October Highlights

As I wrote in my previous post (3 weeks ago!!), I haven't been in the writing mode. However, tomorrow is a new month and I plan on jumping into blogging again (of course that's just a goal not absolute).

We did have a wonderful month though filled with many outings and visits with friends and family. I won't go in total detail of everything we did (since I'm summing up our month in one blog entry), but for memory sake will include the synopsis.

In the beginning of the month we headed to Zeeland's Pumpkin Fest. We've gone for the past 4 years and loved it. They have a chili cook off, barn yard animals to pet, pie eating contest, and a bunch of games for the kids to play. The best part is that it's primarily free! Next we had my old college roomate and her family visit for the weekend. This was a true treat since we haven't seen each other in over 2 years. We had no problems catching up as if it were just yesterday. The weekend was complete with painting pumpkins, getting in a game of golf (for the guys), and having a bonfire. Their little girl, Ella, fit right in and seemed to become friends quickly with our girls. At times they played so nicely together, we didn't even remember we had children in the house! We tried sneaking my hubby's birthday in amidst the company too, unfortunately other than a cake it was sadly under celebrated.

Katie, painting her orange pumpkin....orange!

Kyra put the candy corn on herself!

The following weekend we had another college roomate and her family come to visit. We headed to the apple orchard and picked apples. Of course we went on one of the 80 degree days, so it didn't quite give us that fall festival type of feel. Of course at least we didn't have to worry about jackets either! And with those apples (along with many my father in-law has given us...he loves to give us seconds from a local farm), we have made apple pie, applesauce, apple dumplings, and apple compote for pancakes. I guess you could say we haven't exactly been shrinking by our consumption of desserts.

The girls at the apple orchard

Finally, the girls and I went for a visit to Chicago to visit my family. Unfortunately they didn't get a whole lot of time to visit their cousins since our family seemed to get stuck with some kind of diahrrea bug, but we still had a good time. The girls dressed up early in their Halloween costumes and were able to take part in the town's Batfest parade. They enjoyed playing more games, watching all the other kids galavant in their costumes, and listen to Halloween stories at the library.

Yes, it was a good month, full of family activities. And as the upcoming holidays approach quickly, I'm sure there will be many more fun times. The quickly descending chill in the air and husband fervantly working to harvest the corn before the frost sets in, tells me that I need to be starting on my Christmas lists, cookies baking ideas, and cards. November, here we come!