This is by far my favorite season. I love the colors. I love the smells. I love the activities. And I especially love the seasonal flavors in cooking. Squash and honeycrisp apples and casseroles and baking... I get all fired up about cooking when the weather cools down and, despite the warmer temperatures this weekend, I have been cooking up a storm! We had balsamic chicken with butternut squash risotto last night. And I've got baked ziti, spinach lasagna, and roasted acorn squash ready to go for this weeks meals.
Craig doesn't always share my taste for certain foods, i.e. the spinach lasagna and squash. However, he's playing on a flag football league every Thursday for the next several weeks and he has an evening seminar this week too... so I'm planning to cook the spinach lasagna while he's out and just freeze portions for my lunches. If I'm trying something new that sounds good to me one week, I just plan to make one of his familiar favorites to make him happy (like the baked ziti). It's a good balance.
Also in the near future, I'm planning to make pumpkin waffles with maple/apple/walnut topping (YUM!), garden minestrone, roasted vegetable penne, etc. And this weekend is Craig's 30th birthday! So we're going out with friends on Friday and having people over for a get together on Saturday. I'm making my grandma's awesome chili on Saturday and ordering Craig's favorite cake - strawberries 'n creme from the place that made our wedding cake. Mmm! I'm getting hungry!
As for fall activities, I visited our little town Farmer's Market on Saturday morning and then took Will to Maumee Bay State Park for a visit to the Nature Center and hike on the boardwalk. We saw some cool turtles and snakes in the Nature Center. And after our walk, we played on the playground and he had a blast in the tunnel. We also had a snack on the beach while he watched in awe at the sea gulls... who were vying for his apple slices.
Will HAD to carry his football with him for the excursion.
This one cracks me up. Look at his expression when he realized he was too tall to STAND inside the tunnel. Haha!
It was a warm day, but a little cooler on the beach.
Another one of my favorite fall activities every year is going to the Apple Butter Festival in Grand Rapids with my friend Jill. We meet at her house about 7 and get an early start before the huge crowds hit. It's an All-Things-Fall craft/activity/food festival and we always have such a good time. I got a few Christmas gifts purchased, bought some fudge and some cute new cookie cutters, and checked out some really cute shops. It's also fun to people watch there - by 11:00, you're bumping elbows with people and squeezing through crowds just to get to each booth. It's crazy, but so much fun. Will spent the morning with dad to avoid the chaos. He went last year in the front carrier (strollers are impossible) and it was an adventure.
Will updates: We attempted using a fork and spoon at mealtimes a little more last week. It went OKAY - definitely needs some work. He would fling food off the tray in an effort to get it on the fork. And I laughed when he finally got food successfully on the fork and then, instead of sticking the fork in his mouth, he pulled the food OFF the fork with his free hand and proceeded to eat that way a bit. But he's trying and that's a start.
Over the wedding weekend he started saying "Uh-oh", with a heavy/loud stress on the "Uh" part. It's really cute when he uses it in context like if he drops a toy. He also holds his play phones up to his ear correctly now to "chat" and can stack his blocks into a mini tower. Yesterday, he learned where his eyes were. I'll ask him "where's your eyes?" and he'll start squinting and blinking them. It's adorable. And he smacks his lips and smiles now when I give him "fish kisses".
Oh, and we painted our pumpkins from the pumpkin farm awhile ago so I'll post pictures of those soon. They turned out pretty good!
