"Bouquets of Freshly Sharpened Pencils"

Have you ever seen "You've Got Mail" with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan? In the opening scene, they are talking to eachother about how fall is their favorite time of year! Tom Hanks character says to Meg Ryan's, "If I knew your name and your address, I would send you a Bouquet of Freshly Sharpened Pencils..." obviously referring to the beginning of the school year, fall, etc... Well, I LOVE FALL! I've recently decided that fall truly is my FAVORITE time of the year. If you think about it, most people consider Thanksgiving and Christmas "winter" holidays, but winter doesn't actually begin until, like, 2 or 3 days before Christmas - so really all of those wonderful holiday's, fall under the wonderful umbrella of FALL!!!

So far, our Fall has been wonderful! I love getting up in the morning and getting Hayden into the car and smelling the fresh air. It reminds me of the short walk that I would take as a child to get to school each morning. There's nothing like a good memory that is associated with a scent!

Obviously, it has been a fall of "firsts" for us with Hayden. Every experience is heightened with excitement as Todd and I see our little boy perk up and play with the leaves or laugh when the wind blows delicately on his sweet cheeks...

Last Friday when Hayden and I got home, Todd had been in the back yard raking leaves. Now, we have two HUGE trees in our back yard. So far, we have filled two full trash cans, 11 regular bags, and 3 of the orange pumpkin bags full of leaves!, and we're only about half way!! Well, anyway... So we got home and Todd and I thought that it would be fun to take a picture of Hayden in the leaves. Well, we tried it, and all that he wanted to do was eat the leaves. Obviously, we had to take the leaves out of his hands, and he did not like that!!


So then I suggested to Todd that I hold Hayden and we take a picture together.... This one turned out MUCH better....


Then on Saturday we went to the Pumpkin patch with a group of our friends. It was a fairly long drive. All of the pumpkin patches that are in town had a pretty small crop of pumpkins this year b/c of the weather, so we drove about an hour south to the "Happy Apple Farm" in Penrose. It was a georgous drive! (What a beautiful state we live in!)

We took a short hayride from the parking lot to the patch, and then we began our search for the perfect pumpkin!!

Hayride to the patch

Picking out the perfect pumpkin with Hayden

"We got ours" Family Photo!!

And here is the picture of what I affectionately call my "Colorado Springs Family"
From left to right, back row, Sara, Jonathan, baby Tarren, Evelyn, Dan, Todd, me, and Hayden
front row, Andrea and Addison!!

We all had such a wonderful time!! Isn't fall the best!!!