A year ago today

I've been thinking a lot lately about where we were this time last year. Our setting was so different. We had only been in Pennsylvania for a short time and we were drinking in the beautiful Autumn weather and color. A year ago today the kids and I were at Weaver's Orchard. There were pumpkins and apples galore. A quaint little shop held crate after crate of winter squash and any variety of apple you could think of. The kids carefully chose the perfect pumpkin and I filled bags with types of apples that I had never even heard of. We had them fill up a little box of homemade fudge for us to take home to Daddy. While the lady weighed our apples and figured my bill Jake reached for the homemade chocolate chip cookies and took a big bite out of one. So we added a few of those to our basket, as well.
It was such a fun morning. When we got back to our apartment we carefully arranged all of our loot and the big kids painted pictures of it all and I snapped a few photos in the natural light. So fun.

Eventually the kids finished their paintings and moved on to different things. I got to work doing laundry. I went back into the living room to check on Jake and found him in the middle of our "posed" produce...taking tiny bites out of all the apples. Every single apple had a tiny bite out of it. He was so proud!

Sweet, sweet memories.

Let's Go Fly A Kite

Yesterday I walked outside and found Max flying his kite (up to the highest height). His roll of string was empty and it was, literally, as high as it could go. Max is an interesting little guy. He will diligently work on a project until he conquers it. Kite flying is no different. He worked and worked and ran and ran...up and down the street. There was very little wind, really. Then he figured out that he could hop up on the mailbox and flick his wrist and get just enough wind to get the kite off the ground (without having to run up and down the street). He worked until he perfected his technique and, before we knew it, the kite was flying up to the highest height! I was so impressed and he was flying as high as the kite was.
Unfortunately, a few minutes after I took this picture the kite took a nose dive and landed on our neighbors house and the string got tangled in a tree. So sad.

We're alive. Promise.