Taste of Fall

Menu plan Monday will be back in full swing next week, but until then, I will leave you with some links to our favorite fall treats.

Glazed apple bars

Apple Dumplings

Pumpkin chocolate chip muffins (I use 1c. wheat flour and 1c. spelt flour instead of 2c. wheat flour. I also add 2T. flaxseed meal. The spelt flour really bakes better than using all whole wheat flour.)

Chocolate Chip Bundt cake (This has nothing to do with fall, but it is delish nonetheless.)

Fall snack mix

Enjoy!!

Gotta wear shades

The future's so bright ...

My mom came over to help a couple of days last week (my sanity thanks her very much!) and she let the kids play in her car when they got home from preschool. (Don't worry. She was sitting out there with them and there were no keys in the car.) They played out there for at least an hour. I came out there to check on them and they were both wearing Meme and Poppy's sunglasses that they found in the car. (Claire told me that they were going on "cation" to Disneyworld.)

David like to wear the sunglasses upside down.

Apparently, the kids were pretending that they were the mommy and daddy on "cation" because I heard Claire saying "kids, calm down" to the pretend kids in the back seat of the car.

I wonder where she heard that?

Boo!

A beautiful day for a fall photo shoot.

My assistant.

Daddy's Boy

After three tries, Will finally got a child that looks like him. Ha!

Our other two children favor him somewhat, but Claire and David definitely look more like me than him. Luke has his own little look and he is looking so much like his daddy for now. (He definitely resembles his siblings too, but Claire and David could almost be twins.)

Luke at age: 5 weeks (and such a serious face).

Will at age: 4 weeks.

(Or so the picture says on the back ... I am highly suspect. What 4-week-old can hold their head up like that? While my smart hubby is certainly an overachiever, I think he was probably 4 months old instead of 4 weeks old in this picture.)

Who do you think Luke looks like?

Happy Fall Y'all!

Well, apparently, I took a little maternity leave from the blog too. Things have been a bit crazy around here with the arrival of baby Luke, but we are finally starting to get settled into a routine (I think).

Anyway, I have plans to do some major blog updating in the next few weeks with lots of baby pictures, but in the meantime ...

We have done a little decorating for fall. I'm not a big seasonal decorator (or decorator in general), but I do love some mums and pumpkins on the front porch in October. Thanks to Will for taking me to Home Depot to get my mums. I couldn't quite figure out how to get two large mums to the car with three kids in tow.

We have a big beautiful tree in our front yard (the prettiest in the neighborhood). Starting to turn shades of yellow and orange and fall to the ground ... and these decorations are free!

I loved the red/mulberry mums, but they didn't have any large enough for the front porch, so I got a small one for the kitchen. David painted the little pumpkin at preschool last week.

A few scant leaves on the ground. Claire has been dying to rake up the leaves and make a big pile to jump in. We had enough for a small pile. I keep telling her to be patient and there will be a ton of leaves on the ground in a couple of weeks (much to Will's dismay).

Finally, thanks to some help with the kids from my sweet mom, I was able to crank out some fall shirts for the kids. Doing t-shirts in threes is quite a daunting task! I did manage to get pumpkin tees and ghost tees made for the kids.

Happy Fall!! Stay tuned for pumpkin patch, leaves raking and Halloween pics ...

Welcome to the World!

Luke Taylor arrived on Monday, September 13, 2010 at 7:01 PM, weighing 7 pounds, 14 ounces, and measuring 20 inches long.

Big sister and big brother are smitten. Mommy and Daddy are too.

More to come soon ...

Back to School, Back to School ...

You finish the line ... a little movie trivia to start your Thursday.

The kids both started school last week, so we have one week under our belts already. Claire goes into her classroom much more willingly than she did the first day. David still grabs my leg and holds on for dear life and has to be pried away by his teacher. Hopefully, that will improve soon!

Claire started school last Wednesday, September 1. Here are some pics from her first day (her last first day of preschool ... sniff, sniff).

Ready to head to school.

Giving baby brother a goodbye hug. I thought David would miss having Claire around all day, but we enjoyed some good quality Mommy and David time.

Claire and her friend Kathryn. This is the third year they have been in class together. They are best buds.

Claire and her teacher. We love Ms. Pam already. She is so sweet. Claire loves her because she does not have a formal "nap time" at school. I had to wait until the end of the day to snap this picture to give Claire some time to warm up to her new teacher.

David started Mother's Day Out last Thursday, September 2. He was excited to carry his red bag (every color is "red" right now ... he knows the difference between the different colors, but he calls every color red.)

David has the same teachers that Claire had when she was two. We love Ms. Jayne and Ms. Stacy! He was excited to see his best buddies, Will and Charlie, from his class last year too.

These are the best pics I got of the kids together in their matching apple outfits. As you will notice, David was ALL SMILES while we were outside the room. The tears started when it was time to go inside the room!

I always make the kids matching back-to-school outfits and this year it kind of back-fired on me since the kids started school on different days. Oh well! Claire just wore her outfit on the second day. [Claire was disappointed that she had a small apple and David had a big apple, but I was trying to cover-up some white screen printing that was on her shirt. She very quickly got over it when Ms. Pam complimented her shirt and told her she would have to wear it again when they were learning about the letter "A" next week.]

We are looking forward to a fun school year! So far, so good. And this no nap thing for three days is working out great for Claire's napping at home. She took a good, long nap every day this past weekend and before she hardly ever took naps at home anymore.