Air and Scare 2012

We went out to the Air and Space Museum near Dulles for their annual “Air and Scare” trick-or-treating extravaganza on Saturday. It was the boys’ costumes big debuts. There are a couple of kinks to work out, but they were a big hit.

You can’t really tell in this first picture, but Conan is a turtle. For Lincoln we went with our “costume from a diaper box” tradition.

We need to get some better pictures of Conan crawling with his shell on.

Long time readers of my blog (ha!) might remember that we tried to get Lincoln’s picture taken with Darth Vader at this event last year and he wasn’t really excited about that. This year we couldn’t even get Lincoln near him. Conan was more cooperative.

More Halloween festivities to come this week… that is if this dumb storm doesn’t get in our way.

Carving Pumpkins

Lincoln was super excited to give his pumpkin a “spooky smile” this year. He waited very patiently, and we finally carved our pumpkins on Friday.

 

He was really excited… until we told him he had to remove all the pumpkin guts.

He would not stick his arm in there, but did try with a spoon for a while. He didn’t get very far, so Jonathan did most of the heavy lifting.

Here are our finished pumpkins.

 

And Lincoln giving me his spookiest face.

Cox Farms

Last week the boys and I went with friends for some weekday fall fun at Cox Farms. They have a huge fall festival with tons of slides, a corn maze path, a hay ride, and various other attractions. It was a beautiful day and a lot of fun.

I had some issues convincing Lincoln that we shouldn’t just spend all of our time on this wooden train.

 

He didn’t quite get that he was supposed to pick up his feet for this rope swing. The first time he just ran holding the rope, but the second time was a little better.

Me and my boys on the hayride. It would be nice if one of the boys were looking, but I’m just happy to be in the picture. Thanks Sarah!

I went down this slide with Lincoln the first time, but after that he had plenty of courage to do it and all the others on his own.

These two were not interested in entering the “vortex” along the corn path, so the three of us passed it by. I remember being scared of everything when I was much older then them, so I didn’t mind.

All of the kids seemed to like these silly mirrors, though.

We were about out of time when we got out of the corn path, and only had time for one more activity. We spent our final minutes before the farm closed relaxing in the cab of the engine again. This boy seriously loves trains.

And who doesn’t love pumpkins?

Fall Festivities Up to this Point

It’s no secret that we are big fans of fall in our family. Here are some pictures of how we’ve been enjoying the season.

Last week we went apple picking at Stribling Orchard, and we’re still figuring out what to do with all the apples.

While we were in Florida Conan’s first tooth broke through, so for the last week or two he’s just had one tooth. It was so cute I could barely stand it. His second tooth is now out so this magical just one tooth time is over. It’s a good reminder for me of how fast babyhood goes, just a week or two and things are already different. This doesn’t really have to do with fall, but Conan is wearing his skeleton pajamas in the picture so I’m counting it.

Yesterday we went and picked our pumpkins in the most beautiful pumpkin patch. I didn’t even come close to capturing the beauty of Hollins Farm with my camera, but we’ll definitely be back in years to come. I know he doesn’t look like it in these pictures, but Lincoln was crazy excited about getting pumpkins. We’ve been reading a lot of Halloween books and working on his costume to get ready for the big day. He is more then ready to give his pumpkin a “spooky smile” next week.

Since we’d already driven for an hour to get out to the country we hung out for a while. We got some delicious apple cider doughnuts and apple cider at a restaurant called The Apple House and enjoyed them in a park while the boys played. Conan had never been on a swing before and he loved it. We’re going to have to find some baby swings a little closer to home.

Fort Lauderdale

We just returned from a week in (mostly) sunny Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Here are some highlights from our trip:

Conan took his very first flight!

We spent a lot of time on the beach. Lincoln and Jonathan were in seventh heaven.

Conan and I spent a lot of time in our borrowed beach tent. It was perfect for small kids.

Sleeping was a challenge for Conan on this trip, but the beach did wear him out. This is his sleeping pose. If he’s sucking his thumb and rubbing the back of his head he is ready for bed.

We loved having Jonathan around all day everyday! If only he didn’t have to work when we were home either.

We ate at Sonic and Conan experimented with baby food from a pouch.

Lincoln loved to pretend he was a train chugging along a track on this wave wall that ran along the beach.

We rode the Water Taxi one day. We saw huge yachts and homes while the captain regaled us with tales of their occupants and price tags.

When we disembarked we had an amazing lunch in downtown Fort Lauderdale at a restaurant called The Cheese Culture. I’ve never written a Yelp review before, but I intend to now. I’m still dreaming about my grilled ham and brie sandwich with mango chutney.

The Water Taxi captain suggested a sweets shop called Kilwins on the main drag, which was also delightful. We had to grab our ice cream and get out of there before we bought one of everything.

Lincoln declared his scoop of chocolate ice cream “extra brown.”

Lincoln took some shots of Jonathan and I while we waited for the Water Taxi to return.

Conan napped…sometimes.

The water in the pool at our hotel was, oddly, colder than the water in the ocean. No one ever got pulled out of the pool on account of sharks, though, so you win some, you lose some.

Lincoln could not stop talking about the train tracks Jonathan built out of sand.

Golly, for a kid who supposedly had a hard time sleeping on this trip, I sure have a lot of pictures of Conan sleeping.

 

We attempted some family pictures with the tripod, but couldn’t get Conan to smile at the right time for the self timer. It’s funny because I’m always getting comments on how he is always smiling and what a happy baby he is. I guess he needed someone behind the camera to smile at.

Our last day was really rainy. We can’t complain too much, though, because we had beautiful weather the rest of the trip. We took the city bus to a restaurant called Grampa’s that was featured on “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives” on the Food Network. It was… dive-y, but the portions were large and the food wasn’t bad. After we had lunch we walked over to another restaurant called Jaxson’s to have some of their famous homemade ice cream, also in ridiculously large portions. Needless to say, we could not finish our one ice cream sundae between the three of us.

After our last summery hurrah, we are officially ready for fall to begin!