Falling for Fall

I love Fall--the cooler weather, the golden colors, the decorations, the apples, the excitement of Halloween (especially when your kids want to be what they were last year--yahooooo!).  Monday the kiddos didn't have school, so we went hiking. We gathered lunches and put them in backpacks--we were serious hikers!  We hiked about 2 miles over quite a few hours. We stopped and looked at leaves and acorns and rocks and sticks and dead bugs and butterflies.  We found branches and fences in the shape of the letters of our names. We tromped over a bridge and listened for the troll to bellow at us for trip-trapping over his bridge. He was silent or we were loud.  We picked up walking sticks and dropped walking sticks. We stopped along the way to munch on lunch. We were so intent on the adventure of what was ahead, that we forgot about the distance we'd come.  The return trip wasn't quite as cheery with more stops and a few sighs of "Are we THERE yet?!"  But we made it.

Serious hiker with a serious backpack!

Looking for trolls!

Sitting on the Troll bridge

My beautiful A

All my QTz!

Armful of love!

My girls!

X-man's cactus!  

The last time we were here X got so excited about the prickly pear fruit he found that he reached out to pick it, not realizing that the fruit had tiny, hair-like stickers. Knowing from experience--twice--I hollered for him to stop. Too late. He came away with a handful of stickers. We got them out. Now we've lovingly named the cactus after X-man!