Fall Is In the Air

I am so excited that next Tuesday is the first day of fall!  We had cooler weather this week with highs in the 80's most days with only one day that crept into the 90's.  It gets me so excited for fall weather which unfortunately only sticks around these parts for a couple weeks at most.  I always joke we pretty much go from summer to winter, but maybe this year will be different!  Carter and I already have a trip to the pumpkin patch scheduled with our meetup group and I had Ty pull our fall/Halloween/Thanksgiving basket out of the attic last night.  I had the itch to decorate and pull out fall books.  The itch started at Target yesterday when I was walking through the dollar spot and they had the cutest little Halloween-themed decorations.  I splurged and bought about $5 worth of decorations with the plan to bring some fall fun into Carter's room.  I don't know why, but my favorite thing to decorate is the top of his dresser in the nursery (Thomas just officially moved out of Carter's big boy room on Monday, not sure when I'm gonna move him over, but none of us are ready yet).  When I first realized next week was the first day of fall I planned for our weekly learning theme to be fall.  Then I started planning ideas and realized there's no way we will have enough fallen leaves to do the activities I want.  So I was thinking either potty training week or zoo week.  But I really want to be in town for the weekend when we undertake potty training and we'll be visiting Ty's family, so I'm going to hold off on that one.  I do feel like Carter is mostly ready, but it's hard to know for sure until we jump in!

Being able to put Carter in these adorable overalls is enough to get me excited about cooler weather!

Carter's dresser decorated for the season.

I couldn't go through the Halloween tub without pulling out the dog costumes.

Lucky for Quinn she was visiting and got to wear a costume too!

This morning was a rainy morning.  There's just something about waking up to the sound of rain falling on the roof.  Carter woke up earlier than usual at 6:30, I'm guessing due to the rain.  I brought him into our room to lay in bed with us even though he didn't go back to sleep because I just needed to lay there for a bit.  Thomas' dog, Quinn, is staying with us because he is out of town for a conference.  She is afraid of storms and Ty found her in Harper's dog bed with her when he got up.  So stinkin cute!  I woke up with a hankerin for waffles and anytime it rains I'm in the mood for some Jack Johnson.  So when I finally rolled out of bed I pulled up a Jack Johnson station on Pandora and made homemade waffles for breakfast.  Little man was too hungry to wait so he ate cereal while I made the waffles.  I was excited to find a few frozen strawberries and some whipped cream in the freezer.  Nothing goes on waffles better than that!  I ate one waffle and froze the rest.  It's going to be a fabulous few weeks.  After making waffles and fantasizing about fall, I decided to look up a pumpkin waffle recipe so we can have breakfast for dinner next week.  All this chillier weather makes me want to eat soup as well and I've been all about broccoli cheddar soup lately, so I looked up recipes for broccoli cheddar soup and plan to make it for dinner one night next week.  The best part of our days lately is that they start off around 60 degrees.  Carter loves to play in the backyard and I love the slight chill to the air.  Although I'm excited for fall, I'm going to miss summer once the sub-40 degree weather comes rolling in.  I keep hearing this winter is going to be a rough one and ouch, I just can't stand the thought of cold bones!

Snuggle babies!

Embracing the rain this morning and following along with our weekly learning theme for this week, movement, we headed out to the Children's Museum after we ate breakfast and I mopped the floor while Carter played with cars.  I'm not sure what exactly it is about the address to the darn place, but my phone GPS never takes me there.  Last time I ended up somewhere random downtown and today my phone cheerily told me I had reached my destination while I was on the highway.  I frantically looked to my right and thought I possibly saw it in the distance, but by the time I made it to an exit I had no idea where to go.  So I called on my most trusted navigator, Ty, who pulled up a map at work and directed me to the Children's Museum.  Next time I'm having him write me out directions and after a few times I'll hopefully remember how to get there on my own.  I always need to go the exact same way anywhere from 2-5 times before I can do it all on my own and then branch out to find different/faster ways to get there.  I've lived here 4 years and just realized I could take the highway to the library I tutor at and it's actually much quicker than the way I had gone the previous million times I drove there to tutor, so yeah.  I'm very directionally delayed and my mind is blown by people like Ty and my sister-in-law, Amanda, who just know how to get places.  Must be nice...  But anyway once we made it there we had a blast.  Carter's favorite is always the tape tunnel and we typically spend close to an hour continuously going through it and down the slide and then running back to the entrance to do it all over.  He can go through on his own but I always go with him because there are always bigger kids going through and they can get rough.  This time there was a school group and I don't know where they were from, but they were rude and slightly out of control.  They would run past Carter sliding on the tape and knock into him, cut in front of him on the slide, and one kid even pushed him.  Now Carter doesn't take sh*t from anyone because he just straight up pushed the kid back.  I laughed so hard.  So needless to say Carter wanted me right there behind him.  One time he turned around and checked to make sure I was there and the look of terror on his face when there was a group of kids between us and he couldn't see me was so sad.  But then I said his name, he saw me, and all was right in his little world again.  Even with the all the craziness Carter still had a blast.

Of course he spent lots of time playing with cars!

Took a break to read a book.

Got serious in the construction area.

And threw the hat off refusing to put it back on for a better picture.