Enjoying the Fall

It's funny how even though I went through a fall last year here in Texas, this weather truly throws me off. The trees are still green and now that it's November we are finally to pulling out the pants each day and maybe a jacket here or there.  Finally there is that fall crispness that is in the air. Don't get me wrong I LOVE it. But it just doesn't seem like Fall to me until the weather changes. Since the weather has been nicer, we've been getting out a lot more to the parks which has been a lot of fun for Andrew. There are so many great parks that are really close to us and so we've tried to test out a few of them and find our favorites.

Texas State Fair
Fall time here in Dallas means it's time for the Texas State Fair. We loved going last year and wanted to go again. Although, life's been so crazy that the only weekend we could go was the very last weekend it was open. We were able to have Stephen's Aunt Janet come and join us too!

 We live close to a train station, so this year we decided to take the train into the city for the day. Andrew was very excited to be riding on a "choo-choo train". Of course, we filled ourselves with yummy fried foods. I'm always so amazed at the many different things they think up and then try to deep fry. This year we tried some fried alligator,which wasn't too bad. But of everything I tried I think my favorite is the fried cheesecake. You can't go wrong with cheesecake...Yum!

Andrew's First Train Ride to the fair. 

Most of the animals were not hungry with tons of people trying to feed them all day long, day after day. But we did find one goat who was ready for a snack.

One Happy Boy!!!

He loved watching all of the different animals. The piglets feeding were quite intriguing

Listening to a concert on the steps with Aunt Janet, eating fruit snacks, and dancing...life doesn't get much better than that for a two year old. 

Last year, just a few days after we went to the fair, Big Tex caught on fire and burned down. This year he was back and we had to get a family picture by Big Tex.

  We played hard and had one tired boy on the way home. 

Pumpkin Farm

With different organizations I'm involved in, I have made some really great friends who also have had preemies babies. They do play groups every once in a while and it's really nice to chat with other preemie moms. Mom's who have experienced similar things with their kiddos, who's children, although very different from one another, have many challenges to overcome and who are also involved in a variety of therapies. Sometime's it's nice to know you aren't the only one out there.

Anyways...this last month we headed to the Pumpkin Farm together with our kiddos. Boy did Andrew have a ball. Seriously he talked about going to the pumpkin farm for almost a week! His favorites were riding the tractor and of course walking around and seeing all the pumpkins. We actually had to break out the jackets this morning and despite my gps directing me to some cattle ranch out in the middle of nowhere(a funny story for another day) we found our friends for a fun morning. They had a great petting zoo with some long horned cattle, sheep, goats and chickens. Andrew was pretty brave and would stick his hand out with the food, but as soon as their mouth or gigantic tongue would reach out to grab it he would drop the food for them. Except for this one goat who saw Andrew's cup and came right up behind him. It was pretty funny.

 Going on a hayride around the farm!

We came back three times because there was always a long line to sit and drive the tractor. Finally after lunch all the field trip kids had gone home. He could have stayed there for hours. 

Big Longhorn Cattle

Each of these five boys were all born at 30 weeks or earlier. Seeing them all together like this was a lot of fun! They are sure cute! 

Carving pumpkins

I have truly enjoyed how much Andrew has gotten into everything this year and after our visit to the pumpkin farm, he was all about pumpkins...all the time. Everywhere we went he'd spot some sort of pumpkin. So when it came time to carve a pumpkin he was pretty excited too. He specifically requested a happy pumpkin with circle eyes, a triangle nose and ears.

 "Helping" daddy

After we were all done Andrew wanted to give his pumpkin a hug. 

Trick or Treating
We went pretty easy on the trick or treating this year. Our ward was doing a trunk-or-treat the night of Halloween. Which made things easy! Andrew got the trick or treating thing down pretty good, but after 9 or 10 cars. He could careless about the candy and just wanted to walk around. Which was fine by us and he had a ball. We spent about an hour with the ward then came home and in less then 10 minutes handed out the rest of our candy. (Yeah our neighborhood was insanely busy) It was pretty awesome! Lights were out before 8:00 at the Holden home and we crawled into bed to watch movies. It was a great night!

Happy Halloween from Russell, Mr. Frederickson, and Kevin the Bird

For our costumes this year we decided that we should incorporate Andrew's walker into his costume. So we originally thought of just doing an old man. Then it kind-of morphed into this...So went as the characters from the Pixar movie "Up".

They were the easiest costumes ever! I love that! Just made a quick boy tie and tied a few balloons to his walker. Stephen was a good sport again and dressed up too...I guess my teaching years has made me a kid at heart, because I love dressing up for Halloween!

We had beautiful weather on Halloween. So I let Andrew go outside with his walker for a bit, while I was cooking dinner. He just LOVED the fact that there were balloons tied onto his walker and that they were following him. I could hear his laughs and giggles so I grabbed my camera. I'm so glad I did because I got some darling pictures of our little Mr. Frederickson.

 Love these Boys!