Fall Family Fun

This past Saturday, Eric, Ellie and I enjoyed a delightful fall day together. I must say, usually I must be dragged into fall kicking and screaming. In my mind, the only redeeming quality of fall is college football. Why? Because fall means winter is coming, what with the cold and the wet and the way too many clothes ALL THE TIME and it lasts FOREVER and UGH. But, this year, we're leaving in December (boohoo!!!). As sad as I may be about that, cold, dreary weather for months on end does not loom ahead of me this fall. Instead, we'll be enjoying Florida sunshine. I'll miss the charm of an actual winter-y Christmas, but hey, sacrifices. I'll be at the beach by March!

Anyway. The lack of winter dread this year has really helped me to embrace and cherish the changing seasons, and Saturday was a perfect day of fall fun. We started the day off with a family portrait session in Central Park. I bought a Living Social deal for a photographer back in January, and we saved it for this very occasion. We met her at the Bridge to take some pictures with the changing leaves as our backdrop, and we had a great time doing so. Ellie was super tired (we were very much in the throes of her nap strike) so she refused to smile for almost the entire session, but it was still a fun way to spend a beautiful fall morning. You can see a few teasers on the photographer's Facebook page, but I'll post more here when we get the full set in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, here are a few we snapped ourselves after our official photo session:

With my pretty girl by the Bridge

Ellie enjoying the fall foliage ("Don't mind me as I go ahead and eat this leaf, Mom.")

Ellie and her Daddy

On our way home, Ellie fell asleep in her carrier. Given her lack of naps, we decided not to go home and wake her up and spent quite some time wandering Hoboken so she could keep sleeping. That's nothing to complain about considering the weather was perfect, but really. Can't that baby just sleep without making it into a whole production?

When Ellie woke up we went home and grabbed some lunch, then went back out to Pier A Park for the Hoboken Harvest Festival. Hoboken really is such a great family town, I must say, and I'll be so sad to leave here. The Harvest Festival was small but very fun, with train and horse-drawn carriage rides, pumpkin painting, live music and dancing, a hay maze and a petting zoo. Fun for the whole family!

Horses along the waterfront

Train rides

Ellie and me watching Irish Dancers, and I'm thinking how well-suited my constantly-kicking baby may be for Irish dancing someday.

(And yes, she's totally rocking a pumpkin hat. Obviously.)

Hay maze

Hey.

Ellie meeting some goats

She was a hit with the sheep, and I was not sad to have wipes to wash her sheep-licked hands.

Fall girls

We were most excited about the pumpkin painting, not because we wanted to actually paint pumpkins, but because they had all the unpainted pumpkins laid out in a sort of tiny pumpkin patch. We have been desperately searching for a relatively nearby farm or some such thing that we could easily get to on public transportation so we could take Ellie to a pumpkin patch, but we came up empty. Honestly, what do a couple of new parents have to do to get a picture of their kids with pumpkins around here? We were about to resort to sticking Ellie in the bin of pumpkins at the grocery store, but wait! Hoboken Harvest Festival to the rescue! Pumpkin pictures we wanted, and pumpkin pictures we got.

Our pumpkin picture dream come true!

Is it just me, or are the pumpkins particularly cute this year?

I think I'll take the one in the middle.

Family pumpkin fun

Ellie was pretty excited about the pumpkins, too. She wanted to eat them. She also wanted to play in the dirt. Good times.

Come here, pumpkin. Let me gnaw on your stem.

By the time we enjoyed all this fall festivity, Nap-Refusal Baby was sleepy so we made our way home. She's never too tired to smile for Daddy, though.

Poor tired pumpkin baby

Smiles on the way home

The loves of my life

We called it a day outing-wise and went back home to watch the Gators handily beat South Carolina while we relaxed from our fun overload. What a perfect Saturday!

Maybe this fall stuff really isn't all that bad after all.