Farewell summer and hello fall

We got together with our friends for one last summer gathering a couple of weekends ago. 

We marked the end of the season with some delicious Indian food and a movie played on a screen in the backyard.

I suppose it is time to pack up the side walk chalk and flip flops until next year. 

We made so many sweet memories as a family over the past few months. Me and my pale skin are not the biggest fans of summer, but even I am a little sad to say goodbye to summer 2012.

In the words of Max, " Thanks summer, it was fun."

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Fall, on the other hand, is my absolute favorite season.
No competition.
The crisp air brings back warms memories of new schools years, cozy sweaters, and my first few months as a mother.
Good stuff.

We have been spending more time out and about over the past few weeks, enjoying the less oppressive weather every chance we get.

On Sunday, we had a chance to meet some friend at Chatfield Botanical Gardens.

Natalie took this family picture for us :)

 The weather totally tricked me that day. I came with the family dressed in layers, expecting a cool morning. Instead it was somewhere around 90 degrees according to our car when we left!
Poor Eli was overheating so we had to take his shirt off.

We checked out the farm animals and shared some bagels and fruit. Just in case you ever find yourself with bagels and cream cheese and no knife, know that a Starbucks stir stick gets the job done :) 

Max and Evie played really well together. Evie doesn't seem to mind Max's aggressive play style, in fact, I think I saw her tackle Max at one point. Go girl!

They had some sweet moments too.

And just in case Max and Eli ever look back at this blog and start to get the impression that taking pictures of them was easy/life looked so happy and perfect...here is a collage of what 99% of my pictures look like. And everything, seriously, EVERYTHING, in our life is covered in sticky hand prints. So just know that.

Lower right hand corner is one second before we almost lost Eli, thanks to Max pushing him off the bench. Thank goodness Daddy caught him.

We checked out the kiddie corn maze...no one really had the courage for the big maze with the hot sun beating down on us and three little ones nearing nap time.

The reviews for this stroller promised that you could fit 3-4 kids on it if you had to. I believe.

Finally, we discovered the best part of the whole day.
I guess you could call it a giant spider web thingy.

Max sat on this for a long time.
I mean, he SAT in ONE place, for something like 20 minutes.
That just doesn't happen very often.
Evie sat too.
They were in this amazingly calm happy trance.
I think this spider web might just be magical.
I even heard Julian and Jared discussing what it would take to build one of these in our backyard.

Now, that's a good idea.

It was a great fall day, even if it was a little hot.
I treasure times like these, moments spent with friends.

Also, this spider web is only about 25 minutes from my house, so we WILL be going back there :D