Fall leaves make good piles – good piles make for good fun! We had a morning playdate with the leaves this morning. There was a lot of jumping, wading, dumping, and pushing. The kids enjoyed picking up leaves and dumping them on each other. Kids sure are fun to watch! Thanks Aiden, Elena, and Maeve for coming to play today.

Playtime among the pumpkins and corn stalks. Four little girls have lots of fun in the fall sun.

Just some other photos from our camping trip. Elena and Emily enjoyed playing with the stroller and giving rides. Emily is now big enough to climb in the stroller by herself. Julia had been riding for quite a while as an activity while Emily took her afternoon nap. I wasn’t lucky enough to have both girls nap at the same time.

Kenny let Emily ‘pretend’ drive while they were waiting for me to get Julia ready for the pool. Emily was as thrilled as punch to be behind the wheel. Who knows how many buttons she ‘adjusted’ for Kenny. Emily warmed up to Kenny a lot on this trip, normally she is somewhat cautious. Emily was trying to call the Smith boys by the right names too. It was really cute even when she didn’t get them all right. I appreciated the boys playing with Emily and not minding being called by the wrong name.

While we were camping we went to a talk about possums on Saturday morning. The talk had some interesting things in it, but it sure didn’t capture the excitement of two-year-olds. Emily picked dandelions, worked on sharing toys with Elena, visited with the other people at the talk, and was thrilled to leave the talk early.

After the talk, we said hello to some horses. The horses weren’t inclined to visit, but seeing them up close was fun. Julia was OK with someone else holding her in the close vicinity of her mother. That didn’t happen much on the trip. Somehow she lost one sock.

Last weekend we took the girls camping. It is wise to do things for the first time (with Julia) with friends, so we went in a rather large group. Emily slept on the air mattress with us and Julia was in the travel bassinet next to us. I found out how small our air mattress and tent have gotten with the growth of our family. Despite how cozy we were, both girls slept well.

Julia and Emily played in the pool with Elena on Saturday afternoon. It was a great way to cool off. The pool had music playing and the girls enjoyed dancing to the music. There was a good amount of splashing and even a few moments of sticking faces in the water. This was Julia’s first trip to a pool and she loved it. She loved being held by Mommy, being able to kick her feet, and slap the water with her hands.

We spent a beautiful hour out picking strawberries with some friends and their girls. It is nice to be out with people that Emily is familiar with; so that, she is so much more bold. She also wants to be like the other girls so she generally acts better and tries new things to be like them too. I think she had a lot of fun, she didn’t have any inhibitions about picking the red strawberries straight from the plants on the ground. No lesson on how to pick was necessary. I might need to check over the ones we picked to see if we have any overly ripe ones.

Emily picked strawberries, visited with the different mamas, hung out with the girls, fell down and required comfort, played in the dirt, found mud, played with Julia, snuck snacks from Elena’s lunch, and sampled Mommy’s strawberry fried pie. I call that a successful outing! It is hard to take photos, herd kids, pick strawberries, and get great photos. So, I have no photos of Julia because she hung out in our front pack and no great individual photos of Emily. But we had fun and enough photos to help us remember it by.