long enough!

Our group making our way through the mini corn maze. The kids really loved running along the paths inside.

The highlight of the day were these long slides the kids took turns riding down. Landon was a bit freaked out by them so he decided to make his own (slightly slower and definitely dirtier) version!

I think I've said it about a thousand times... but

I SURE DO LOVE FALL!!

City Fall Festival

We have really been hitting up all the fall festivals and pumpkin patches around this area. The weather has been gorgeous every weekend in October and we have taken advantage of it by spending our time enjoying the great outdoors. At the beginning of the month, we started out by going to the City of Hagerstown Fall Festival at Fairgrounds Park. It was pretty crowded but the kids enjoyed getting a free pumpkin, eating apples, watching some dance groups perform, devouring some ice cream, and visiting the petting zoo.

Hay was also fascinating for these two (we bypassed making our own scarecrow...I wasn't sure what we would do with a giant stuffed man once we brought it home!)

Landon LOVES anything with four legs...just like his big sister!

The highlight of the day was the train ride around the park in these barrel-like things. Good thing too, because we had to wait in a HUGE line just to go on them!!

We actually went to a church festival down the street from our house on the morning before General Conference where the kids tried out a similar train for the first time. They also got lots of prizes and free food from that festival too.

I tell ya, much to Jason's chagrin, I am the master of finding free things to do around these parts!!

Jumping Jack and Jill

Our neighbors were upgrading to a heavy-duty trampoline for their older kids

and asked us if we would like their old one. Never one to turn down free sources of entertainment (and fun fitness too!) we eagerly took it off their hands!!!

We are loving these trampoline-filled days of Fall!!

Future Hairdresser

Abby loves dressing Landon up in all of her pretty princess dresses and fixing his hair into beautiful styles...

Landon doesn't always enjoy all of this "beautifying" but he is usually a good sport about it (at least most of the time!!) I guess that's what comes with being the younger brother to a "girlie-girl" to the MAX!

Our Backyard Adventures

We made some pretty big improvements this summer to the outside of our new home. Our first purchase was this fun swing set for the kids...

They have spent many hours this summer swinging, sliding and playing house!!

We also added a paverstone patio outside our backdoor. We love it and it has made the backyard a great place for parties and barbecues this summer.

We also love the $15 patio table with six chairs that we found at a yard sale this summer...SCORE!!!

Perhaps the best investment though was our new wood fence. It was been wonderful to be able to let the kids and our dog run and play outside without worrying about them escaping from the yard.

Please excuse our nasty grass. It has been an extremely DRY summer so "crunchy" grass has become the norm around here!!

Half Marathon

Last Saturday I finished my 4th Half Marathon (but my first since 2003!) I have gotten so into marathon running the last few years that I really had forgotten how much I enjoy the half marathon distance. It's enough of a distance to train for and feel accomplished about running but not enough to completely take over your life like marathon training can sometimes do.

I trained really well, but unfortunately became injured about two weeks before the race. I ran a pretty painful race last week, but I survived and even managed to come in under two hours (1:56). I was hoping for a bit better, but with being injured and all, I'm happy that I was just able to finish. You can read a more detailed description of the race over at my fitness blog here.

It was a beautiful and flat course long the Western Maryland Rail Trail and the weather was gorgeous.

The weather around here has been so wonderful this last week...until yesterday that is. We had a little tease of fall and now we're back up into the 90's again. Oh well, it will hopefully cool off again soon. I sure do love this time of year!!

Our Little Preschooler

A group of us decided to do a preschool co-op this year for all of our children who will be starting school in the next little while. They meet once a week (Thursday) for two hours and we rotate among the five different houses for hosting responsibilities. Abby was so excited about finally going to "school" like all of her friends (she's one of the only ones in her group of friends from both church and in the neighborhood who didn't start kindergarten this year.) She woke up extra early on her first day and requested some "Sleeping Beauty" curls for her hair.

Ready for her big day, backpack and all...

Striking her model pose...

I swear this little girl seems to get more and more beautiful by the day (and is growing up way too fast for my liking!)

This day was all about excitement for Abby and she loved her first day. Landon on the other hand was not a fan of having his sister leave him. He was hysterically crying in the car after dropping her off and it took him about 30 minutes to calm down.

I actually think this little preschool will work well to prepare us all for when Abby starts kindergarten next year. I think Abby will have the easiest transition of all of us because she adapts so well to new situations, makes friends pretty easily and is so excited about riding the bus and going to school with all of her friends. I still have a hard time thinking about missing my little girl for that much time during the day (full day kindergarten around these parts) and Landon, well he will definitely have a rude awakening when missing her for a couple of hours each week turns into all day every day. We'll just enjoy her while we can now though!!