Chick Pea Chronicles: Outdoor Fun in October

A^4 had a good week that went by too fast! Ayson and Daddy had their last football practice of the season on Thursday - yay!!!!! We had a week and weekend of wonderful weather and we made sure to make the most of it! Friday involved a play date with Neighbor Denise for the kiddos and a night out for Mommy and Daddy. While Ayson and Daddy were at their last game on Saturday (the TOOLON Tigers lost :( Mommy and Addie made a last minute decision to attend a Fairy Festival with some friends. SO much fun!!!! Sunday found us outside most of the day catching up on chores and we picked out pumpkins! We hope all of our family and friends found time to be with people they love because we sure did!!!!

Ayson reading the Book of Farts during his nightly 15 minutes of reading session. During bedtime, Ayson now reads us a book (he requests this) and then we read him a book.

On Friday night, Neighbor Denise offered to watch the kiddos so that Daddy and Mommy could go out. Daddy went to the Syracuse/Clemson football game and Mommy went out to dinner with a girlfriend (not enough tickets [with seats together) for Mommy to go to the football game too). Mommy is pretty sure that she had more fun than Daddy ;)

Ayson writing Denise's name with his toes :) Addie is wearing pigtails and they look SO cute!

The kiddos drew lots of pictures for Denise.
Ayson's

Addie's

Their spinart creations

Mommy's dinner with a view and time with a great friend!

Clemson lost - poor Daddy:( Syracuse played a great game!

Sunshine sent Mommy a picture of Ayson and Khanlen riding their bikes from a previous weekend in September

On Saturday, Mommy and Addie attended an "Autumnal Fairy Festival" at Baltimore Woods with Mikhan and Sunshine. The girls has such a great time!!! Mommy loved watching all of the fairies flit around :)
The girls getting their pipe cleaners so that they could make a bead bracelet. A new bead was added at each station: face painting, games, story time, fairy wand making, crossing the bridge with the troll under it, potion making, catching the wizard, a bead from the Fairy Queen, scavenger hunt, making a fairy house, AND a bead for dancing! Whew!

The Fairy Queen was a luna moth

Games with a wizard

Both Mommy and Sunshine agreed that any guy in a hood or mask was scary/creepy and we were not surprised that the kiddos were hesitant to approach the wizards.

Fairy wand making

Talking with the Fairy Queen :)

Picture time

Follow the Fairy Queen, it's story time!

Walking through the woods

Three Billy Goats Gruff

Mother Earth

Addie spotted the "apartment" tree (animals [or maybe fairies] MUST live in all of the holes)

Walking down the trail to the troll bridge and potion making!

The not so scary troll (thank goodness!)

A teeny tiny fairy house :)

A fairy in the woods

Crossing another bridge to get to the potions!

The kiddos had to find a rock or leaf, make a wish, and add it to the potion cauldron. They then got a tiny vile of their potion to wear around their neck. TOO cute!

The Potion Fairy handing over their vials. (Little glass vials with cork stoppers with an eye hook loop in the cork which was then threaded through with twine)

Another forest fairy and a face on the tree stump

Collecting supplies to make a fairy house

Addie's fairy house

Dancing!

Addie talking with the Wood Fairy

It's hard to see, but our basil (with all of the flowers we did not pinch off) is covered in bees!

On Sunday, we picked out our Pumpkins from the local apple orchard, Deer Run. $24 for 4 huge pumpkins - not too bad!

While waiting for Daddy and Ayson in the store, Addie climbed up the hay bale mountain.

Addie listening to Ayson read her Duckling book that she checked out of the school library :)

Daddy had the kiddos stack the last two face cords of fire wood. Mommy was on the very western portion of the yard picking grapes and could hear Daddy giving military (boot camp - left, right, march, MARCH!) type words of encouragement to the kids :) It took a while, but the wood is now ALL stacked!!