Our visit to the pumpkin patch

Fall is hands down my most favorite time of the year! I do love the winter season too, but, I just love the fall colors. Growing up in Florida, I never really got to appreciate the outdoors during this time, so, I have been trying to take in as much as possible while we are here in CO.

I decided that it would be fun to take Abigail to a pumpkin patch for her first fall with her daddy :-). I researched for a bit and came across one farm that had a pumpkin patch, petting zoo, and hay ride. This was everything that I wanted, and, a farm seemed perfect since we'd be able to get great pictures with a field of pumpkins as our background. Sadly, upon arrival...it was NOT what I expected. Abigail was scared, tired, and cold. There were at most 20 pumpkins sitting in the dirt (I should have turned around when I saw the shipped boxes of pumpkins hanging out in the barn.) The petting zoo consisted of bunnies and chickens in their coupes and a horse and goat in a little pin. I guess these were the animals that I was picturing...but, not in the atmosphere they were in. Oh...and that hayride...it was a little tractor with fake green hay stacks to sit on. Real special, haha. So...I think I'm going to do a little more research for next year :-P.

We did get to go to Starbuck's afterwards, and, that was DELICIOUS :-P.

Daddy Has a treat

Christian decided that he would feed treats to both Abigail and Tupac (people food, of course). I have no clue what it was, but, it seems as though they both really liked it. They're both pretty good at begging :-P. And please look at the scary Tupac in the last picture, yikes!

Abigail's Birthday

A week and a half after Christian came home, we had Abigail's 1st birthday party! It was just a small get together with family and a couple of friends. She was so sleepy, but, still loved eating her cake, and playing with a few of her new toys.

Chrsitian's Homecoming

So...It's been over a month since Christian came home, but, I thought I'd share a little bit about that day :-).
He came home on the 25th of August, which, was a little less than a year after he deployed. Both Bruce and Lynda were originally going to come down to greet him, but, poor Lynda came down with an awful bug. She had to stay in Westminster to recover, but, Bruce was still able to go to the ceremony with me.

The ceremony was held in a gymnasium where they had a bounce houses and food set up. They had a video playing on repeat of the soldiers exiting the plane in Colorado Springs. It was fun trying to figure out which one was Christian, since, they all look alike to me when they are in the uniforms. We were finally able to pick him out by the way he was walking. We arrived at the gym about two hours before the soldiers did, meaning, a very impatient 1 year old. Abigail was not too thrilled with hanging out in her stroller for more than a few minutes, so, Bruce and I tried to keep her entertained with hand flags, food, and juice. Eventually, I had to just let her crawl around in order to prevent a meltdown. I decided to make her a patriotic tutu for Christian's homecoming, which was very hard for her to crawl around in. She ended up "crab walking" throughout the gym which provided many people with a laugh. All you could see when she was crawling across the floor was a little hiney framed by tulle.

When the soldiers finally arrived, they set off fog machines, played patriotic music, and had them all line up. For me, it was over the top corny, but, I guess it was really meaningful to others. We also listened to a few speeches...which was fun, haha. I'm sure most of the families there just wanted to get their soldier back and leave, but, I guess we can't always be impatient :-P. I sadly was not able to pick Christian out of the mass of 200+ uniformed soldiers, so, once they released them, he was the one who had to find us. Thankfully, he spotted us quickly since we were sitting on the first row of the bleachers. After he found us, we grabbed his bags and headed home. Bruce then took us to lunch as a sushi restaurant (yummy yummy!) and headed to Whole Foods (One of the first things that Christian wanted to do). After that, we dropped our goodies off at the apartment and went to On the Border for Dinner. And that was pretty much it :-).