Precious Days of Fall

I have a love/hate relationship with fall. As a general rule, I resist change. Summer is so fun and fast and easy. No coats to remember, staying up late with the sun, sandals or bare feet.

Summer is low maintenance.
Fall, on the other hand, is a very high maintenance season. The kids might wear a warm coat to school in the morning,zip-off pants and a sweatshirt with a tee-shirt underneath. By recess, they have to zip off the pants for shorts and discard the sweatshirt (usually on the soccer field - will we ever see it again?) They come home from school asking for slurpies, play outside for a few hours and come in begging for hot chocolate. Fall is a thief in the night, stealing the green that has taken two months to cultivate and turning it yellow, dead and brown. Yet fall is a necessary step to prepare me for winter. My body acclimatizes to the cooler weather and I take a lesson from the earth as it slowly shuts itself down, ready to sleep through the winter. I slow my own life down, staying home instead of running errands, taking long walks instead of going for a jog, staying in bed longer in the morning as the sun comes up later and later.
Unfortunately my kids don't always listen to the sun...

Excursion to Elbow Falls

We went out to Elbow Falls the other day. It was the perfect fall day. We went on a little hike and the kids had fun climbing on every rock formation they could find. Even Miranda.
The kids all climbed up on this rock and wanted their picture taken. Miranda was not going to be left out and tried to climb it too. It was so cute. She refuses to be left behind. She even jumps on the tramp with the big kids.

She is talking so much now. The other day I asked her if she wanted to go over to Keyrai's to play. She screwed up her little face and said, "No Kitchi!" Kitchi is her name for Keyrai.

You know when my kids are the cutest though? When they are asleep. Happy Thanksgiving.