Walk on a Beautiful Fall Day

A few things -

1. Sorry for so many heavy picture posts in the last week. I go in picture-taking spurts. Today was rainy and gray, so no more fun outdoor pictures after this post (at least for a couple of days… rain rain go away!).

2. We heard back about our appraisal – it came in exactly what we paid for it 14 months ago. While in a different year, it would have been nice for the house to actually go up in value, today I’m feeling very grateful it didn’t go down and we can move forward with the refinancing to save some money each month.

3. My goal for the week is to not feel so frustrated when things happen or come up that are out of my control, which throw my plans out the window (this happens almost every day). My other goal for next week is to go to bed before 11:30 p.m. every night. I certainly haven’t done that this week and I am tired... though I really think staying up is a part of my DNA.

4. Charlie had his 9-month check-up today. Sadly, he's thinning out because he is so mobile now (I love his chub so much). He was 18 lbs 6 oz (which is 25% - down from 50% three months ago), and was 50% in height and head circumference. I haven't had a chance to check what Eli's stats were at this age, but I'm guessing Charlie is still a little bit bigger.

5A. The weather was so perfect yesterday that we had to get outside in the afternoon and enjoy the beauty around us. I wanted to exercise by pushing the boys in the jogger, but along the way, I stopped at the golf course and took lots of pictures. Eli was less than cooperative, but I still managed to get some fun ones.

5B. If you’ve seen enough pictures of my kids this week, there are some pretty seasonal photos toward the bottom of this post :)

The majority of my pictures are of Eli running away from me…

This is my favorite one of Charlie, who climbed up here, intertwined in the park bench:

What is this thing called that Eli is standing on (part of the golf course)? I was impressed with his balance:

He was quite pleased with himself as well.

Some pictures from the rest of our walk:

We have SO many squirrels and chipmunks that run around causing trouble. I thought it was fun to catch a shot of the lovely black squirrel variety…

Pretty cobblestone streets and huge trees -

I love autumn! It’s sad when all of the leaves fall and everything is stark for five months. But it is fun to crunch in the leaves when they are all over the ground. I’m telling you – mid to late October is such a pretty time to visit Chicago… :)

The view below the elevated train tracks, on our way to meet Ben coming home from work on the train -

It was so nice to be outside! The walk could have been more enjoyable though; at one point, Eli took his sippy cup and threw it at Charlie’s face… totally unprovoked. What am I going to do with this kid??