Newborn pictures

One of the fun things the hospital did for us was to have a professional photographer come by to take newborn pictures of Annabelle! Our photographer did a great job and we loved the pictures. And honestly, it was so convenient to have that done there rather than try and organize it when we got home! Here are a few of the pictures she took for us:

Annabelle's First Day

On Annabelle's first day, she got to meet so many people! She got to meet her big sister first of course :) And her nana and pace, aunts, uncle and cousins had all stayed overnight at our house, so they were able to come by and meet her the next day. She also got to meet her aunt Margaret and uncle Rodney later that evening. It was a busy first day! And she slept through most of it ;)

Hill Ridge Farms

Every year, Lily's school takes a school wide field trip to Hill Ridge Farms to visit their pumpkin patch and play on the farm. It's one of our favorite field trips of the year, but I wasn't able to make it this year. I was, at the time, a day past Annabelle's due date and relegated to resting at home by the doc for some blood pressure problems. But, I got to enjoy it vicariously through the pictures daddy sent while they were there :) they had a great time! Lily took her annual picture with the "how tall this fall" pumpkin (make sure you look back to see the ones from previous years!) Unfortunately though, the pumpkins were not so great this year. Richard and Lily had to look pretty hard to find good ones this year. But, they were able to find some and bring them home to add to our display!

Pumpkins!

To get our pumpkins this year, we headed to the farmers market like we did last year. We love supporting the local farms and we (I) wasn't really up for walking around a pumpkin patch at that point, so we figured this would be a good solution! We found some great pumpkins and gourds for carving and for our fall display on our porch :)

Fire safety day

Lily's school had fire safety week one week in September. During this week, the fire department came to talk with them about fire safety and to show off their trucks and ladders! And sirens :) Lily really liked getting to see the trucks and ladders, but she wasn't a huge fan of the sirens.

Pullen park

As you may have gathered in some other posts, we love going to Pullen park! It really is such a fun place and the little eatery they have there is really delicious. They use locally sourced foods and offer simple dishes that are super tasty. We grabbed lunch there and did some hanging out at the park one weekend in September. And, after riding the rides and playing on the playground, we grabbed some Popsicles before heading home - they were fantastic! You should definitely get one if you're there - try the cherry lime one; we loved them :)

Lily's Science Fair

This year, for Lily's science fair at school, she decided to do a project based on water. We were watching a Pioneer Woman episode one day and her kids did a little experiment called "Walking Water" where they placed the end of a length of toilet paper in a cup filled with colored water and then placed the other end in an empty cup to watch how the water traveled to demonstrate capillary effect. Well, Lily thought this was really cool, so she decided she wanted to do this experiment, plus a couple of other fun ones, to enter into her science fair at school. These experiments tied in with the scripture verse we chose also - John 4:14 "But whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life." One of the requirements of the science fair is that we incorporate a bible verse or teaching into it as well.  he also chose to do a rain cloud experiment! with shaving cream and water. She put shaving cream on top of a jar of water and dripped blue food coloring onto the shaving cream until it was saturated and started to drip into the water, showing how rain clouds work. The last one she did was an experiment showing how different things float in different environments (oil and water).

Lily's science project won this year!! She was so excited that her project won, but I think she was even more excited to talk about her experiments. I love that she loves to learn!