Lar comes to visit, Fall Festival and Apple Picking

My sister, Laura Dawn, came to visit last weekend. She immediately got busy helping Savannah have a cute hairdo. She did a beautiful crown braid and then they decorated it with rose buds from our rose bush.
Savannah was very happy with her princess hairdo.

When the other kids got home from school, we all spent some time jumping on the trampoline. Earlier that morning, we cleaned off all the leaves and pinestraw, so no one would get yucky stuff on their feet.

The kids had a pep assembly at their school where the cheerleaders came and did some cheers, so Ryanne had a couple of those memorized and she showed us her moves.





It's not very easy to take pictures on a trampoline when everyone is jumping!

That night was the Fall Festival at the school. We haven't ever attended it before because it is usually on the Saturday right before Ryanne's birthday, but this year the had it earlier in the month and it was on a Friday night. The kids were very excited because there were lots of fun activities. First we had to check out the book fair and then we were off to explore the options for fun.
There were bouncy houses, tractor rides, face, nail and hair painting, games, bungee jumping things, a rock wall, a cake walk, etc.
The kids had to try out everything and they had a blast. We stayed for the full three hours.
Here are the girls showing off their face painting. The woman who did them was very precise.
The girls also got their hair spray painted all crazy and won all sorts of *great* plastic prizes!
Yay! for the Fall Festival!
The next morning we all got up early and got ready for the day. The boys headed to Knoxville for the Georgia-Tennessee Football game and the girls headed to Ellijay, Ga to pick apples.

We had lots of fun at the apple orchard. We started off by picking apples and taking a hayride.
Then the girls both got to try milking a pretty cow.



There were lots of activities at this orchard, so it turned out to be an all-day affair. The girls loved the petting zoo and spent at least an hour in the zoo, having a blast with all the animals.




Lar even caught a chicken!
The girls loved picking up the goats and carrying them around.

The baby chicks were also a favorite.

There was a playground with interesting horse swings

Of course, pony rides
and the girls were able to sit on a cow
I had plans to make applesauce donuts, and mini apple pies, and all sort of other stuff, but we shared an apple fritter, apple hand pie, apple ice cream, and apple cider when we were the orchard and that fulfilled all my apple recipe desires. We ate most of the apples just by snacking and then I made a big batch of applesauce with the rest.

Luckily, Georgia won the football game, so the boys were happy when they returned home.
Lar and I had our own adventure in Atlanta, but I will save that for a different day.

Thanks for visiting Lar and helping us have all sorts of fall fun!

It's Baseball time again!

Jonah had a good experience playing baseball this past spring, so we decided to sign him up for fall ball this year. Matt and Jonah spent lots of time practicing over the summer and after a month of practices with the team, the games began last week. Ryanne and Savannah love it too, because they get to run around with all the other younger siblings of the boys on Jonah's team for a couple of hours. Usually they don't sit by me for more than a second, so I decided to snap a couple pics of them while I had the chance.
They do look a little topsy-turvy at this point, but it was near the end of the game and most of their running around had already taken place.

Jonah is in the dugout somewhere-I think I can see him.
I went over to get a picture of him and of course he was like "what do you want?"

I said "Smile, please!"

Matt is helping coach the team and they are having lots of fun. They won this particular game and they were really excited about it.
I was not successful in getting any great pics of this game, but at least you know what we are up to, even if it is really blurry!!

Savannah and Eli

I am lucky enough to watch my sweet little nephew a couple days a week. He is a little over 4 months old and Savannah loves to help me. This is the outfit she picked out for him the other day when it was a little bit cooler in our house than it had been. I just had to snap a picture of them together!