plugging away! here's november.

The beginning of November we were still in Utah and had a dinner with Janet and John, and the rest of Jon's family. We got some great Halloween shots. Kate loves being around her family.

A new cup-holder for Matt...

Tinkerbell, Scottish style.

Wait Hudson!! I think this is hilarious, Hudson just CANNOT sit still for a few seconds... Plus Sam in the background apparently in complete protest. Heh heh. :)

Reasonably well-sat picture I guess. Hudson is still in revolt...

Grandma and Grandpa with the little fairy-child.

I just have a huge thing for our Scottish heritage and Kate looks so cute in everything.

Crazy pants getting a little fun in before the snow flies...

My friend Lisa. Can't visit Utah and not visit darling Lis!

We celebrated Thanksgiving in New York. Brian drove up from Philly and my mom and dad flew in from Utah. It was so much fun to have everyone there. Dinner was a little stressful but it's so rewarding to see everyone enjoying it.

October

October was a fun month. There always seems to be a lot to do with Halloween plus we got to go back to Utah for a week. Here's some stuff we did in Liverpool and Salt Lake.

Abbott Farms is a farm quite close to our home that has a fall festival thing around halloween that was fun for Kate especially. They also make their own fudge from products from the farm - their own cream, raspberries, butter, maple, etc. It's some of the best I've ever tasted. The farm had a hay ride, pumpkin patch, corn maze, animals, a little pond, a big bouncy slide, a ball house, and various farm things like watching cider being made from the apple orchards.

The bouncy slide

Kate picking out her pumpkin
She's just very pretty. I'm a tad biased, I suppose. :)

We didn't go through much of the corn maze because it was getting close to naptime and Kate was getting cranky. This thing is a root from the corn stalks they pulled to make the maze. It took us forever to go through a few feet because Kate had to step on all these roots. She called them spiders.

Cutest pig on the farm.

Animals with hats?

She's eight feet tall in personality.

We went to the Syracuse Zoo when it started to get cold. The leaves were turning and there was hardly anybody there but the weather doesn't stop Kate from doing what she wants. :)

Heh heh heh. That's my little vampire penguin.

We went to Utah at the end of the month to spend Halloween with the Utah fam. We had lots of fun there. We trick-or-treated, went to the zoo, went to the Garden After Dark with Nathan's family, and had fun seeing everyone again.

Kate back in her favorite place - the carousel at the Hogle zoo.

Melissa and Kate helping cousin Hudson down the hill.

Jen and Hudson

Alicia and Hudson

It seemed like we had a lot to do in Utah - lots of friends and family to visit especially - but it was nice just to chill out sometimes.

So cute!

This one is actually in New York. Kate walks around without pants most of the time in an effort to improve potty training. She formed an attachment to the honey bottle shaped like a bear.

With Aunt LaRisse

Garden After Dark is a neat thing Red Butte Gardens does every year at Halloween. Some years are better than others and this year was really good. Nathan's family came up to go with us. Kate was SOO excited to see her cousins! They did a walk through the gardens, make potions, made broomsticks, painted pumpkins, saw fortune tellers, saw a real owl, heard a story-teller, and did some face painting.

Little Red Riding Hood, a fighter jet pilot, and Little Bo PeepMaking potions. They provided little glass vials to wear around the neck and gave them lavendar, calendula petals, pine needles, juniper berries, and rose hips to combine into "potions" in their little vials.

Kate on her homemade broom. It's an especially long one but she seemed to ride it like a real pro.

The four cutest kids ever.

Trick-or-treating was fun though sort of short-lived due to the small attention span and easily worn out little body of my two-year-old. But she had a blast and made quite a haul.

My little tinkerbell Grandpa and Kate hitting the houses

September... short and sweet.

Though nothing of extreme importance or excitement seemed to happen in September the calmness of everyday humor and routine is what we needed. So these pictures are a random assortment of everyday and a couple visits to the Syracuse zoo.

Quite the ensemble my crazy pants put together. Note the chocolate around the mouth, the bright red slippers, the pink sunhat, toy dog, and cat toy. The cat toy she actually was using as a trumpet...

Playing glow-in-the-dark frisbee in the front yard.
UFO?

Chocolate dream cake. Made it like four times in two weeks. HEAVENLY...

The Syracuse zoo is called Rosamond Gifford Zoo. It is a small zoo but pretty nice and they seem to be trying to improve parts of it. There are a couple of really cool exhibits there - the penguin habitat is really neat, and the lions are right up close and personal. I'm pretty possessive of my Hogle zoo but I feel lucky to have a zoo so close here. Plus we get in for free with our Hogle membership because they are sister zoos.

Crazy pants at the zoo

Kate watching the elephant. The elephant habitat is a little odd - there is a small area painted like an Indian temple or something, then there are two or three other elephants in a plain grass enclosure further down the zoo. I think that's the next big project.

At the goat/sheep barn.

There's a fake bladder under this cow that sprays the "milk" (it's actually just water) into buckets. Kate freaked out a little at the "milk" on her hands and wanted to wash them immediately.

The lion enclosure is quite small but the three lions in there (a brother and his two sisters) are right up close and personal. Around halloween there was a little kid dressed as a pumpkin and the lions just prowled back and forth following the pumpkin. :) After they eat they roar for a few minutes and the ground shakes. It's intense.

The penguin habitat is neat. There are several areas that are covered with windows so you can watch them dive and swim. They are fast!

Kate wasn't too thrilled about riding the fake tiger. The tiger enclosure is just a vast area of grass, weeds, and trees but the viewing area is above so you can actually see the tiger a lot of the time. It prowls along a path by the fence.