My home state is better than yours ;)

...and I'll take on any comers who would attempt to prove otherwise. The kids and I just spent the week at Gram and Papa's house. Despite a nasty head cold (complete with fevers, ick) for me, molar teething for Hudson and then him catching my cold, and Hen just being her 3-year old self, we had a fabulous time. The weather more than made up for the last time we were there and we had nothing but sunshine and happiness. While not quite peak leaf season, I'm guessing that will happen Tuesday, the color was still fantastic. Actually, we probably got peak as it's calling for rain all week so that will just knock everything off. I made a point of doing one thing a day as we had the house to ourselves with everyone at work and the kids needed a break from my constant "no's". There are stairs for Hudson to climb, chairs he can get on to, and just sooooo many temptations for little busybodies. Our days started early (5:30) but bedtime came pretty quick too (7! yay!!!) and I think it was the most rested I've been in a long time. Not that I didn't make Steve get up with Hudson this morning at 6 ;) We have a blazing quick trip planned in a couple of weeks and I have my fingers crossed for decent weather as I'd love to make a run up the mountain with Steve and leave the kids with my folks. Course then we'd have to fight off all the tourists. And oy, were there a ton of them in the way on our trip back home on Sat. Public service bulletin: If you are from New Jersey, or if you drive a Prius, PLEASE stay out of VT. Seriously. Your driving sucks. All the rest of you are annoying too, but this subgroup consistently takes the "idiot" category. And now back to our regular program :)

A few flowers survived the frosts

This little lantern has always fascinated the kids

Putting pebbles in it

haha, I love Hen in the background

Lots of climbing

Gah, he is just so cute, Loud, but cute.

They're starting to play together somewhat. Here they were throwing rocks at each other...

The tire swing broke but the crossbar is the perfect height for a trapeze

Growing in the woods

The big stairs I had to dash up over and over and over to get Hudson down. He had a blast

Hard to see, but Papa has done a ton on the rock wall and there are all these hidden flower beds and staircases, just gorgeous.

Headed down to Great-Grams

Out back of the barn

Hudson was tearing down her stick pile. Gram's have the best toys!

More westerly views

Her front tree is so cool: just half turns bright red while the other half stays green. Been doing that for years. 

Normally I just stop at the orchard and buy drops, but we had an outing and picked. Kids loved it

Sampling. Henri picked the whole bag by herself and did a great job selecting ripe fruit.

I know it's their business, but it always amazes me how much fruit there is on a tree!

I know, major choking hazard, but he was tickled to have his own apple

And he just stood in one place and munched so he was easy to keep track of

Of course we had to get drops for sauce and cider donuts ;)

Aunt Anna's stick was a big attraction this time. Had to hide it finally.

Late afternoon light

Anna leaves for college and her roses decide to bloom

More west views. The coyotes were out and wow, such a scary noise.

Lots of kitchen play

Papa! 

We got out the old doll's bed

Hud playing in the mud, Hen telling him not to

A lot more milkweed pods than I've seen in a long time. Maybe the monarchs will make a comeback?

See how evenly the color splits?

Gram had us down to dig potatoes. I've never done it, and it was very exciting. We had them for supper, breakfast, and lunch. Delicious!

Some of the haul

I washed all the dolls and they took a few days to dry. It made a slightly disturbing sight.

Every morning before he left for work Papa would leave a drawing of a scene for Henri on the chalkboard and ask her an open-ended question about it that we'd talk about through the day. This was the farm day.

Grammie and Hudson. 

On last view of the scenery out back

Not pictured was a few library trips with time spent on their playground, being terrorized by my Aunt's dog (my kids are petrified of dogs), lots of baking and delicious food (including grilled!), and just the general play of kids. Fun times indeed.