John

Octo-stagram: Carnival, Carry-On, & Costumes

Just like we’re way behind on our monthly superlative post over on Young House Love, our round-up of the previous month’s Instagram photos has also fallen behind. Oops. So here’s a sampling of what our IG looked like in October… extremely late (just a few days before December rolls around). And if you’re not on Instgram yourself, you can always catch these pics in real time on Facebook & Twitter.

Sherry’s favorite of the month is the one featured first first in the grid above. It was Clara sporting her floofy, bear-eared winter hat… and a sundress. She actually pulled the hat out of a winter clothes bin herself and asked to wear it to school that week (we compromised and let her wear it in the car on the way there).

This is my favorite. A family portrait snapped by a stranger at the Richmond Folk Festival. I love so much about this. The bees. The bikes (okay, unicycles). The fact that we got this smiling picture of all of us on a single try. #smallmiracle

When asked her favorite, should we be surprised that Clara immediately said “donuts!” (which are from an expansion party of our favorite local fabric store) followed shortly by “rocks!” (which are actually pumpkin seeds).

So that was our October. What did yours look like? Can you even remember now that it’s almost December?

Finally, Some Real Trick Or Treating

Last Wednesday (aka Halloween) marked Clara’s first legit trick-or-treating adventure.

We got rained out last year and the first year she could barely sit up unassisted, let alone knock on doors begging for candy. So it was a treat in itself that this year the stars aligned and we could take Clara out for some good ol’ fashioned T-or-T-ing.

The verdict? She loved it. As demonstrated by this pic (the only one that we got of her smiling face, since she spent most of the adventure dragging us down the street so we just had a view of her braid).

She proudly donned her homemade Jessie the cowgirl costume, grabbed her pumpkin bucket, and marched with us to about 8 or so houses.

We left Burger at home because, well, he only wears his costume for about 10 seconds before shaking it off and he’s the shy one of the family. Meanwhile Clara could hardly wait to see all of our neighbors and shout “trick or treat!”

It got darker faster than we expected, so our photos quickly became blurrier and grainier than we had hoped. But there were at least a few sweet moments that got captured on film.

And we probably would’ve made it to more houses had a band of tweenagers dressed in scary costumes not crossed our paths (and by scary costumes I mean no costumes at all, except for a couple of bloody masks). Clara, whom we’ve learned is easily frightened by realistic Halloween decorations, was immediately a crying mess and just began wailing “I want to go to my house!” It was a pretty clear sign to call it a night.

Her loot was pretty meager, but that’s more than fine by us. And once we got home and she calmed down she had fun answering the door with me and handing out candy to the rest of the trick or treaters. She was so into the game of “What is he/she dressed up like?” that even this week she still asks us questions like “What is the tree going to be for Halloween?”

How was your All Hallow’s Eve? Any especially spooky costumes or houses? Any full size candy bars on your trick or treating route? Clara got one and we were like “wow, they’re high rollers.” It was awesome.

Apple Picking

So we’re a bit behind in actually writing this post, but anyone who follows us on Instagram knows that we took Clara apple picking a couple of weeks ago. It’s this awesome spot about an hour from here called Carter Mountain which is on top of (surprise) a mountain and overlooks Charlottesville, VA – home of my alma mater.

They’ve got plenty to do. Pumpkins. Hayrides. Even little educational pieces – like this board about bees. Guess we’ve got a kid after our own hearts, right?

But we were there to pick apples. Plain and simple. As simple as spelling the word “Fuji.” Okay, maybe that’s not as easy as I thought…

Clara had a blast just running around, which was good because the first section of the orchard we went into was pretty picked over.

She was pretty proud of herself when she spotted apples on the ground – of which there were plenty – so we had to break it to her that we wanted to take apples from the tree.

Eventually we spotted some, but they required a little bit of a boost.

But isn’t that what dads are for?

We eventually made our way over to another section of the orchard to hunt for more easily accessible fruit.

At first, we encountered the same scenario. Lots of apples on the ground. Few on the trees. Boo.

At least that gave Clara an excuse for more running.

Eventually we made it deep enough in to find a bounty of lower-level apples. Victory!

Someone was in love.

She was so proud of the apples she gathered that she was determined to carry them back to the car all by herself.

Eventually we sped up the process by giving her a hand. I just love this photo because it looks like a paparazzi photo. You can blame it on the flash going off for some reason. Well, that and Sherry’s giant Angelina sunglasses.

All-in-all, it was a beautiful fall day atop a mountain in the Blue Ridge.

And oh yeah, those apples were eaten by about 5pm the next night. Clara was addicted.