Fall at the Farm

It seems like fall is flying by. And it seems like we've actually had one this year. It seems like last year, fall came and went way too quickly. There wasn't a long leaf display. There were no piles to be raked and jumped in. The weather went from sweltering to freezing. But this year, I feel like the leaves seemed to be prettier. They seemed to stick around longer. And we actually had some nice fall weather. And another fall means another trip to the American West Heritage Center. Lily loves going to the farm. How could she not with train and pony rides? In the fall, they also have a hay fort, a huge slide, and a corn maze. We opted out of the corn maze this year, but Lily enjoyed every last bit out of the rest of the activities.

Our first stop was the train.

 Lily is in LOVE with this little train. It doesn't go very fast, and its route is just a loop around a sorry little pond. But this train is better than any other ride out there. Just ask her. Timothy got to chill in the back pack on the train since Erik decided it was too much of a pain to take off.

 As a side note, we've hit a phase where any picture taking opportunity elicits the cheesiest, most fake smile you've ever seen from Lily. Most of our pictures now look like this:

Fantastic, right? Hopefully it won't last long.

Our next stop was the big slide. Two years ago when we Erik took Lily down it, her response was, "That was fun, Daddy. Let's not do it again." This year, it was all we could do to get her to move on to the hay fort. Although brave as she is for most things, she was not about to go down by herself. But I think Erik was having just as much fun as she was, so it was ok.

When we were finally able to convince her to move on, we headed to the hay fort. There was jumping and hopping and throwing of hay. Oh, and Lily had fun, too.

We went to the farm with a few friends who have kids both Lily's and Timothy's ages. Lily honestly wasn't too interested in playing with boys closer to her age. But she latched on to one of the little boys who's about 4 months older than Timothy (and much more mobile). Sully didn't really seem to mind...

She led him around and he showed her the planes flying overhead. It was pretty adorable, really.

Before two more rides on the train before heading home, we stopped at the pony rides...another favorite must do.

Going to the farm each year just confirms to me how much and how fast Lily is growing. The first time we did the pony rides, the helmet was way too big. Now she rides without any help and takes the helmet off on her own. Doesn't she look so big in this picture? It blows my mind...

And Timothy continued to chill in the back pack.

Next year, he'll be running around with Lily having a great time. (He's walking a little and could all the time if he wasn't such a fast crawler. Why stumble around when he can get anywhere he wants in .02 seconds?) I'm sure we'll have another train and pony lover in our midst. And I'm looking forward to it...

Hope everyone's fall has been as fun as ours!

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Chicago

I don't travel much for work...maybe once a year. And it's usually some place not too exciting like Phoenix or Salt Lake (which I wouldn't really consider traveling). But this year, I had the opportunity to go to Chicago for 5 days. When I first heard I would be expected to be there, I was excited. Then I was less excited when I realized we'd probably be at some airport hotel and I wouldn't have much time to actually see anything. But then I found out we would be right down town...in walking distance of so much great stuff. And I started planning.

When we got in on Tuesday afternoon, I made a quick appearance and the "networking reception" and then headed out to see the city. There was a great river walk and all the buildings were lit up. It was amazing. And I only had one guy call me "baby" and ask for a buck.

Wednesday evening, I headed out the the University of Chicago with a couple colleagues to check out the Oriental Institute and their Egyptian collection. Pretty cool...especially the 16 foot tall King Tut statue. Since the person I went with knows a lot about Egypt already, I didn't really have to read the cards...it was a personal tour.

Luckily, the meetings scheduled for Thursday afternoon didn't really pertain to me, so I was able to take the afternoon off. Of coarse, this was the ONLY day it rained the entire 5 days we were there. When I started out, it was just a little drizzle and nothing my hoodie couldn't handle. Let's just say, it got worse.  There was a chocolate exhibit at the Field Museum (natural history museum), so I headed out after lunch. By the time I arrived, I was pretty wet. My jeans were wet half way up my calf and my hoodie was soaked. But I was actually pretty dry and figured a couple hours in the museum would dry out my clothes. The chocolate exhibit was pretty fun, and I picked up some chocolate that was actually too dark for even Erik to enjoy. (By the way, if anyone's interested in trying it, let me know. We have almost the whole bar sitting here, and neither of us will eat it.) I also spent a huge amount of time in the hall of mammals. It was like Cabella's...only WAY BETTER! I didn't grab any photos, though, since everything was behind glass and nothing turned out without a flash. I checked out a few other exhibits and then head back into the rain.

My next stop was the Sears Tower, which is now Willis Tower. Who knew? Expecting a line, I walked right up to the elevator where I was told visibility at the top was ZERO. Hence...no line. But I headed up anyway, hoping it might clear up while I was up there. There was one person in the elevator with me, and we were the only ones up there for quite a while. At least the rain meant no waiting in line. After the 60-second ride in the second elevator (ear popping and all), this was the view I had:

AMAZING, right? But it DID clear up enough that I was able to walk out on the ledges and get a decent view. When I got back to the street, it was pouring. And I mean POURING. So rather than try anything else, I headed back to the hotel.

The next night, our entire staff headed out for some Chicago deep dish and a good time. The morning we left, I decided to do one more quick venture to see the Millenium Park Bean (which I had decided would be lame in the rain) and Buckingham Fountain. I headed out pretty early, so the sun was still rising and it was so pretty. Unfortunately, the fountain was dry...although I'm told it was running the day before. What timing, right? But it still made for a good picture. 

Work trips can be pretty boring for the most part, let's be honest. But I have to say, this one was actually pretty fun. I got in some good sight seeing and the meetings weren't too terribly boring. So Win-Win, right? Rumor is next year is Boston...I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

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September Review

So I'm a horrible blogger, but that's not something we didn't already know, really. Let's just be glad I don't make a living as a full-time blogger.

It's been quite a while since my last post, and I'd love to say it's because we've been super busy and I just haven't had the time. Nope. I'm just lazy. I'd think about blogging some fun activity and then remember that if I did that, I would need to catch up on all the other activities, too. And I didn't want or have the time for all that. I figured I'd wait until I was willing to do it all. And then the next activity would happen...and that whole conversation with myself would start over. And this is why there has been no blog activity since August. And yes...I realize we're now over halfway through October.

So my solution is this: I'm not going to try to recap the entire month of September. Let's just say, September was great. We had fun. The end.

OK...I'll give you a picture collage of highlights.

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