Welcoming Fall!

Fall is especially beautiful here in the Blue Ridge Mountains of VA. We love to make our annual trip to the Peaks of Otter on the Blue Ridge Parkway to see the fall leaves. Every year we collect some of the prettiest leaves. Sometimes we make them into placemats. One year we took some of the prettiest leaves down to Staples and had color copies made of them. They were BEAUTIFUL!! We have used them for fall decorations, for leaf identification notebooks, for placemats, and for using in our photo scrapbooks to place around the fall pictures that we take. Sometime the older kids will hike up to Sharp Top and enjoy the gorgeous view.

We also look forward to a trip to the apple orchard to buy apples. This year, we have had a huge bumper crop of our own apples and Grace canned many quarts of applesauce and apple butter that she made in the crock pot. It is very good! We've had apple pies, apple crisp and apples to eat. Tuck and a friend installed a sprinkler system in our garden this year and I think the apple tree was close enough to benefit. We still have buckets of apples we haven't used yet.

This month we will take our annual trip to the Pumpkin Patch. It is run by a family of homeschoolers here in town and we have gone there for quite a few years. In recent years, we love to make a morning of it and invite the grandkids and their moms to go with us. There is a wooden Noah's Ark to climb and several climbing and bouncing inflatables that the little guys enjoy playing on. There are pumpkins to paint and of course, each child gets to choose a pumpkin to take home for decoration (and later eating) purposes. We usually take lots of pictures and have lots of fun. Often we go to McDonalds for lunch when we are done playing.

Last year, I found some really fun Thanksgiving activities to do with my younger children and the grandkids that were a big hit and we will be sharing those fun crafts with you this fall, so be watching for them.

We learn about the pilgrims, read Gov. Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation (older kids) and Stories of the Pilgrims to the younger children. Uncle Rick will be recording those stories this year for our grandkids and your kids too! Thanksgiving is often overlooked in our society, but it is so much a part of our history. We have looked for ways to celebrate God's providence in the founding of our country and will be sharing some of the things we do in the next few weeks.

Enjoy your October!!
~Marilyn