A Cowgirl and her trusty Cow.

Our friend, Sarah, invited us to join her neighborhood & church Harvest Party they have every fall. She has two children just a couple of months younger than both of Emily and Julia. We dressed up in our Halloween costumes for the party. Some years we have had costume issues when we went to put them on, but not this year. They loved them and loved being in them.

At the party there was a scavenger hunt, pumpkin decorating, yummy food, a story, and a pumpkin seed spitting contest. The girls enjoyed running around with the other kids finding the baskets of treats. Emily stuck pretty close to Grace the whole time and Julia wanted to be with Mama. Therefore, Mama saw a lot of Julia and not much of Emily.

Emily had a very serious face and wind blown hair.

We got to practice the word “lollypop” a lot, because it seemed to be Julia’s favorite candy in her basket.

When it was time to decorate the pumpkins they were very serious and content to stick their stickers on the pumpkin. It was fun to watch the serious work. There is so much to learn about kids and how they approach tasks.

The lollypop stick kind of reminded Mama of the toothpick or strand to hay a cowboy might chew on while on the range.

It was surprising that so many kids would sit for a story and be quiet, but they did.

The pumpkin seed spitting contest was funny. Julia didn’t want to try until the third spit. Emily gave it her best try, but she had some bad bounces that brought her seed back to her.

The only sad faces I saw were at the end when it was time to go home with our tummies full of lunch and sweets. We had so much fun in the warm sunshine playing with others. Mama even met some new mamas. Fall is so much fun with nice weather and fun activities.

Julia “moo-ed” for Mama. If you asked her what her costume was she would tell you, “Moo-Cow”. She was very happy to moo anytime you asked her what a cow says. She didn’t keep the cow hat on much, but loved the costume so much she didn’t even take it off for nap when she got home.

We visited the Museum of Appalachia for their annual homecoming. It has been years since Mama has visited the Museum and it was a great day to visit. The weather was another wonderful fall day here in East Tennessee.

We met our friends and explored. We enjoyed the tractor corner, visiting the knitting machine, listening to some of the music, eating curled potato fries, checking out vendor booths, finding old cabins to explore, and enjoying the sunshine. The girls enjoyed playing with Elena, Maeve, and Lincoln. The girls started to wind down as we got close to naptime and we headed home.

Emily helped “Fancy Nancy” run her knitting machine. They were making hats, but it looked like a really long sock. Both girls enjoyed turning the machine crank.

Our normally shy Julia would have stood there all day turning the crank if we hadn’t moved on.

Emily liked the tiny pumpkin.

One really happy Lincoln enjoying his ride.

She looks pretty comfortable up there.

Friends just hanging out and taking in the sights.

A beautiful Fall morning took us to the Knoxville Botanical Gardens for a playdate. It was perfect. The kids had fun exploring and running around with each other. It is tough to get great photos of moving kids, but I got a few. We are looking forward to the next fun Fall playdate.

Hey, look we got all seven kids to look the same direction at the same time . . . kinda.

As a reward we asked them to make silly faces. It seemed to be a hit for the over-two crowd.

A great and hard-to-photograph genuine Emily smile.

Sweet Elena

Grins from the sun-kissed Julia.

An almost smile from McKenzie.

A pixie smile from the pixie Maeve.

This was the first trip to the Great Sand Dunes for Mama and the girls and Daddy’s second visit. The visitor center was fantastic and had kid friendly exhibits about sand dunes, magnetic sands, lightning, and frogs. They had a video that explained why the huge sand dunes exist in the middle of Colorado. The dunes are deceptively large as you hike out to them; they just grow bigger before your eyes.

We hiked out to the first dune and played on the back steep side for an hour. We would have liked to hike further, but the girls had all the fun they needed on that one dune. The girls practiced their rolling downhill technique. Mama ran down and rolled down too. We could only talk Daddy into running down the dune once. When we left we had sand everywhere. The girls loved seeing all the sand we poured out of their shoes.

I love food. This is a fact. In the years of travel with my family as I grew up, we would enjoy food from all over America. There is a problem that comes with travel cuisine. When you go home you can’t get the different foods you find that you love. Therefore, when we travel we have to include food as an activity. This is never more true than with a trip to the Southwest where we get our favorite Mexican food. When we travel to New Mexico and Colorado we hunt down sopapillas.

The trick to finding good sopapillas is to ask locals for the best locations. This trip we found out that restaurants are now stuffing them with taco toppings, but the best way to eat them is to fill them with honey. We found two places that served great sopapillas in the areas we were visiting. Restaurants used to serve them in baskets before meals like some do with tortilla chips. The best we could find were that some restaurants served them as dessert and you could buy more individual sopapillas. The ones we ate made our fingers sticky, cut the spicy kick from our mouths, and made our stomachs full. The biggest disappointment was that Julia didn’t fall in love with them. She tried one bite both times, but passed on the sweet dessert. Emily could manage one each time.

Robby’s family traveled to northern New Mexico when he was a child and their family discovered a favorite restaurant in Taos. We had to stop and try it out. After hearing the stories repeated over and over we were sure that it would struggle to measure up to the hype. We are pleased to say that both their Mexican food was fantastic but so were their sopapillas. The girls tried the Mexican French Toast which was Uncle Doug’s favorite thing to eat there at age three.

Emily eating her Mexican French Toast, which was cinnamon nut bread made into French Toast. Sounded pretty good.

The drive into Mesa Verde was beautiful. The skies were clear and we could see long distances from the overlooks. One of the places we stopped on the drive was at the fire tower. We took the short hike and enjoyed the views while the girls loved the flag pole. We love how exciting “ordinary” things are to the girls.

The swearing in ceremony. Emily talked about the things the Ranger had told her at her ceremony for days.

At the visitor center, Emily got her first Jr. Ranger booklet to complete. She enjoyed doing the activities with us and absolutely loved being sworn in as a Jr. Ranger later. She was so proud of her badge. We tried to avoid this program on this trip, because it was a little too involved for Julia. She was a bit disappointed to get left out. It won’t be long until she can keep up with the questions and activities.

Julia doing all the climbing hard work all by herself.

Our Jr. Ranger checking out the area for things her Bingo card was missing.

Happy Hikers!

After watching a short video about the people of Mesa Verde we took the Spruce Tree House self guided tour. We only took the kid backpack for the half mile hike into a canyon to the ancient dwellings. Emily played a Bingo game out of her Jr. Ranger guide as we did the hike. At the ruins we were able to climb into a kiva on a ladder and explore. I was so proud of the girls. They didn’t need any help on the ladder and were brave to climb into a dark hole without seeing the bottom. Amazingly, Emily did the whole hike by herself. At the bottom we wondered if we shouldn’t have brought the stroller, but we didn’t need it. She hiked out faster than the rest of us. What a big girl!

After the hike we enjoyed a sunny picnic and then drove other area roads while the girls napped. We have mastered the overlook-kid swap so that we can go on with sightseeing despite naps. The number of dwellings at the park are pretty unbelievable. I appreciate not having to live on the side of a cliff and having to use hand holds to climb down for basic needs like food and water.