Final Weekend of Summer

This was our final weekend of summer and time for our fall ritual of making applesauce. This is Chris' specialty and the kids LOVE to help. They took turns "peeling-coring-slicing" apples from our apple trees.

Livie was very proud that she managed to keep her apple peel all in one piece!!!

Mmmmmmm....can you smell it? DELICIOUS!

After the applesauce was done, and a trip to the library was made, we spent the rest of the day outside. Our little neighbor, Katie (2-1/2) loves to come play with the kids. If Tony and Livie are out, Katie is out. She especially loves to follow Tony....it's proved to be quite a help to her parents in encouraging her to so all sorts of things like potty training, eating, going to bed...whatever "Tony does" Katie will do. :) Hey, whatever works!

The kids make themselves comfortable and settle in with their new library books. Livie, a.k.a. Jojo Jr., hauled out half of her bedroom for the occasion.

Sunday was another gorgeous day with temps in the 80's, no wind, no humidity and no bugs (except for the #$%*@! grasshoppers). We took the kids to the Fontenelle Forest Nature Center, just south of Omaha.

It was the grand opening of "Acorn Acres" (cute name!) an interactive nature exhibit geared towards children. Our kids loved the whimsical touches such as the one above. I'll add that to our "list" of projects when we SOMEDAY have a house in the woods. :)

Here Tony and Livie play Tic-tac-Toe with rocks and shells. Livie won every time, as Tony hasn't figured out the trick of putting your marker in the middle when you go first!

Climbing into a "fox's den" and getting quite dirty!

Livie somehow managed to spy this itty-bitty green tree frog! He was so dang cute!

I just had to post both pictures of him. We figured Auntie Jojo would be excited to see!

We broke our cardinal rule of hiking on Sunday....ALWAYS BRING A MAP!!!! The Forest has a wonderful boardwalk system, but we ventured off on a path down to a river and well, let's just put it simply...WE GOT LOST!!!! First time ever. Above is a picture of Chris going "around the corner to look for civilization." Yikes, we hiked for hours, literally. Good thing we had food and water. Chris kept saying "if we just keep going right we'll find our way back." Wrong! I told the kids "we learned a valuable lesson today, always bring a map." To which Livie replied, "No. Never follow Daddy."

Luckily, we happened upon a nice gal swiftly hiking along by herself. She graciously let us look at her map and we managed to hike our way out. We finished the day by pigging out at Sonic! Alls well that ends well. We were never in any danger, as we knew as long as we stayed on one of the Center's paths we had to eventually end up back at the beginning...we just didn't know when.

Today is a dark and rainy first day of Fall. The kids have a short week as we have conferences already. My mom, Erin and Celia arrive on Wednesday night for a visit and we are counting the minutes!!!! They have Friday off and I'm letting them play hookey Thursday afternoon. I'm sure we'll have all sorts of fun pictures to share from their visit.

HAPPY FALL!