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!