Fall Festival
This weekend is the annual fall festival. I think all the moons and planets aligned just right so that it is actually peak weekend for the colors of the foliage. It's stunningly beautiful outside today. I stopped and took pictures on the trip home so I could share them with you.

We began the morning at the Farmer's Market. Then we went into town to see the vendors on the courthouse lawn. We walked down to the library's used book sale, then back up the street to the SPCA's sweater sale. After that we grabbed some sandwiches from a church chow wagon and had a picnic at the store with Daddy. We had a really nice time together.

Here she's picking out some gourds and pumpkins. At 25 cents a piece it's hard to resist.


I let her pick out some cookies from the bake sale.


Daddy posed her next to this car which was parked outside the store. I didn't pay attention. Maybe it's a Karmann Ghia?


Emma's chatting up the fellow at the Bird Club table. She's trying out all the bird calls on the stuffed Audobon birds.

Foliage Report - Fall Festival weekend
Click on the photos for a much better look.





Cheesecake anyone???


This was M's bright idea. He melted the wax on the bottoms of the candles and fused them to the wax on the cheese. No actual cheese was disturbed in his little display. BTW, this is not an acceptable birthday cake for my purposes. Ahem.
A present in the mail!
Today Emma received her swap gift from her friend Jack. Jack's mommy is on my mommy board. They sent Emma a "Cars" racetrack. She wanted to play with it right away. After she played with it a while she was running around with the track around her neck, telling us she was going swimming with her floatie.


Harvest time!
It was time to bring them in. We may have freezing weather tonight, or at the very least some frost. Our harvest was pretty lean compared to last year.


Daddy helped her by cutting the vines.


We collected pumpkins big...


and minuscule.

Thursday, October 11, 2007
Train time
She asks for train all morning and as soon as she gets home after work. She and Daddy build it every evening so far. Daddy said they had to give up on the oval track configuration and go for the square one because she likes to sit in the middle to play.

Child abuse...not
You can tell my child has no concept of what being hit means. If you brush past her or nudge her along when she's being slow she'll say accusingly, "Don't hit me!" You can barely touch her and she'll accuse you. It's not just me, she's done it to Noni, Popi and M too. She really gets indignant if she thinks she's been "hit."

We don't hit her. I don't believe in it and I don't want to do it. But I joked to Popi last week that you can tell we don't abuse her because she has no idea what being hit really is. Besides, she'd probably die of mortification if you did hit her.

That being said...today, Alice...to the moon.

She was so bad. I took her to the library after work and she would not stop talking and talking loudly. I kept tell her to talk quietly, use your indoor voice, stop talking, anything to get her to pipe down. I don't know what was wrong with her because we've been to the library plenty of times and she was fine. She kept making loud demands that were impossible to meet. She wanted the whole children's section to herself. There were people there. Make them go away. Hello?

Then when her demands weren't met she escalated. Unfortunately I had all this stuff pulled out and needed to put it away before we could leave. Meanwhile she's worked herself into a crying, screaming fit because she doesn't want to leave. Like throwing herself on the floor fit. I wanted to just drop it all and leave but I couldn't. When I finally was able to go she was screaming and crying the whole way. As we were passing by the computer station which was fully occupied (of course) she stopped and tried to make a stand. I nudged her along and she threw herself on the floor and right there in front of everyone screamed "Don't hit me!"

I'm sitting here half expecting to hear from CPS. It didn't get much better after that. She threw herself down on the ground at least four more times on the way to the car. I finally had to pick her up like a sack of taters and strap her in her carseat.

She hasn't thrown an epic fit like that since the beginning of summer. It's such a joy to endure one in a library, I can tell you that for sure.
Cinema for Grandparents
UPDATE: Post fixed, replaced duplicate film with the one I intended.


They say it's your birthday...
Emma turned three years-old today. She was so excited about it. When she woke up she wanted to know if it would be OK to tell Mary (babysitter) that she is three. We sent cupcakes for her to share with everyone at Mary's so she was bound to find out anyway ;)

She opted for an orange cupcake instead of leftover Pop's cake for her birthday. We sang Happy Birthday and she got to blow out three candles this time.


New boots! She wanted to wear them right away.


She received Dora and Diego puzzles. We had to stop everything so she could do both of them.


She received a "book" called My Granny's Purse. These are the glasses from the purse.


A new dress up dress. She was a bit frustrated because the straps wouldn't stay up.


Daddy is helping her put together his gift to her. She was totally into it. But she was more interested in building the track than actually playing with the train. She's definitely her father's daughter.

Sunday, October 07, 2007
Birthday celebration #1
We had a fabulous dinner. M's first attempt at London broil turned out excellent, just fantastic. The cake was also very good. After the meal was over there was enough food left for another family to come in and eat. Of course Emma was jazzed about the presents. She mostly got clothes that I had picked out for Grandma. Uncle K's girlfriend gave her two stuffed animals and candy. That was a hit, I'll tell ya. Grandma also gave Emma a new Backyardigans DVD and CD. She made out pretty good.

Daddy and Emma are waiting for our guests to arrive.


Birthday cake, finally. (Someone please remind me to remove the cleaning products from the hutch before the next celebration. Thanks)


Opening presents. Yay!


A new friend!


Fetch
This is how Emma unwinds after being hopped up on sugar from her birthday cake.

Birthday Banner
I was told that brother-in-law's girlfriend was working on a birthday poster for Emma. I decided not to put up the Backyardigans banner we'd bought and leave room for the poster to be put up. Good call.

This is what Uncle K's girlfriend made for Emma and my sister-in-law (they share a birthday). It is all colored in with crayons. Tons of work went into that. Pretty cool effort.

Congratulations, Popi!
And well done to both you and Aunt K!

The both participated in and finished the Army Ten Miler this morning in Washington DC. From what I'm told the weather was hot, so it wasn't ideal conditions. They ran with approximately 25,000 other runners. Popi and Aunt K. ran together the entire run. The rest of the family stood on the sidelines cheering on all the runners. "Let's go Army, let's go!"

Aunt K. signed Popi up for the run when we were visiting them at Easter. Popi went from zero running to a ten-miler in six months. That's quite an achievement. We should all hope to be so motivated in our sixties. Heck, how about right now?

We're all very proud of you. Grandma G. says to be sure to tell you they're proud of you too.