Fall Is Here!

Let's just say that the beginning of Fall has the Drake family a little bit excited! After much hype, the leaves are starting to turn colors and our fall decorations have been up for over a month! This is the time of year that I would always get homesick while living in the South, so we have been loving the beautiful fall here in IL! Ben helped me put up fall decorations around the house, and I even let him pick out a couple of pumpkins to decorate his room with. He has about 8 pumpkins of various sizes on the front porch that he rearranges several times a week. And the picture above was taken after he completed putting his own fall decorations up around his toy kitchen. He did this one Sunday afternoon while I was putting Ella down for a nap. He and Carl were watching the Bears game when I left, and by the time I returned he had completed his decorating. The rock, plastic boat, toy cookie dough container, etc. . . were also part of the decor. But to be fair, Carl would like me to explain that it really was a lousy game, or half time, or something like that. . . . . But even Carl has to admit that seeing Ben's pride in his achievement was about the cutest thing ever!

In addition to Pumpkin Spice Lattes and lots of pumpkin baking, Fall also means small town festival time! Ben had great back to back weekends at the El Paso Corn Festival and Morton Pumpkin Festival. He covered his ears whenever a fire engine or marching band would pass by, but the candy he received erased any bad memories from the parades. And his cousin, Connor, helped Ben perfect his smile and wave to the passing floats in order to rake in the maximum amount of candy! Ben also experienced festival rides for the first time this year. He was definitely not ready to throw his arms up in the air yet!

Unfortunately, the Pumpkin Festival parade got rained out shortly after we got there, but we returned later to sample the famous pumpkin ice cream and were not disappointed!