A few recent pics of us out and about

It's cool to see the world through Emmett's eyes.  We have a second chance to have beginners' minds.  What is he looking at?  What is he thinking?  What might he be learning?

Just a cute gardening outfit from the other weekend.

The weather turned cold, so we busted out a couple new clothing items, including the hat here and the snow suit below.  Hungry Caterpillar is one of his favorite toys right now.

These two guys were quite interested in each other.  It was a rather tender moment.  I've been missing riding quite a lot, lately.  Hopefully horsemanship will be a part of Emmett's life.

The snowsuit.  Out for a walk with Pat.

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At Home Depot.  Almost as thrilled as his Papa.

Bikes and flowers and markets and autumn leaves

On Sunday we woke up to a beautiful, crisp, sunny day and headed down to the market.  Sarah and Emmett and I have been impatient to get back on the Waterfront Trail and do some more exploring, so instead of parking at the market, we parked at the Children's Garden on the far side of Cayuga and road over the inlet and around to the Farmers Market.

We're really happy with the bike trailer.  Em. C. Harrington fits in their nicely inside his carseat and the seat snugs in tightly with the lap strap across it.  I'm surprised at how smooth the ride is.  The Dude was awake and looking around for some of the ride, which is super cute, and then he fell asleep in his chariot.

The market was busy, but we managed to get all the food we wanted anyway.

Cormorant on the lake.  Waiting for a fish to swim by.

Friends ride bikes together.

Boo had to head home at noon on Sunday, so we said goodbye to him in the parking lot, but we hadn't had enough bike riding yet.  Sarah says, "Let's go!"

These are some photos I took in the Children's Garden.

I like this one a lot.

On the way home, we had to stop and take a picture of our bucolic valley. 

Getting ready for the next season.

After a long, wonderful day, we're ready for bed.

Chilly weather coming....

It's fall all of a sudden.  Last week we had a couple days in the 80s, and then suddenly it broke and the temps dropped fast.  This weekend we had a couple days in the low 60s with nights in the 30s.  Very comfortable flannel and sweater weather.  We've been trying to keep up with the Chopper's growth spurts and it seems like Sarah is constantly sorting clothes.  We already have  a bag ready to be passed onto the next newborn.

The leaves are changing already, too.  We talk a bit about how the drought may affect the leaves.  The consensus seems to be that we'll have a bit of a weak showing this year.  Regardless, we've spent a lot of time outside in the last couple weeks.  My job is keeping me pretty busy between 7 and 7, so we pretty much chill in the evenings during the week.  I'm getting better, with Sarah's support and Emmett's adorableness, at turning off work on the weekends, so we have been pretty pleasantly busy for the last couple.

Emmett lent his critical eye to Sarah's work a couple weeks ago.  The sweet alligator was an early gift from Zach's girls, Nora and Charlotte.

Two weeks ago Zhora, Jenn, and Bob went glamping at a local spot.  We dropped by for an evening.  It's nothing I'd want for myself, what with other people talking and hanging around and tents and fires set up by staff, but the fully stocked bar in the "lobby tent" was pretty sweet.  As far as bars go, it's pretty sweet.

There's no story with this one that I remember.  Emmett loves his jingly elephant.

Last weekend we had our first campfire of the season!  Unbelievable.  Between the new kid, the drought, and the heat, we just haven't gotten out.  Everyone was happy with this fire, including Jonas.

We got out for a walk on the Waterfront Trail and got really excited about doing more of it.  Looking forward to Mom and Dad H coming up soon!

The garden is totally overgrown and past its prime, but Sarah dug out 15 gallons of  potatoes and we got plenty of other produce throughout the season.  I'd say we did pretty well this year.

One of our favorite events is the Migration Celebration at Cornell's Lab of Ornithology.  There's lots of cool stuff, especially for kids, but our favorite thing is the live raptors that are on show.  

This is Sarah's favorite.  I think she's blind in one eye or something (the owl, not Sarah).  All of the birds are injured and living out very comfortable lives at one of the rehab centers on campus.

The new mural at the Lab is incredible.  We looked at it for quite awhile, and could have easily stayed for quite a while longer.

On that same weekend (I think), we went to the farm to table market at Caroline Elementary.  Zhora was selling veggies and flowers there.  We had some great food and juice.  Emmett is now big enough to face forward in his carrier.  I like to have him grab onto my fingers and pretend like he's driving me around.  He likes to chew and drool on the Bjorn.  Bob likes to make weird faces in the background of pictures.  He reminds me a lot of that one ventriloquist dummy from the comedy skit.

The Dude has been doing a lot of reading.  If he ever finds himself on the plains of Africa or in the Andes, he'll have words to describe the animals he sees.

This weekend Sarah got a new bike as an early birthday present from Moms H and B and Dad H and me and Emmett.  Emmett wanted mama to have a new bike so that she can tow him around and get some fresh air.

Our friend Anne surprised us with a gift of a hand knit sweater this weekend!  It is so cool.  It's soft and fits him pretty well, with a little room to grow.  He will definitely fill it out by the end of the winter.

I just can;'t believe that someone can knit a sweater!  We went into town Saturday morning to go to a winter gear sale at Mama Goose, where we scored a couple cool snow suits and some gloves and hats, all for Emmett.  Purity makes a great breakfast that we indulged in, too.  After that, we went over to Anne's to say thank you and hung out for a bit.  Then it was back home to unload, hang out for a bit, and then over to Willa, Sebastian, Erik, and Margaret's for dinner and fun.

Becky knows babies.  This is one of his favorite books.  He looks at the pages for a really long time.

So, the reason we surprised the mama with her new bike early is because there are several biking opportunities in the near future (and recent past).  On Saturday morning I was searching Craigslist, and lo and behold, someone in B-dale was selling a bike trailer for cheap!  I went and picked it up so we could hit the downtown for Streets Alive on Sunday.  It's a cool event where they close off some of the streets in Ithaca and only allow pedestrians and bikers.  We saw a few people we knew, and had a nice time, but in the end, we wanted more.

So we headed over to the Children's Garden and went for our first ride on the Waterfront trail as a family!

It was great.

Finally, we came home and made another campfire.

The days are just packed.

A couple walks and some other stuff I'm thankful for.

This past weekend was lovely.  Actually, the weather has been pretty amazing for as long as I can remember, now.  We took advantage of the sunshine and brisk air to go for some walks.  Zhora came over, too and did some crafts and helped out around the house with whatever was going on.  She's a good egg.  She and I walked the dogs, as well, but I didn't get any pictures because she really keeps me moving.  We had to tag all the mailboxes, throw the biggest rocks and try to outrun Eva.

The swamp is low on water, but high on beauty.  Eva was excited to have some weeds to push through.

I still love taking these washed out, over exposed photos.

We went out to Pat's Sunday morning to cut some trees, visit with Pat, and see the boys.  I set my axe down in the woods again and couldn't find it again... for the last time!  We stopped at Agway on the way home and I picked up some spray paint.

No more searching for axes.  We had a nice time in spite of it being opening weekend for deer.

We've also been having a little snow.  Nothing major, but we've run the stove 24 hrs for the last few days.  I just got my boots back from the cobbler and am looking forward to getting the skis down.

Jonas was happy to take a snow bath on Monday while I studied for my test.  He'll go all out to brighten my day.

So I took a break after 4 hours of studying school law and we went for a little hike.  Here are a couple more over exposed pictures of the back yard.

We went to see Supaman at the Greater Ithaca Activity Center.  It was crazy.  It was a small space with only about 50-100 people.  He told a lot of really corny jokes, which was unexpected and funny.  He was all about audience participation.  Here he is having audience members make sounds while he samples and loops them.  He also had us pull stuff out of our pockets and he walked around and free styled and riffed off of whatever he saw.  It was silly and really impressive.  We were totally excited to here him perform Prayer Loop, and he sang Why, too.  His cousin and DJ sang a little also.  It was really a great time.  If you need a reminder of how awesome he is, here are a few links:

He didn't say much about Thanksgiving, but reminded us that there is a real story of thanksgiving and admonished the audience to treat the land as sacred since it belongs to another group of people.  Mostly, we were reminded to take care of one another, that we are all one people, and to be thankful.  It was one of the more uplifting hip hop events I've been to.

This is Eva's little toy nest.  She was trying to lay on all of them at the same time, even though nobody else in the house shows any interest in them.  So cute.