Fall Fun!

Fall is officially upon us.  I LOVE fall.  The cooler temps, changing colors of the leaves, and apple and pumpkin everything!  When my mom came down to visit a few weeks ago, we headed out to Royal Oaks, a great apple orchard in Chicagoland (even though it's really closer to WI!).  It was a drizzly day, but we ventured out anyway.  There weren't many people there, and we didn't get to pick apples(we chose not to due to the rain), but we still had a great time.  They have a great cafe, gift shop, petting zoo, carousel, and outdoor area.  They even had a fire going in one of their outdoor areas.  Since it was actually pretty chilly, it was nice to warm up near the fire.  Lydia and I also danced to some folk/(country?) music.  It was right up my alley, seriously!

 Here are the kids warming up under the blanket by the fire.

 

 

Joe sitting in a big wooden rocking chair near the fire.

Lydia found a white squash.

Joe was in awe of the honeybees. There were thousands of LIVE bees in there! It creeped me out a little. 

Then, just this past weekend, we went camping with our small group.  We went to Rock Cut State Park, near Rockford.  It's the same place we took the kids in July.  It was a little chilly but we still had a good time.  Layers is the key!  The rest of our group went canoeing on Saturday, but since Marc had a lot of reading to do for the ADT class he is teaching at church, we stayed back.  It was also in the 40's when everyone left for camping, so I wasn't heartbroken over it. :)  We enjoyed our day of hanging back at the campsite, sitting out around the fire, reading our books (I brought my own book to read).  We even got a short hike in.  Here's a pic from that. 
  

 

 

And this week, here at home, I decided to look up some fall activities to do with the kids.  Joe has pretty much dropped his pm nap, and I realized with more awake time, there needs to more things to do!  I found this really cool blog here, where I got the idea to do a sound scavenger hunt (this could really be an any time of the year thing, but 'leaves' make it fallish). 

I could have added a couple of other sounds that would have been appropriate for our neighborhood right now, for example 'Construction workers' and 'people speaking in a language other than English'. We had fun completing this Scavenger Hunt on our walk to the library this morning!

 

 

I also got this idea from the same blog I linked to above.  It's Autumn Rainbow Rice. 



 

It was, suprisingly, very easy to dye the rice different colors.  And then I added some Autumn trinkets I got pretty cheap at Hobby Lobby.  If you're interested in learning how to do this one, click here.  Lydia has really enjoyed this one.  I have yet to let Joe play with it, since it will require close supervision!  Maybe outside? 

 

That's some of what we've been up to!  Now I'm off to make apple crisp for Small Group tonight!