Boo!

Wow - you couldn't ask for a more perfect Halloween night in New England. It was 70 degrees here today and the wind is blowing all the swirling leaves around. Lovely!

We live in a development of about 40 houses, so it's a great place to trick-or-treat, but to walk the whole loop is about a mile. So, Sophie gets to ride in style:


EJ's friend V came over to go trick-or-treating with us. I called EJ the Halloweena Ballerina!

My little Curious George:

The older girls being silly:

Fall Photo Shoot

This area is what used to be the woodpile at the end of my driveway. Now that we have a pellet stove, we cleared it out and made a little garden area.


It was the perfect New England fall day today (well, other than the Red Sox knocking themselves out of the playoffs...), and the girls wore their new pumpkin sweaters to church this morning, so we went outside for a photo session. Sophie took the stickers off the pumpkins and stuck them on her face.

This is her grumpy look, which she announces before she displays:

EJ striking a pose:

Okay, got the fall photo shoot out of the way. Would you believe they're have Christmas portraits taken tomorrow? I hate the crowds at the mall in November, so we always do it in October!

Deerfield Fair

Today we went to the Deerfield Fair in Deerfield, NH. We were hoping to go yesterday, but the rain kept us away. Luckily, it stayed dry enough to go today for a few hours.

EJ did some spin art:



The girls with the prize-winning pumpkin, which weighed in at over 1000 pounds!


Sophie enjoyed her first corndog, and we had lots of other yummy food - funnel cake, chowder in a bread bowl, pierogies, maple cotton candy, and ice cream.

Sophie really liked the horses. And she moo'ed at all the cows. Quite loudly.

EJ's not really a fan. She likes looking at all of them, but is very cautious about where she steps after a near accident a few years ago!

These twin calves were born just an hour before we saw them. We were walking through one of the cattle barns and saw a huge crowd around this stall. They were so cute!

Apple picking

We went apple picking this past weekend. It was the second weekend that the farm we go to was open, and they had three kinds of apples availabe - Macintosh, Cortland, and Liberty.

All of that rainy weather back in June and July is supposed to deliver a wonderful apple harvest this fall. Just look at how the trees are loaded!


EJ was there for all of 30 seconds and picked only three apples the whole time we were there. She spent all of her time comparing the taste of the different varieties.

Then Sophie got into the tasting:

But she did have fun pushing around the little wheelbarrow:

The farm is pretty small and is a low-spray farm. It's not crowded at all, and it was a beautiful fall day. Afterward, we went to a Big Sib, Little Sib program at the Phillips Exeter Academy, a local prep school. The program is for local adopted children. They get "matched" with a high school student at the academy from the adopted child's country and do crafts or have play time. We didn't get the info until the day before the first meeting, so they weren't able to match Sophie for this month's meeting. Hopefully they'll have a match by October for her.

Sohie's 3rd Birthday portraits

Sophie is 3!

Last week, on September 10th, Sophie turned 3!! It's hard to believe...the last 2+ years have flown by so quickly.


I asked her a few weeks ago what kind of cake she wanted and I thought she would say Curious George, as she's a big fan of him right now. Before she could answer, EJ piped in that when she turned three, she had an Arthur cake, so that's what Sophie wanted too. I had to dig out the old pics of EJ's 3rd birthday to see how I did it, as there appears to be no Arthur cake pan available online anywhere!

She smiled the whole time we were singing to her:

Then it was time to open the stash of presents...she got a Dr. Seuss puzzle which she loves:

EJ got her this magnetic color-sorting toy that Sophie spent a lot of time with at the Eric Carle museum. Luckily, they sold them in the gift shop!

Okay - time to catch up

I've been a BAD blogger this summer, and we've done so many wonderful things that I'll never catch up. I will try, however, to do a post each week with updated photos, etc. Although, I must say, compared to the way I can upload photos in Facebook, this Blogger interface is really lousy. I got frustrated and only loaded up a few pics, so if you want to see more, they're in Facebook.

Anyway, we'll start with back to school. EJ is in 5th grade this year, which is in middle school in our town. Here she is on the first day:



Over Labor Day weekend, we took a small one night trip out to western Massachusetts. We visited the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst. It's a gorgeous facility, but I really wish that they had more square footage dedicated to gallery space. They do, however, have a nice library for the kids and a beautiful art studio. This year is Eric Carle's 80th birthday and the 40th anniversary of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, one of his better-known works. EJ is lucky enough to have several personalized signed books from Mr. Carle, including one he sent her as a gift after she wrote him a letter to tell him about her collection of signed children's books. He returned the books we asked him to sign, which he personalized with her name and some sketches, and then a few weeks later, we received a copy of Dream Snow from him. We've tried to get one personalized for Sophie, but he is mostly retired now. We did get some signed bookplates though.



We spent the night in Northampton and had dinner at the Northampton Brewing Company, which we highly recommend if you're in the area. The next morning, we drove to Sturbridge, MA to the Old Strubridge Village, a recreation of a colonial village. It was WGBH's (Boston PBS) Family Fun Day, so Curious George met us at the gate. Sophie LOVES him, and gave him a big hug and told him that she watches him every day. She doesn't know it yet, but I just ordered her a Curious George Halloween costume. We're trying to talk EJ into being the Man in the Yellow Hat, but she's not interested. I think we need to get K a hat to wear with her for trick or treat.



Here are some other photos (again, more in Facebook). It really is a nice destination and they had a lot of hands-on stuff for the girls to do.