Yup. It's definitely Autumn.



My favorite season of the year and it completely snuck up on me. I chaperoned a field trip for Sydney's pre-school class this morning to a local family-owned pumpkin farm. We all had a great time, despite the frustrating start of my day. If you follow me on Twitter you know that my SUV's keyless entry system decided to fail on me at the last minute and the car pretty much went on shut down mode. The alarm started blaring and all doors locked up. No matter what button I pushed, they would not open up. Finally it occurred to me to check the back/trunk door and it opened for me but that meant that I had to crawl through the back of the car while the alarm blared away in the parking lot of Sydney's school just to get to the ignition... good times!

After the field trip was over, I decided to drive straight to Jon's work to see if he could figure out what was the deal with this darn car but of course the car was at its best behavior in front of Jon. ARGH! Made me even more angry! Those of you who have ever worked in the corporate world will sympathize with me when I say that it was just like when your computer starts acting up and you call tech support but it acts perfectly fine when they show up. They always look at you like you're either dumb or crazy and mutter something under their breath like "user error"... blech!

But I digress, the field trip was such a wonderful experience for the kids. They got to watch a movie and munch on some popcorn...



We took a hay ride and saw a corn maze and a pumpkin field...



It cracks me up that every time I point the camera at Sydney she strikes a pose (I have her well trained, eh?!)





But actually my favorite pictures of her were the more candid ones...





They saw farm animals...



Played on the hay stacks...



And in the soy bean mounds...



Took a [very wind-blown] class picture...



And even got to take a pumpkin home... hmmm... which one should I choose?!



OK. This one!



Next up will be Halloween pictures. YIPPEE!! This year, after a very frustrating and unsuccessful trip to our local costume store where all we found was a bunch of poorly-made over-priced CRAP, I decided to make their costumes from scratch. Both girls had very specific and detailed requests (hmmm, I wonder who they get that from?) Sophie will be going as a witch and Sydney will be Tinkerbell. I didn't have time to make myself anything new so I'll just grab an old costume from the closet. Check back in a couple of days for pics!

What are you and/or your kids dressing up as this year?