Fall Traditions

I'm not big on picking a "favorite" season, but their are distinct moments in each season that make me giddy beyond belief.  For fall, it's the golden hour of sunlight in the afternoon reflecting and brightening the yellows of the hayfields and fall leaves against a brilliant blue sky.

It's the crispness in the air requiring a sweater and hat (and cup of coffee) but the bright sun that warms your face.  Though these days are getting few and far between we've had some great ones recently and have been busy exploring some of the best fall events Bozeman has to offer.  First we headed over to the Hay Maze.  We didn't make it last year (the maze actually caught on fire filling the city with tons of smoke before we were able to go) but we had enjoyed it in the past.  This time Matthew was big enough to tackle the maze (with help of course!) and we met up with some friends for the afternoon.   Matthew mostly had fun running around and over the bales with his friends but I did convince him to pause for a picture or two:

This was about as cooperative as the kids got for a photo.  The rest of the time Catherine was busy licking her pumpkin and Matthew was watching the train behind him.  In fact, he was pretty disappointed when I didn't get the train in the picture.

Matthew was a little intimidated by the corn bin at first but as the place cleared out, Matthew decided to brave the bin, and then got even braver:

Last weekend we had quite the Saturday.  Matthew went to his third swimming lesson.  His recap was "I didn't cry and mommy be happy."  Matthew hasn't taken "swim lessons" since we took the parent-tot lessons two years ago.  

Swim lessons are one of the few lessons that I place a high priority on, especially at this age, so it was time to man up this fall and make time to do it.  The 3-4 year old classes do not involve parents.  Matthew has been great in other lesson situations thus far and started out pretty excited. Our first lesson went okay.  Matthew participated a bit but kept coming back to me and there were a few tears.  The second lesson pretty much drove me to drink.  He wouldn't participate and wouldn't even watch from the sideline without crying/screaming.  It was rough.  For our third lesson we went early and I got in the pool with him.


I ended up staying in the pool with him and gradually backing away as he participated with the teacher on his own.  Not ideal but there was no screaming and he got some swimming in.
Catherine is between taking 1 and 2 naps and the times vary wildly.  She just happened to take a crazy long morning nap so we got a late start heading out to pick out our pumpkins.

"Who Me?"

The whole faux pumpkin patch thing cracks me up as we take a hayride out to a field where a truck drops off pumpkins and spreads them out which seems like a very odd business model.  However, it sure is fun if not a very odd and off-base way to show kids a "farm".  I mean, there was a (delicious) crepes and gelato food truck there :-)  Catherine didn't want any photos taken of her dining though:

Here we are on the hayride:

 Matthew was pretty jazzed about using his (I couldn't make up half the stuff that comes out of his mouth if I tried) "big muscles and skills" to pick out pumpkins.

Catherine was in charge of watching the pumpkins as Matthew collected them:

And practiced standing: 

And falling for a while:

 Matthew meanwhile picked out another pumpkin:

 And when we finally convinced him he had to stop, he took to running through the pumpkins:

 Afterward we headed back to play in the hay bales and hay tunnel:

 Catherine wasn't nearly as impressed with the tunnel:

 But enjoyed the ladder and climbing around on top:

 If only to keep up with her big brother who has all of a sudden become Mr. Daredevil.

 Turns out we need another pumpkin for preschool this week so Matthew may have another opportunity or two to use his "muscles and skills" soon.  In the meantime they've been put to good work raking the yard and helping with other house projects to be shared soon :-)

And, if you saw this picture I shared on facebook it has been confirmed that yes, Uncle Matt and I were likely fighting over the pumpkin lid in this adorable picture:

Now I'll let you go back and guess how many of the photos in this post were taken just before a toddler fight :-)  I'm sure its higher than I'd like to admit!

Owls Love Pumpkins

Happy Halloween, or Owl-o-ween as it's become in our owl obsessed house.   As I may have shared earlier, Matthew was even his favorite type of owl, "heavy".   It was a fight to get him to leave the headband on, and an even bigger task to get him to hold Catherine






Hugs.

And more hugs that look like headlocks:


This boy sure does love his sister.  He however, was not a big fan of the mask so that was delegated to mommy:

I convinced him to put it on a little longer for trick-or-treating and once he got super excited about the treats, he managed to wear it most of the evening!

Next year we'll be able to hand out candy from this fabulous porch:

But for this year since someone was still napping during trick-or-treating downtown, we opted for the mall again.  It's warm, well-lit and the perfect distance for a child whose 4 step path from A to Z often requires 22 steps.   We were also early enough that we were willing to wait in line for our free family photo (which I then snapped a photo of because I'm lazy and our house is in disarray, so the coloring on the original is better.  My crazy eyes however - still just as crazy looking in the original):

Speaking of photos, since I'm on the way to one monster post (that will make up for my 2 weeks hiatus), a few weeks ago we had family pictures taken again by Amy, who took Matthew's one year photos.  We just did a mini-session with her this time, but as always she got some great shots.  She's moved to LA but was back for a weekend so we were so glad we could meet up!  Here's a few screenshots of our proofing gallery, and if you want to look at more, you can go to http://www.amyshertzerphotography.com/proofing and create an account.   The access code is: matthew



I'm not sure what else I've skipped over in the past 2 weeks but here's at least what I found lingering around my camera (well, with the exception of the pictures Matthew took of the inside of my nose.  I'll spare you):
The other weekend we took a short hike around the Wildlife Preserve.  We missed spotting a deer in the river due to our very loud toddler and as always, checked out the ducks.  It's bear suit time for Catherine:

And frog hat time for Matthew:

He spent most of the hiking letting us get ahead, counting down and then running full force to give us hugs.  It's quite possibly the best thing ever:

We also did some splashing (shock!) and the colors were just about perfect, even if the skies and winds weren't.



We finally got around to carving our pumpkins.  Out of sheer exhaustion I lost a baking sheet and 2 pumpkins worth of seeds to absentmindedness.  On the bright side, I didn't burn down the apartment :-)   Matthew's first pumpkin face was a series of 4 vertical dots.  As he drew each one he said "eyes, nose, eyes, mouth".  When I "carved" the tiny dots they didn't pack much punch so I carved his second drawing for him.  I'm calling it an abstract ghost . . . unsurprisingly, he's calling it an owl.

Otherwise, I survived another concert weekend, we all survived our first cold/virus/sinus infections and we managed to progress on our house even with this surprising news from James' company.   Our nanny unfortunately found a position in her field for more hours so finding new childcare's added a new level of excitment to our lives - especially since I'm 2 weeks out from putting on a big work event, then we're headed back east for 2.5 weeks (speaking of that, anyone up for a potluck/get-together the weekend of Nov. 19 in NoVA?) then we come back and close on our house!  We'll share more as its official-official, but as we've shared some of its awesome points (aspens, front porch, kitchen bigger than a postage stamp) here's definitely one of its quirks:

There's a HUGE "landscaped" (and that's a very loose definition) area around the hot tub (which will hopefully be gone) that's filled with these weird "rocks".  I think it's some type of volcanic rock, rounded out and then painted.  Anyway, they're lightweight and a toddler's dream to stick in their pockets and throw but they are also sitting on 6-8 inches of sand which is just, well, weird.  I don't get it at all and I have no idea what we'll do with the space - other than maybe just declare it a toddler exploration area/sand box of awesomeness since it fails as reasonably attractive landscaping in my opinion.
(Oh yeah, and it appears that I only own 1 fall sweater, but I infact own 3.  They are just all a very similar style and in the gray/brown/green family.  I might however be wearing the same sweater in all of these pics because thats just the type of life ebb and flow we've had).
That's all the news thats fit to print in Watson-land.

Fall Fun!!

This weekend, we packed in a bunch of fall fun! On Saturday morning we headed out to Rocky Creek Farms for pumpkins and cider. First we checked out the pigs

Then we took a tractor ride out to the pumpkin patch.

Matthew took his turn at "driving"

Technically they were "out" of pumpkins but had set aside a few for a birthday party that never showed. They were little, but the perfect size for Matthew.

Later that afternoon in my quest for carving pumpkins the day before Halloween (FAIL) I saw a mom and her two kids at the grocery store picking out "pumpkins" (small gourds). The poor boy couldn't comprehend that he was going to have to paint his "pumpkin" and they wouldn't be carving any because there were no pumpkins left in town. Thank goodness this year Matthew won't remember and I've learned my lesson. Even though it seemed silly at the time, I should have picked up pumpkins in Worland last weekend :-)

Once we finished up our hay ride we picked out a box of apples, then watched as our cider was pressed






The cider turned out delicious.

Afterward, I couldn' resist a caramel apple. As I was dipping my apple I thought "wow, this caramel is so smooth and creamy for sitting in the crock pot all morning . . . I wonder what their secret is". Turned out the secret was the caramel never, ever set, so it was a drippy gooey disastrous mess. Matthew shared some of daddy's and didn't seem to mind:

Sunday we headed out to Bozeman's Hay Maze which was incredibly cool. It was just before nap so we didn't take on the big maze, but Matthew enjoyed the little maze

and though he was hesitant at first, eventually enjoyed the cornbox. As I pulled corn out of every crease in his overalls when we got home, I was less amused.
Before we headed out we found some big pumpkins to use for a photo op. Even though these next three pics are very similar, I just couldn't pick a favorite :-)


And finally some pics with Mommy and Daddy.