Falling into Fall...or Falling Behind on Fall!

I love this time of year! I just wish it was a tad cooler, like out of the 90's!  We have been busy around here and having a lot of fun getting in the spirit of fall and ready for all the festivities that happen this time of year.

Before heading off to the Waxman's house for Rosh Hashana, we stopped off for a quick pic and just happened to get one of my all time favorite pictures to date of the boys! We are so lucky to have friends like the Waxmans who we have known all our lives!

One evening we decided to go check out a little pond that is close to our neighborhood spur of the moment. The boys were so excited to get to go in the middle of the week!

The pond was a total disappointment, but we still had fun and saw hundreds of turtles.
With the weather a little bit cooler, we have really enjoyed riding our bikes to school. It is such an amazing way to start the day, and I really love this time with the boys. On occasion, Blaine will take them, and I like that too!

Soccer takes up a lot of our Saturdays! But it has been an amazing season so far. Two weeks ago, we went to check out Stanley's Farmhouse Pizza. It was such a fun, cool place to go hang out for a few hours, have some beer and some really yummy pizza.

For the last few years, we have always gone out to Sweet Berry Farms pumpkin patch. We felt a little crazy and decided to try a new one this year and headed out to Barton Hills Farm on Columbus day.  It did not disappoint! We got there about 10 minutes before it opened, and not only did they let us in, but we were the only ones there and were able to get a jump on all the rides and activities without a line!

One Friday night, a friend of mine was taking her family to the Anderson vs. Bowie Football game and invited us to go!  The boys LOVED going to a "real tackle football game."  There was so much to see and watch for the boys. It had been a super, long day after school, and almost two hours of soccer that we only made it to half time.  But for days afterwards, I would over hear the boys telling friends that we got to go to a real football game, so my feeling is that they loved it! I was too busy to take pictures, so these two will have to do of the boys induction to high school football games!

We even had a couple of cool fall days....it was not nearly cold enough for all these clothes, but the boys were so excited to get it all on and all came down stairs so proud of all their "gear" as they called it.

 .....and then it was hot again. Hot enough to play Naked and Afraid in the backyard (until I came out and found them....WTF?!?!?) and rub mud all over themselves because as Eli put it, "its natures sunscreen and bug repellent."  Boys. Needless to say, I brought out the soap and bathed them in the house that evening. But I do love so much that they do these kinds of things as boys and love it!

And with the fall, comes Track and Field at Kiker. 

Here is my real feelings about this....I lived for Track and Field as a kid. I loved it, have so many fun memories of it.....Tug O' War against other classes, potato sack races, relays, sprints....for ribbons! Like, we actually won ribbons for these events and had real competitive races and games and things that took real effort and competition. 

Not. Any. More.

No ribbons, no competitive games, nada.  Not to mention that every school in Austin is over crowded and what used to be nice, big fields for the kids to run around in have been over taken by portables. 

So, it is still fun for the kids, they have no idea what they are missing, but the stations at Track and Field now are so lame--carrying a wooden egg on a wooden spoon, twirling a spin jammer on their finger, jump roping....there are some other fun events like games of volley ball with huge balls, basketball and the classic rope climb, but nothing like I remember.  Lame or not, I wouldnt have missed it! So I headed up to the school and went back and forth all morning long between Eli and Owens classes and watched them have a blast with their friends.