Fall Round-up

Ideally the following post would have been broken into a series of shorter posts, scattered throughout the past few months. But I'm not nearly that organized these days and life has not been terribly accommodating lately. See my last post, for example. So instead, here's a look at all the fun we've been managing on surprisingly little sleep...

In early September, we went apple, pear and raspberry picking. Yes, raspberry picking. We went to Alstede Farm where you can pick just about anything if you time it right. Including gooseberries, who knew?



And after much anticipation (over a year's worth), Esmé finally took that pony ride. And she's hooked. What's next? Maybe camel rides this Fourth of July.


In addition to fruit harvesting and pony rides, there were all sorts of other fun activities, including swimming in a vat of corn kernels.







I made good on a promise and participated in the Lehigh Valley Marathon as a member of the Four Hawks and a Lion relay team. Here we are:



Rather than try to squeeze a regular routine of running into my life, I'm opting for the run the occasional race regimen. This way I get to run with zero preparation and often on little sleep. And in this case, while fighting a cold. I like the idea of maximizing my potential for injury while minimizing the overall benefit of running in the first place. It seems to be working for me. Check out how I leave one of my competitors in the dust. To be fair, he was actually running the full marathon. Not 1/5.


It almost goes without saying that we took a pass on hosting Oktoberfest this year. It was not an easy decision, but both Kristopher and I agreed that we just didn't have it in us. To be sure, we plan to be back in form next year. Meanwhile, we did host a much, much smaller version to celebrate the combined, September birthdays of K and Stephanie. And this gave Theo an opportunity to dress the part, courtesy of his pal Calder.


Also wrapped up into Kristopher's birthday celebration was a fun visit to The Crayola Factory with Tia, Tio and Bini.



And not hosting Oktoberfest does not exclude us from attending Oktoberfest celebrations elsewhere. So when Christy and Eric invited us out to Reading to experience the Reading Liederkranz's Oktoberfest, we were game. Esmé especially loved the music and dancing. And we all enjoyed the food and company, of course.








We managed two trips to the zoo. Once to The Turtleback Zoo. And once to The Bronx Zoo. We're members of both zoos, so this is an easy daytrip for us and one that never disappoints. Because it's fall, both zoos had lots of haystacks scattered about, so we took it as a (photo) opportunity to snag a rare pic of both kids together.





Apple picking- check. Sausages and sauerkraut- check. Zoo- check. Seems like all that's left is pumpkin picking and our fall rituals would be complete. Pop and Sarah took care of that for us this year and we all had a great day together.