Wordless Wednesday: Daddy's Mini-Me

Welcome, Fall!

October has a knack for always being a really busy month for us... it starts with our anniversary and seems to slide right through to New Year's before we know it! This year is no exception, and maybe even more so than the past few years!

The first weekend in October we celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary! We tried to think of something more original than dinner & a movie, but after about 5 minutes of discussion, we decided a baby-free meal and a chance to just chat with each other and then go out and do something we rarely do anymore sounded more than just fine! Matt's parents graciously offered to keep Kenna even though they were already keeping Beckley, which was great because she was happy as a clam playing with grandparents and a cousin! (Thanks Nana B & Granddaddy!)

We went to Outback since we hadn't been there in forever, and I was craving both a bloomin' onion and their baked potato soup. It never disappoints! We almost didn't know what to do with ourselves, having an uninterrupted conversation! After that we headed to see a new Ben Affleck movie called "the Town" about a town in Boston that produces a family legacy of bank robbers... terrible language, but a very interesting story and awesomely acted! One of my favorite things about Matt is sitting and discussing a movie after we've seen it- in fact, we've been known (before kids, of course) to finish one movie in the theater and then turn right back around & go in for a second one! We love movies around here. This one especially had a very good story with a very conflicted main character who wants to be redeemed from the evil he has done, but doesn't know how to get out of it. If you can kind of "tune out" the language, I thought it was a really great story.

Here is the only picture we got of us on our anniversary:

This weekend we are heading to Boone for a friend's wedding- Matt is actually performing the wedding and I'm so excited for him! We love going to the mountains in the fall and seeing the leaves change. We're hoping to have a little window of downtime to find some mountain apples or maybe take Kenna for her first out-of-utero trip to Mast General Store. Here are some pictures of our trip 2 years ago right before Kenna was born:

8 months pregnant with Kenna!

Beautiful fall colors!

Can you imagine a 2 year old seeing all these candy barrels? Heaven!

When we get back into town, first thing Monday morning we have our 2nd trimester ultrasound where we should hopefully be able to find out baby B's gender! I'm so ready to start planning and decorating!

I am so excited that the leaves are changing and some fall weather is here. Kenna and I have been putting up fall decorations around the house, and I have been craving pumpkin everything under the sun! This is my absolute favorite time of year. Also when we get back from the mountains, we plan to go back to Hillridge Farms to pick a pumpkin... yay! This is a really fun place to go with kids that we have made one of our fall family traditions. This too, I think will be more fun now that Kenna is a little older to enjoy. Here we were last year among all the orange pumpkins:
I'm hoping we'll be able to go to the NC State Fair again this year (another fun tradition- maybe on canned good day!) and our church has a wonderful Fall Festival that is always a great time! Then we will blink an eye and it will be mid-November... my Dad is coming to town, we are going to Florida to see my grandparents, then coming home quick in time for Kenna's birthday, Thanksgiving, and then my birthday... then it will be December already, more family in town, Sunday school parties, putting up a tree, and hopefully some cookie exchanges, and then Christmas! Whew! See what I mean?

For now, Happy Fall! Go get yourself something pumpkin to eat!

P.S....

This is what we brought back from the State Fair for the little girl who had to stay home:
Actually, she was at her Nana B. and Granddaddy's house, getting spoiled just a little more rotten!

Very Fall-ish Things

In addition to going to the pumpkin patch a week or two ago, we've been able to do some other fall-ish things recently too... like going to the NC State Fair and a corn maze!

NC State Fair:
Going to the fair is a special tradition if you live in Raleigh... lots of people even take a day off work to be able to go spend a whole day there with their families! This year, Matt and I planned our afternoon at the fair around two Christian bands that came that night, Tenth Avenue North and Jeremy Camp. Grandaddy and Nana B. agreed to keep Kenna while we went so that our afternoon was relaxed with no time pressures! It sounds silly, but just having no diapers to stop and change all day was such a treat!

One of my favorite things is collecting all the stickers and wear them with pride... we brought extras of all of them home for Kenna this year too.
Every year we ride the Ferris Wheel together and take a picture at the top. Our picture this year was a little awkward since we weren't actually sitting next to each other. The little door to get in and out of the ride was right between us! Luckily we didn't fall out. It's beautiful to see the entire fair from the top of the ride.
Mercilessly, we didn't take photos of all the ridiculous amounts of fair junk food we ate... which honestly is why everybody goes to the fair. My favorites this year were the NCSU ice cream (which somehow I had never had before! Delicious!) and the awesome apple cider slushies (I had three and literally could have eaten dozens more. They were incredible!). Matt's favorite was the ice cream too, McBride's polish sausages, and the elephant ears (he loves the elephant ears, and I love the funnel cakes!)

For a fun comparison, here is the one we took on top of the ferris wheel in 2006, right after our second anniversary! I remember being bitter that my sunglasses had just broken and it was so sunshiney that day! Isn't Matt's smile is adorable? We look so much younger!


The Corn Maze:

We went to a corn maze in Morrisville with our Sunday School class, and we had a great time even though it was a little chilly and tried to rain on us a few times! There were a couple of fun things besides the corn maze (which was extremely detailed and partially shaped like a picture of Kay Yow from above) such as a corn kernel sandbox, a "cow truck" (a tractor pulling sideways barrels on wheels that were decorated to look like cows... they looked like an awesome, bumpy ride!), a hayride, and my favorite... a corn husk chucker gun. I'm sure that's not the official name, but imagine those "guns" they use to shoot out tshirts at football games, then imagine shoving a corn husk into it and shooting it out into a field, trying to hit a round hay bale with a target painted on it. Awesome! We all shot it a couple of times.

They also had duck races (our class is competitive!):
We were laughing that Kenna has already been on two hayrides in her short life! She was turned around looking at another little girl who was screaming bloody murder... apparently not so much a fan of the hayride. Kenna loved it! They started playing music over a speaker right after this, and she started clapping along and laughing.
We tried to get Kenna to crawl through the hay tunnel, but she wasn't so sure about it, and I started wondering how we would get her out if she crawled into the middle and then stopped! But it made for a cool picture:
We ate a great lunch at Smithfield's barbeque before calling it a day, and all the kids left with balloons with a bag of cookies tied to the string. We love our Sunday school class and have had such a great time getting to know these incredible families! Hayride, corn chucker, barbeque, and balloons... if that's not a successful day, I don't know what is!