Fall Walks in the Neighorhood

Our town has been working on extending their bike path and it turns out that part of it is only a block from our house. When we headed out Tuesday to go vote, we were able to check it out  since it leads almost straight from our house to our polling place.  We enjoyed the crisp weather and all of the fall leaves.

Cora's style is really developing lately. Cora loves to pick out her outfits, so there is always a lot of compromising when we need to make sure she is warm enough for walks. On our walks, Cora is really into picking up as many leaves as she can (just like her momma) and enjoys looking at all of her nature finds. She puts her favorites at the top of the stroller so she can have them for a little bit longer.

Ida is always happy to be along for the ride. She watches as her sister runs around like a crazy person and will point to things she finds interesting. Once Cora and I have picked out some favorite leaves, we like to give some to Ida to play with. Ida will wave them around and take a good look at them as we continue to walk.

I love finding all these new places so close to our home that we can explore together. All of the trees in our yard are just green or brown or already bare, but I love that we can just go for a quick walk and check out the fall beauty around us. I also love having these two adventurers to explore with.

Conversations With Cora : Part VII

It's been two months since I shared my last convos with Cora post. She has been such a fiery spirit lately and I'm doing my best to keep up with both girls as far as documenting and enjoying life. She loves chatting nonstop about anything and everything, so it's hard to remember all the awesome things she says.  Here are some of my favorites lately:

I can't believe I didn't share this one before.  Just thinking about it always makes me laugh out loud. Whenever we go over to our neighbor friend's house, Cora runs up to the porch, opens the mail flap, and yells "hellloo?! wanna plaaay?!""

Cora: How do you cook food?

Ben: Apply heat.

Cora: I wanted to know how to cook food and dad told me! Woooo hooo!!!

Cora is really obsessed with passing time. She's always asking which days she goes to school, which days I'm at home, which days we have events, etc. Because of this I started a monthly calendar and have everything color coordinated so she can start reading those words or symbols for other things like parties, holidays, or my work from home days. We discuss what is coming up each month...

"after Nobember, comes YESbember!"

Me: what month is it?

Cora: Nobember, turkey month!

Me: What do we celebrate on Thanksgiving?

Cora: FEEEEAAAAST! Family and togethertime! ... And FEEEAAAST! First we kill the turkey, then we cook the turkey, then we chop up the turkey, then we eat the turkey!!!

Trick Or Treat

I got off work a little early so I could pick up Cora from school and see their little costume parade. All of her classmates are the cutest and I love seeing what each child decides to dress up as. Cora and I stopped by Kroger to pick up ingredients for Sweet Potato Pie and some more candy.

Ida greeted us in costume.  Ben said he put on her costume to drop Cora off to school, and Ida refused to take it off the rest of the day. It's pretty much a onesie with extra gloves attached, so I get why she wouldn't mind wearing it all day. I loved seeing her in costume whenever she'd sneak up on me. We like to take holidays slow so we can really enjoy them, so we spent the most of the afternoon slowly getting ready.

We made some Sweet Potato Pie (You can find my recipe here... it's the bomb!) and my parent's came over to see the girls, get some pictures, and have some pie. When I was younger, my grandparents always came over to our house to help pass out candy and we'd have pumpkin pie at the end of the night... so my parents visiting was a nice little reminder of that. Aren't they the cutest?!

The girls and I did a little bit of Trick-Or-Treating, then met up with our neighbor friends around 6:30. We headed down our street and weaved our way through some of the less crowded surrounding streets. It was fun catching up with my mom-friend and the kids always love running around with each other.

When we got home, I handed out the rest of the candy then we headed in to have some dinner and get ready for bedtime. It was a perfect first Halloween in our home.