Happy Halloween!

Grrr, I'm a scary lion. Err, maybe not.

shoulder

Its shoulder season. Har har.

Bailey's

This past weekend we went with the Russillo's up to Bailey's Orchards up in beautiful, not at all whitetrashy, Whitefield. Its an idyllic farm setting and with the beautiful fall colors and the smell of apples in the air it was bound to be an enjoyable day. This would be the first real apple picking trip for both myself and Brynna.

My first apple.

Followed by Brynna's first apple.

Followed by daddy trying to get a pic of mommy's cleave. Wrong angle dang-it.

The day marked the first time B at an apple without it first being peeled.

The day also marked another day of B flirting with Michael. She digs the older men already and that day alone took several years from my life.

Chase me Michael, chase me!

As Joe and I discussed, once B turns 12, she'll never see this guy again. He totally has that "your daughter digs me" look on his face. Little player...

Careful,

I serve up my own special brand of crazy.

First kiss

There are a few milestones in a daughter's life that the father just doesn't look forward to. The first kiss, the first date and the first time driving all immediately come to mind. Well, unfortunately, I can cross the first off the list already. B has a friend at school named Raphael who is 2 1/2 years old (6 months older than B) and Guatemalan. B and Raphael have a love/hate relationship going on, they play together every day and typically have a great time together but Raph does have a tendency to push Brynna on occasion. We know this because B is Marcy's daughter and is therfore unable to let something go and will, on an almost daily basis, say "Raphy push Binna!" even though the last confirmed instance of that happening was several months ago. Anyway, when Marcy and B were leaving daycare one day last week Raph wanted to give B a goodbye kiss. B dutifully lowered her head so Raph could kiss her on the forehead but Raph being Latin-American couldn't settle for that and quickly grabbed B on both sides of the head, pulled her in and kissed her square on the mouth. No word on whether he tried to use tongue or not.

To his defense, who wouldn't want to kiss this face?

Pumkinland 2

A few more pics from our Pumkinland trip on Saturday.

Ride 'em cowboy.




There is an interesting story to go with the following two pics. When walking by the graveyard (complete with moving/groaning cadaver) B saw it, asked what it was and wanted to go in to take a closer look. Not scared what-so-ever.



Immediately afterwards we went by this old woman with the kids. This she found very scary. I was trying to get her to go down the adjacent slide but all she would say was "old lady scary, old lady scary!" Like I always say, who knows whats going on inside that twisted little mind of hers.

Pumpkin Land

Saturday we were blessed with sunny and clear skies for our, now annual, trip to Chipman's Pumpkin Land in the land of stolen ground water. B loved it last year so we were hopeful this year would be the same. Initially, when we got there and met the Brauns B was being a bit shy and unwilling to do anything but a giant pile of moldy hay seemed to do the trick and brought her out of her shell. After playing on it with Lilly for about 20 minutes there was no stopping her.

King of Aspergillus Mountain

Laugh it up now kid, tomorrow you'll be sporting red, puffy eyes. Whose laughing now?

One of Daddy's favorites of the day were these atv style big wheels. They were enough fun that I'm seriously thinking of looking into getting a fleet for the house. Can you imagine the damage the whole Nelson gang could do on these bad boys?

Giving Tim and Lilly a 'lil love tap to let them know we're there.


Making the pass. I swear I didn't mean to put them into the wall. :)

chin strap

Toddlers are amazing creatures. They see you using an object in a certain way on a daily basis and when they get a chance to try it out themselves sometimes they get it right, sometimes they're close, sometimes things go horribly wrong.

Brynna has seen me wear a hat on many, many occasions. She was given the opportunity to try it herself the other day. She was oh-so-close to getting it right but not quite.

holy shit, daddio's hat!

visualizing the solution

chin strap

She's got the whole world in her hands...

The fair!

Saturday afternoon we got our fair on and headed down to the Cumberland County Fair. It was really small and kind of lame but still fun since it was the first real fair that B has been to (except, of course, for the hippie-dippie Common Ground Fair last year). She refused to go on any rides but she did like seeing all of the animals and the maracas I bought for her from the kind mexican fella.

B initially wanted to try the slide, until they got to the top...

B seem intimidated by the KKK sheep.

Her first candy apple.

With maracas in hand, she was ready to cut loose.