Harvest Festival
Last weekend we headed to the harvest festival over at the Little Museum. We got there a bit late and didn’t have any cash on hand. The story of our lives. But, by a miracle we were handed enough tickets by folks leaving to get us a hay ride!
These are the pumpkin pie pumpkins they were selling.
This is India pressing apples to make apple cider.
The apples
The donkey
This was the quaint fall spot we were looking for.
India on stilts and Ezra in the hay maze, which he didn’t want to leave
They both enjoyed washing the clothes. Put ‘em to work early.
Pumpkin Patch
This year we didn’t make it to a quaint, picturesque pumpkin patch. We went to a patch beside a busy road in Denver. But it was for a good cause. The proceeds went to Habitat for Humanity. One of India’s school friends was heading to the patch so we followed. It was a lot of fun and we got a couple of cute pumpkins.
India didn’t get enough of her own popcorn since Ezra dumped it in the car. This is her buddy’s bag… she’s sneakn’ some
I feel like I’ve taken this back-lit shot before.
Not quite the same, but this is India at almost a year and a half. This was at a quaint apple orchard just outside of Boston. Oh the yummy apples!
The Children’s Museum
We had a blast of Saturday at the Chirldern’s Museum. What a cute little place. India was so excited to see the rabbit hole and dress up like an animal (she loves to dress up). Ezra was happy just running around… but he probably loves the fire truck the best.
Popcorn… we love it!
When we come inside, after school, it is often popcorn time. I have sworn off microwave popcorn in favor of the air-puffed variety. This change of thought happend a couple of weeks before the popcorn scare. I don’t know what is in microwave popcorn and wanted something a bit healthier. So I bought an air popper. But I never got around to buying the kernals. When the story broke about the man with the lung disease, Zach went out and bought a couple bags of kernals. When he made the trip he had to go to 2 stores, the shelves were bare after the story came out.
Sometimes we pop it on the floor, even.
Fall is here… and almost over!
I am a bit behind on life these days. I tried to get some plants for our yard in time for the fall season. I think I must be on Baltimore time or something. The nursery we went to was closed so we headed to Lowes. They had a hand full of plants for sale and each was $.25. Some would say that is the perfect time to buy plants. But really, that is when you know you have missed the boat. So I got a few ground covers and some flexible tube for a plant tunnel we will hopefully make in the spring. We checked out this awesome book from the library that has all sorts of great garden projects for kids… things they can do on their own too. The tunnel was one of the ideas. Once we get it going, I’ll post photos. You only have to wait a few months! Ha!
Anyway, I haven’t gotten too behind on fall to avoid raking some leaves. It seems that any yard work I start takes a few weeks to get done. Finally I was able to get my piles into bags. They had been on the lawn for a few days. It’s hard when you start to get into a groove and your kid wants to take a nap.
Both kids loved playing in the pile. I kept wanting to get the camera out and when I finally did this is what India was up to. Ezra was in the swing, done with the leaves. Oh well.
Go Rockies?
Ok, it looks like the Rockies and the Red Socks will be at the World Series. Now who do we root for? You know, I’ve never written those words before (and I’m not quite sure how to spell ‘root’, is it really like a tree root?). Um… rooting for any team has never, ever been an issue. But now it seems to me that it has some sort of connection to our old digs. I think Zach will be rooting for the Rockies while I might be cheering the Sox on.
We have been to a couple of Rockies games. Both had fireworks at the end of the game. They won the first, lost the second (which is pictured here). It has been nice having our little, itty-bitty point and shoot camera. I can take it anywhere and capture everything. Although I don’t ever look like I’m a photographer with it. Humph.
This is at the train stop on the way to the game. The sky was very pretty. Made me wish I had my real camera. I need to get down to the tracks and take some photos.
Zach at the game.
Ezra’s Day
Ezra watching the older boys playing ball on our way home from dropping India off at school.
Then we were off to the Littleton Historic Museum. They’ve got a working farm with an old time school, blacksmith, and home with a pretty extensive kitchen garden. Oh yes, and a cat who was really friendly and followed us for awhile.
This is Ezra in the barn. I have been inspired by the fashion images of late, which are pretty low-key; meaning dark or even underexposed. It was difficult to get this shot with my point and shoot. The shutter speed was really low so I made sure to take several in a row and hope one came out. Wiggly boy (or maybe I’m the shaky one). Anyway, I made sure the auto focus/exposure square landed on a lighter part of his face so it wouldn’t try to lighten the shadows. Does that make sense? Much easier to do when you’ve got control of your settings. Just expose for the highlights and let the shadows land where they will.
This one was with the flash, which my camera automatically fired. Ah, I hate flash! But what a cute smile. I had to reduce the red-eye in Photoshop at home. With on camera flash red-eye is typically unavoidable. Unless you don’t mind waiting 2 minutes for your camera to fire while the red-eye-reducer flashes. Meanwhile, your subject has moved or even thinks the picture has already been taken! Not worth it!