gettin ready for Halloween

First off, holy cow, Mike's writing a post again! Yay!
Like lots of other people in the Northeast, we had some early snow Saturday. Not too bad here, just 2, maybe 3 inches at most, and I didn't seen any tree damage around town. Unusual early snow fall but not as destructive as the one we had in mid-October 2009 that destroyed a bunch of trees in the neighborhood. Here's the melting snow as it appeared today (Sunday)

From October_2011

We carved a pumpkin and decorated some others for Halloween. Gwen gets the props for pumpkin shopping and door decorating. (Although I bought the indian corn). Everyone is ready to go trick-or-treating tomorrow night!

-- Mike

From October_2011

From October_2011

From October_2011

From October_2011

From October_2011

Beautiful Fall Weather

We finally had some beautiful fall weather here in 'Happy Valley'. The kids and I raked up a big pile of maple leaves had had days of fun playing in it. We also had a few picnics out in the yard. It was so wonderful after some of our recent soggy weather.

Time for a picnic on the deck.

Our maple tree has the best leaf pile ever! The kids are yelling 'Celebrate!' and throwing leaves in the air. Meredith was trying to yell 'Celebrate!' just like Jeffrey. Not sure what inspired them, but it was really funny.

We picked apples at the annual Way Fruit Farm Apple Festival. We also went on a hayride out to the pumpkin patch. It was fun and everyone was there! I made a delicious apple crumble for dessert, it turned out yummy.

Meredith is riding her bike too! Just like Jeffrey! But mostly without any moving. She likes to put on her helmet and sit on the mini bike for about 2 minutes. It sure is cute though.

September Fun

Some of the fun family activities we did this September were attending the annual State College Insect Fair (along with every other family in town and their children!), and finding some of our own caterpillars and butterflies at home and at the Arboretum.

We finally found a big monarch butterfly caterpillar on the butterfly weed at our house!

Jeffrey at the insect fair with the butterfly displays.

We saw some buckeye butterflies at the arboretum - Jeffrey calls them 'owl butterlies'.

We also took a trip to 'Reptiland', where we saw giant dinosaur displays, a butterfly house, tortises, and of course really great reptile and amphibian displays. It was a fun day trip, we packed a picnic lunch had a fun time. I highly recommend visiting Reptiland - we will go again next year when they have a Komodo Dragon display.

Meredith and Daddy check out the Aligators.

Watch out for the T-rex!