Long Weekend

What a fantastic long weekend. Wes and Darlene's old house got painted, so it was a big weekend for Alexander Family visiting. In fact, I learned that Grammie saw ALL 11 of her children over the course of the weekend. That's pretty amazing!

As you all know by now, Ed got his first moose on Wednesday afternoon. I do not have any digital photos, I guess Thomas will have to post the pictures of the moose parts on the Slumber Party blog (or not...)! But anyway, we're all proud of Ed and all the Glover Camp boys who were part of the "Moose Team"!

Thursday was a beautiful sunny, cold day. Elijah and I headed up to Glover to visit Darlene, Wes, Julie, Thomas and all the kids. We had a nice visit, and all played outside for a while.

The children all love Thomas. He's so FUN!

This trio of photographs of Darlene, Heather and Cole cracks me up! Notice Darlene and Heather smiling nicely at the camera. They look the same in every picture Cole, on the other hand, is being an absolute clown! What a personality!!!

Here are Julie and Thomas. Julie is wearing her old letterman's jacket from MMU. What a hoot!

Beautiful Estelle.

Estelle, Heather, Elijah, Sandy and Cole (Wayne was off running an errand with Wes).

Ed, Elijah and I went back up to Glover on Sunday so we could see Grammie. We all had a nice lunch together before the weekend painting crew left.

Julie, Cole, Lauren, Elijah, Chelsea, Estelle, Paul, Wayne and Lesley

Outdoor fun

It was this kind of weekend here in Fairfax...

While the peak foliage has surely passed, we're in a stretch of beautiful, colorful, sparkly days.

Ed is gone moose hunting. He says he hasn't gotten one yet- but maybe he has, and just wants to spend more days at Glover camp!

Elijah and I spent many hours each day playing outside.

Saturday we went for a walk, and then spent the afternoon playing at home.

Today we ventured out for a long walk, and then stopped at the playground.

Elijah LOVED his first experience with the kiddie equipment.

He spent some time climbing...

...and figuring out the slide.

Look at Elijah's hair, from static on the slide. Everytime I touched the poor kid, I gave him a shock. Electrifying!

His favorite part? Eating woodchips.

We're looking forward to seeing Julie, Thomas and Estelle next weekend. Hope to have lots of great pictures to post then.

Have a great week!

Apple Picking

Today we planned to go apple picking in South Hero. But first, Elijah did some walking. You can hear me reprimanding Ed in the background for working a pan of bacon right over Eli's head. :-)

We shudder to think what these hardwood floors will look like after a couple months of this!

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Ed and I have been planning on taking Elijah apple picking for a while, and were thrilled to learn that this was "Apple Harvest" weekend in South Hero. That sounded like so much fun!

Well......It turned out to be a mob scene. What we thought was going to be a charming fall day turned out to be no different than a day at the Champlain Valley Fair. The Main Road in South Hero was lined with greasy food joints (think Al's French Frys, Bloomin' Onion, etc), which brought out the Fair-lovers. There must have been thousands of people. Once you got into the stream of pedestrian traffic, you couldn't stop for fear that you'd be stampeded like the "Running of the Bulls." Ed was kind of grumbly and cross. It wasn't starting out to be very much fun.

The first apple-picking farm we got to was called Hackett's. We got in line, and when we arrived at the register I asked the woman, "How do we go about picking apples?" To which she replied, "Come back next season. We're done picking for the year." I was flabbergasted. I mean, wasn't it "Apple HARVEST" weekend in South Hero? She mentioned that we might continue down the road to Allenholm Farms. They might still be picking.

So back into the pedestrian stream we maneuvered, and about 1/4 a mile down the road we found Allenholm Farms. Thank Goodness they were still picking. So we bought our bags, moved through the crowds and found some trees way back where no one else was.

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Elijah was pretty interested in the "drops"

Ed has never been apple picking before. He probably ate 4 or 5 apples in a row! This cheered him up, and we actually enjoyed the rest of the afternoon.
It was a beautiful, sunny day!

In the end, we came away with WAY more apples than 3 people need...but it was a nice way to spend a sunny Saturday afternoon.

Walking

Please ignore the the "goofy parent" commentary!

A Round of Applause

When Elijah was first introduced to semi-solid foods, he was a fabulous connoisseur of anything vegetable. If it was pureed, he'd eat it- broccoli, peas, green beans, zucchini, etc. I think I was even a bit smug about my health-conscious little guy.

Fast forward 5 months. If it's green and it gets within 3 inches of his mouth, he starts gagging. Adding butter or cheese doesn't seem to make much of a difference.
(Julie, you should be pleased that Estelle will at least EAT vegetables, even if they have to be pureed!)

Tonight we learned a new trick, though. Clapping. If we gave Elijah a round of applause when he took a bite, he would gleefully clap his hands and (kind of) excitedly accept the next bite. At dinner, he ate a whole serving of peas, with only a touch of butter added in. I guess he likes an audience.
It's pretty cute, too.

What Elijah has NO trouble eating is blueberries. The child LOVES blueberries. Oh, and cranberry sauce (the jellied stuff in the can that you might have at Thanksgiving dinner). Surprisingly, cranberry sauce has pretty much no nutritional value whatsoever, but plenty of HF corn syrup. Oh well.

Here's what Elijah looks like when he gets "what he wants" for dinner:

Let's get a closer look at that:

Shout stain remover has become part of our evening ritual (as if we don't have enough to do at night!)

In other news, Ed and Tyler drove to Castleton to watch Matt run last weekend. Here is a nice picture of Tyler and Matt (bee stings and all):

Then, Tyler came back to stay with us Saturday night. Elijah was mesmerized by him.

Tyler ran the Leaf Peppers Half Marathon on Sunday (Waterbury). What a wonderful autumn day for running. He did great- came in 10th place in a huge field of runnes! Congrats, Tyler!

The Garrows came for dinner also on Staurday night. It was great to see Heather, Jason, Jackson (7) and Ryan(5). We see so little of each other lately! They might look familiar from the photo album at the cottage in Maine, as they have vacationed with us there for the past 4 years.

Here's a photo from our vacation this past summer:

Until next time...