Fall Activities Part I

Fall is definitely in the air. Every year it seems that the months from September to Janurary go by so fast because of all the activities and holidays. This year it already started the trend. We had a baby shower for our sweet FriendSpeak readers Wen and Jun at our house. Andy helped me to make this monkey sign. I made a diaper bassinet. David made the balloon pacifiers. Emily helped with the fruit bassinet. It turned out to be a really nice shower. Emily and Andy enjoyed it so much that as soon as the shower was over, they asked "when will we have the next baby shower?" Jun was touched by everyone's love. Sandy caught some happy tears in his picture. We know that little baby boy was already loved by friends and strangers!

 

 

 

 We celebrated the Chinese Mid-autumn festival with our FriendSpeak readers with fruits and mooncakes. It was a great time of fellowship.

Emily and Andy both loved their schools. They both were the students of the month at their schools. We attended Emily's school meeting first. She was called to stand in front of the 500 people with other students of the month. She kind of hid behind others. Later she told her brother "Andy, when you are ready for the Kindergarten, you will have to stand in front of all other students and not get scared!"

Andy was called up in his meeting too. But he was so little that even when he stood up, he wasn't taller than the kids who were sitting on the chairs. I sat in the back rows. So I couldn't get a good picture of him.

Andy and I helped with Emily's school with the bike safety rodeo. Some rode bikes; some rode scooters, others ran. It was a fun event that everyone enjoyed and learned about being safe on the street.

 

Our kids are so excited about playing with our neighbors' kids everyday. I caught a picture of them playing together in front of our windows.

Maddison is one of their favorite kids in the neighborhood. Every time when they saw her walking with her grandma, they would invite her to come in and play for a while.

 

Of course, Gayla is their favorite friend of all time! We got to celebrate her birthday at our house.

 We are going to the State Fair twice this year. One was with our church friends whom we wanted to spend more time with. The other was with our FriendSpeak readers who are new to the State Fair. We all had fun!

We also went to a pumpkin patch right next to our neighorhood with Chloe and Sophia. It was a little cold. But the kids had so much fun running around with their cousins.

 

We didn't buy any pumpkin at the pumpkin patch because the price was too high. Each kid got a pumpkin at Walmart. We had a carving party at home afterwards.

After a whole summer's bountiful grass, the horses finally came to our fence again. I bet they were surprised by all the vegetables that pop out of the garden boxes.

 

 

When the tomatoes were in season, our church friends gave us some tomatos they grew in their garden. I ended up making 10 jars of hot sauce. They are so yummy that even Emily loves dipping her dumplings in these hot sauce.

Homemade Okra chips and beef jerkies are the favorite snacks for school. We could never have enough of these.

David wanted to free up some spaces for the fall garden. So he dug up some sweet potatoes. We were surprised at the size of these organic sweet potatoes.

Now, these dates are not from our garden. They were from my parents'. I wish we could have some of them. Notice they are as big as the egg. They are super sweet and crunchy too!

 

I just love seeing these two enjoying each other.

Happy Fall!