Fall, birthdays, and more

Last weekend, I visited my sister and her family for my nephew's 3rd birthday. I had a great time spending so much time with my sister and her kids since my sister was on maternity leave. This was her first week back to work.   I took some pictures from the weekend. Here's some of the good ones. The first picture is Tyler blowing out his candles with Evee in the background. The second one is the birthday "cake" (cupcakes, really) that my sister and I made. I had a blast making it. The cupcakes were a mold that I bought. I was excited to be able to use it so soon! The third one is me and my two god-sons. Mikey is 10 now! He's growing so fast! And look at Tyler, he's such a ham!

I love fall, hence the next couple of pictures. I loved the leaves sitting in our yard and how they looked against the green grass. The panoramic picture is from the drive to the airport last week. The leaves here were at their Fall peak and absolutely beautiful. Today, I went to our back yard to take some pictures of the trees there in their fall colors. Unfortunately they are all still green. I stood in the middle of the parking lot and looked around. Out of the forest came 4 deer. They saw me, but saw that I wasn't moving and continued into the yard. They walked around and ate some grass for a while. I was there for a good 10 minutes before I looked into the woods and noticed a buck! It was the first buck that we've seen in the yard. I managed to get some great pictures of the does as well as a good video of them. I got a few pictures of the buck but only one of them was really good enough to see it.

Well, I'm having problems uploading the video, so I'll try to add it later. It really shows how close I was to the deer and how calm they were.

Family Time!

It seems like September and October are Family months.  I visited my sister for about a week in the middle of September. We had a good time being sisters (i.e. staying up late talking, going shopping, and loafing around). I'm glad I got to spend so much time with her (and the kids) while she's on maternity leave and not working. My parents came to visit at the end of September. It was the first time they were in Fredonia. From what I could tell, they liked it here. They seemed to enjoy themselves and even stayed till Sunday instead of leaving Saturday afternoon like originally intended. We visited the Festival of Grapes in Silver Creek and despite there only being a handful of grape-oriented things, we managed to come away with the fixings for a grape pie. Mmmm...

This past weekend my twin sister and her family came to visit.

It was the first time for them visiting Fredonia also. My sister is on maternity leave from having her second child. She has a (almost) 3 year old boy and a 10 week old girl. I got lots of baby time and toddler time in this weekend. Here are some great pictures of the kids and some of the things we did.

Next weekend, we'll be with Nate's family at their annual clambake. I feel like I haven't seen them in forever, so it'll be good to see them. We'll be celebrating the many October birthdays in the family. 

Then the weekend after that is my nephew's 3rd birthday party (as well as my other nephew's 2nd birthday party, but I can't make it to both) so I'll see my sister and her family again!

Somewhere in there, we're squeezing in a short visit to Chicago to visit some friends. It's going to be short, but we'll see as many people as we can. I'm hoping to see my co-worker who had a baby at the beginning of September.