Officially Fall!

Not only has the weather finally started to feel like fall, we marked our family fall tradition of going to Bart's Farm on the 5th of October!  This tradition was something Mike and I did even before Lila was born and one we plan on carrying out as long as the Gingrich family owns the farm and opens their home up to visitors who are in search of their fall treasures! 

 



Where the tradition began...our first house!



For those of you that don't know about Bart's Farm, it is a cute little farm off of Alburnett Rd.  The Gingrich family started the pumpkin patch to raise money for their kids and their college tuitions!  It has a lot of the fun amenities of the bigger pumpkin patch options, but it has a family feel that isn't commercialized.  We highly recommend going!

 

 

Welcome to the farm!

We started the adventure with a trip into the barn to see all of the animals!  The barn is the home to cows, horses, kitties, and other livestock!  After the trip to the barn we moved on to start our pumpkin gathering!

Daddy & his girl in the barn!

 

 

Lila amongst the pumpkins!

After gathering up all of our pumpkins we headed home to put our very tired girl down for a nap with promises of decorating when she woke up!  We didn't waste much time diving right in when she woke up.  Even the puppies enjoyed helping us put the display together this year.

Lila picks out a "baby" pumpkin each year!

Tag posing for a picture! 

 

The finished product!

 

 

Wait!!! Something was missing!  Oh, Lila & puppy, it's now perfect!

While putting the porch together the temperature had dropped a bit and it had started to drizzle.  We decided to go inside and warm up and bake a batch of my Grandma Harvey's delicious chocolate chip cookies.  I had shared in a recent post how much Lila is enjoying helping out in the kitchen...she is really quite the helper (she is a certified taste tester)!

I love carrying on the tradition of family recipes!

Why is it that the dough tastes so darn good?!  YUM!

Another fall tradition I love is the Saturday that I spend with my girlfriends doing our annual fall shopping & lunch trip!  We take a Saturday and start in Mount Vernon making sure to hit our favorite spots and have lunch at the Lincoln Café.  After we wrap up in Mount Vernon we pick different destinations to visit to round out our shopping and fall leaves tour!  This year we picked Independence and Vinton stopping at many of their stores and picking up items here and there!  Whether we walk away with a car full or not, it is the time spent together each fall that really kicks off the season!

A very large metal "E" that had to come home with me!

Every year I pray that we have a longer fall than the next!  The weather stayed rather warm longer this year, so I keep hoping that our fall weather will extend well into November...here is to wishful thinking!