Happy Fall!

This is my favourite time of year. Well, not counting "strawberry season" of course. And if that isn't a real season, it should be!

This is also the time of year I miss living in New England the most. There is nothing more beautiful than autumn in New England - driving through the White Mountains, and seeing all of the changing colors of the trees on the mountains is just spectacular.

My favorite colors are all of the natural colors of the changing leaves - brilliant oranges, deep reds, golden yellows -- colors that only nature can make perfectly.

There is no joy more pure for a kid than raking up a big pile of leaves, and just jummmmpppiiiiiing!!! Seldom do we find any other time that we are totally free of all worries and lost in the moment of childhood.

I love these crisp mornings when there is just that threat of frost, and the fallen leaves crunch beneath your feet. You don't quite need a winter coat, but your favourite fall sweater is a welcome addition to the wardrobe.

All of you who live in a "seasonal" area know the challenge of the furnace -- where you try to go just one more day before you add heat to your house. Somehow we always remember what day we finally gave in the year before, and try to hold out for just one extra day.

When I was a teenager, and young adult, I declared October 17 as my favorite day of the year. I would hold yearly "October 17th" parties for my friends. I thought it was just short of fate when I met Wayne and his birthday was the 18th -- just shy of my "best" day.

How wonderfully ironic that Dakotah would be born on October 17th, even though her due date was the 4th, and I went into labor with her on the 15th.

Dakotah even brought a extra nice Fall surprise to me. During my pregnancy with her, I craved squash & pumpkin -- something I never liked before. Now, its a wonderful treat to eat warm butternut squash, with salt and pepper on top--yummy. And every year I find some new pumpkin recipe to try -- pumpkin pie, bread, pudding, etc. Last night I had a taste of a pumpkin blizzard from Dairy Queen...too good!

This morning, Paige and I are the only ones up so far. We snuggled under a quilt and caught an episode of Arthur together before she wandered off to play with her Leap Frog toy.

Our weekend will be spent simply as a family, before the craziness of birthdays and day surgery comes upon us next week. This is the first weekend that we've not had something planned (baseball, etc) for months, so I've got a great big list of things to do for all of us.

I love those "at home" weekends where we work on house projects. The rest of my family, eh, not so much. But its a good feeling of accomplishment as we begin to transform our house to the next season...taking out winter clothes, tending to flower gardens that are being bitten by morning frost, raking leaves...

Its a good reminder that life passes us by quickly, that one season, one year, turns into the next in the blink of an eye, and that we better take the time to go fishin' once in a while, to stop and smell a rose, to marvel at a bright orange leaf.