October wrap-up: walks, logs, cookies and leaves

I love the fall! It really is my favorite season. The weather is perfect, the trees are beautiful and there is always something fun to look forward to. This past October was no exception as we found several things to keep us busy and enjoy the season.

I've joined a walking group that walks 3 miles twice a week and I love it! It's fun to get together with a few other moms and talk as we push the strollers and let the older kids ride bikes along beautiful Charlottesville trails and paths. My favorite trail is the Monticello Trail that takes us up the side of a mountain to Monticello itself. It is beautiful--full of trees and bridges--and the trip back down the mountain is fun, especially for Jude who likes to ride his bike.

On one of our walks, Jude found a salamander! 

We all thought it was pretty neat.

He was a tiny little guy. All the kids took turns looking and then we put him back in the muddy hole we found him in.

The other awesome thing about this trail is this:

At the bottom of the trail close to the parking lot they have a couple HUGE old logs that came from Monticello. They're not sure how old the trees were before they had to be cut down because the decay inside made it impossible to count the rings, but I can only image they were OLD. Look how big they are!

It's a treat for the kids to get to play for a while at the end of our walk.

They think it's the best thing ever!

So cool!

Since it's the month for all things spooky, we had to break out our Halloween decorations. This year we did something a little different and in addition to our regular decorations, we hung up almost 50 paper bats.

It looked great! I loved the effect it had and that it was Halloween-y without being too cutsie or too scary.


And of course we had to decorate some Halloween cookies.

Jude did a great job! He tried hard to keep the icing on the cookie.

Cole just wanted to eat his. He's telling me where his cookie went. :)

Nice bat, Jude!

Lance joined us for a bit, too.

He apparently wanted to color all his cookies black. :) Let's see: a cat, two bats and a black ghost.


We have these huge trees in our "backyard" and every fall the leaves that fall provide hours of entertainment for the kids. We sweep them into a huge pile and the kids go to town jumping, throwing and rolling in them. I love it!

The big kids were jumping from the table into the pile. Cole thought this looked awesome and would climb up to jump, but then just stood there. He never quite got his courage up enough to jump from the top.

One of Cole's obsessions right now is bubbles. I have to admit I have a love-hate relationship with bubbles. They're fun but messy and the kids always want to blow them which leads to a bigger mess most of the time. Thank goodness for good weather where we can blow the bubbles outside!

Cole does a good job blowing bubbles.

Sweet boy.

Jude is as crazy as ever! If he does stop moving, it's because he's asleep. He's on all day long, constantly running around and jumping and laughing. He's the happiest kid and never ceases to find the fun in everyday life.

His favorite thing to do right now is play with his buddy Cameron who lives just down the hill from us.

They get together almost every day to play at the park and play LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean on the Playstation.


And finally, we love having friends come over. One day we had ten kids for a couple hours (I was babysitting Ellie and another family, so we had the Vedomskes come play too. Lance was on the computer playing Minecraft away from the "babies".)

Nothing like watching Phineas and Ferb while eating popcorn. Love it!