Fall Fun

I know I'm leaving you in suspense for Julia's first day and week in kindergarten.  I could tell you all about how she loves school, thinks her music teacher is so funny, mastered the monkey bars in only a couple of days.  But, that will have to wait for another post because I have to show you how much FUN we had today.

We have an annual tradition of going to a local apple orchard every fall with the girls and getting their photos taken atop a barrel of pumpkins.  The orchard is a super popular destination in the Fall and the crowds are really hard to navigate come October so we have taken to visiting in September.  Beautiful weather, same attractions, smaller crowds.

We arrived and headed to the pumpkins for some photos.  Truthfully, this tradition is one of my favorites and I look forward to taking the same photos every year and comparing them to previous years to see how much the girls have grown and matured.  

Full disclosure: This morning we were all ready to go when I saw that Julia's black shirt with orange sequined pumpkin had a huge white spot all over it.  I found out that the culprit was toothpaste and I know that doesn't come out easily and my heart sunk a bit.  I quickly realized I had to relinquish my desire to have her dressed in fall clothes and let her pick out a clean outfit. I think the photos look great anyway so I was a bit upset for no reason at all.

This year we did two things that really made it a fun trip.  We brought Emma's wagon instead of using her wheelchair or stroller.  It's just more FUN to go around an orchard in a wagon and it's super easy for me and Chris to move her in and out of the wagon.  It was a great decision.  The second thing we did was Pick Your Own apples.  We had not done that at this orchard before for various reasons and felt this was the year to check it out.  Oh, how we had fun picking apples!

Emma was all smiles and ready for the apple picking action.  Julia was worried about stepping in the mud or rotten apples and getting her hands dirty.  We jokingly were calling her a diva and she most certainly DOES NOT like being called a diva..but she pretty much is a bit of one.  I love that about her :-)  Emma is all about dirt and fun and loved getting right into the center of the action.  I love how their personalities are so different and special.  The best part of picking apples was tasting their sweet, juicy goodness right there in the field.  Yummy!

We had a {relaxing} picnic lunch with the music festival band playing on stage and watching all the children running around in the playground.  Julia was finished her lunch in the blink of an eye and ready for the playground and kept asking us to hurry up - she is sometimes not all that thrilled that Emma takes a bit more time to eat.  While waiting she burned off some energy by running circles around the wagon.  Julia really loves to run around and I think someday she might take up running with Chris.  Anyway, once our lunch was finished we hit the playground for some fun.

Julia showed me how she can now do the monkey bars.  This is a new skill since starting kindergarten.  My jaw might still be hanging open from how she went from not able to inch herself along the bar to swinging through the entire set of monkey bars without so much as a hiccup.  Amazingly wonderful.  I'm so proud of her!  

Emma is a slide-a-holic and so Chris and I tag teamed to let her do the slides by herself for a while.  On of us places Emma on the slide at the top while the other waits at the bottom to catch her and listen to her ridiculously cute and emphatic giggles.  With all the children running around it is sometimes challenging to do our hand-off and also to keep Emma's rightful spot in line but she managed to go down the straight slide, curvy slide and tunnel slides a few dozen times each.  Happy girl!  Julia loves going down the slides, too, and especially loves taking Emma down with her.  Emma thinks it's a hoot to slide with Julia, and so they went down the non-tunnel slides together a few times.  

Each time we were moving between the play sets we placed Emma in her wagon seat and she pitched a fit.  She does this all the time when it comes to taking a break at the playground - she just loves playing at them so much!  I have a dream that some day there will be adapted slides for children in wheelchairs.  I have never seen one but I can tell you that my back would really appreciate one.  I also wonder what ever we will do as Emma gets bigger and heavier and needs her slide fix.  

But today I choose to live in the moment so I will set that worry aside for another day.