Family Time

It seems that time has just been slipping away recently. I can't believe that next week will be Thanksgiving and then before you know it Christmas, and then hopefully the rest of winter will just zoom on by and we can get right on to spring! Wishful thinking I guess.

Well since our last post we've been hanging around enjoying the mild and unseasonably warm fall weather. It really has been wonderful. It's made raking and blowing leaves a lot less painful when it's warm enough to just wear a shirt and not bundle up. As I type, the leaves are falling again from the huge tree in our backyard covering up any trace of my attempts to rake earlier. Oh well, it's another warm day so I'll probably be shoving the kids out the door to play while I rake so that they can live up what may be one of the last warm days of the year.




Also in the last few weeks, Eleanor has learned to walk. She's no pro or anything, but she has slowly been getting used to standing up on her own and walking to wherever she needs to go in a Frankenstein-esque manner. It's really cute. She also is now facing forward in her car seat and is loving the new view that she gets to experience with her brother.

This last weekend we were able to get a weekend visit from my childhood best friend, Lindsey. She was at an advertising conference in NYC and made a stop-over in Rochester on her way back to San Francisco. She did the same thing last year right after Eleanor was born, and it's made it really fun to be able to see her at least once a year rather than every few years. We hung out with the kids, went for a walk, a couple drives, went to the playground, had a girls night out and went shopping and out to eat... it was great. I'm glad the weather was beautiful and didn't deter her from coming back in the future. The kids already miss her so it looks like we'll need to plan a trip out to San Fran to see her.







Lastly, we finally took the pictures that we bid on at our ward's Boy Scout auction back in March. My friend Jeannette (who I recently went to NYC with) was the talented photographer who captured the following images. It was another perfect fall day and we took these pictures by some old barns in Pittsford on the Erie Canal. I'm glad we got a plethora of good pictures to choose from. I was worried that Eleanor would be totally crazy and Ethan would think the camera was stealing his soul (sometimes he does that with cameras and refuses to look at them). I can't wait to get them printed and hang them around our house!












And although we didn't order the following picture (hope you don't mind, Jeannette), I found it remarkably similar to the picture of me and Ethan that was on the cover of the Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester's newspaper) back in June of '08. My little guy is so grown up!