Today, I decided to take Gabriella, Isabella, Connor and our dog Mercury on a long walk through the fields to go and visit the library. On the way, we passed a lot of trees, where the leaves had darkened and fallen and carpeted the ground in a blanket of yellows, oranges, reds and browns.
I decided to take some portrait photos of the children in the leaves.
Mercury decided that he loved playing leaves, especially when the children kept throwing the leaves in the air or letting him play tug of war with the leaves. (In some of the photos of him jumping, he is out of focus. I didn't have my camera set for action photos as I wasn't expecting his exuberance at finding leaves to play in.)
The benefit of all of Mercury's running around was that he did, eventually, tire enough that I was able to take a couple of good portraits of him in the Autumn leaves.
Then the kids decided to climb a nearby tree. (Bella was not quite as brave about climbing the tree as Connor and Gabby were. And please keep in mind as you view the photos that I did not choose Isabella's outfit!)
Once we got to the library, I let the three of them choose a book each and I sat on the floor beside their child-sized table and read the stories aloud to them. After we visited the library, we went into the store that was next door to it to buy the kids some drinks. They found a Dolmio display and were quick to ask me to take their photos in it.
All in all, it was a fun day. Next time, I'll bring Cameron too. (He had been napping, so we left him home with his two teenage sisters during our walk.)
Isabella turned 5 part-way through August and her little brother Connor turned 4 at the end of August. With just one year between them, they can sometimes be the best of friends and other times they can be each other's worst enemies. Today was one of the good days when they were happy to be brother and sister.
I promised the children I would take them for a walk today to our local store so that they could ride the mechanical merry-go-round that has been there for the past few weeks. The forecast told us it would rain this afternoon, so we headed out early in the morning.
On our walk there, we went through a long stretch of park area. There were blackberries growing up and down the entire stretch of our walk, and the kids liked to stop occasionally to pick and eat them.
Along the way, a beautful black and white cat showed up beside us. It was obvious he wanted our attention, so we all stopped to pet him. He rubbed up against all of our legs and bumped his head against my hand several times. Whenever someone started walking past us, he would dash back into the bushes and hide, only to come out again once they had passed.
We walked on, but the cat followed us. It didn't seem to matter how far we walked, he continued to follow us, and whenever we stopped to look at something or to pick blackberries, he'd saunter up to us and demand attention again.
A couple sets of other parents with kids stopped to try and coax the cat out of the bushes so that they could pet him too, but he would only poke his head out far enough to look past them at us, and then he'd wait for them to leave and start following us again.
I started to worry a little as we got closer to our destination, because not only had he followed us for more than a mile, but we were nearing a very busy road which we would cross soon.
A couple passed us going the other way and they had two dogs with them. I knew the cat would hide until they passed, so I urged the kids to speed up with me, and we got further away from the cat in order to discourage him from following us any further. I think it worked, as I didn't see him following us after that.
When we got to our destination, because we had left so early, the rides were not open and neither was the stand that sold cotton candy. Cotton candy is a very rare treat for my kids, but I was determined to make today a special and fun day for the kids, so I had planned on buying them some.
We went into the store, and I let the kids pick out some inexpensive toys. I told them I would spend £1 on each of them and no more than that. Gabriella and Isabella both picked some little Hello Kitty trinkets filled with candy. Connor, as usual, picked a toy car. And Cameron picked a toy cell phone that made noises when he hit the buttons.
When we left the store, I could see that the ride was open now, so I paid for the children all to have a ride on the automatic merry-go-round. It was Cameron's first-ever ride! Fortunately, I had brought along my camera and my video camera. Isabella chose to ride on the dalmation at first, because she loves dalmations, but before the ride started, she changed her mind and chose to ride on Bugs Bunny instead. Gabriella was sweet and chose to ride with Cameron in a tank. Connor surprised me by choosing to ride on a fish.
Once the ride was over, I bought them a bag of cotton candy to share. They did manage to get sticky and messy with it!
Once the children all had some cotton candy, we started home.
The children asked me questions about many of the different plants we saw along the way.
We saw a lot of plums, but none of us could reach the red plums as they were too high up in the trees.
The kids picked more blackberries on the way home.
At one point, we passed by an apple tree that was full of ripe apples. Unfortunately, all of the apples were at the top of the tree, making it nearly impossible to pick any of them. Only one small apple was a bit lower than the rest, so I picked Connor up and he managed to reach it and pick it. Gabby, Bella and Connor all shared it.
They loved walking onto the bridge and looking at the water a short way below it. I even let Cameron out of his stroller to walk over the bridge too, but he soon tried to make his escape. I chased him down and put him back into the stroller.
We found a lot of yellow plums along the path that were within reach and Gabriella and Isabella both tried them and liked them, so they started picking their own. (I had to explain to Bella not to pick them as low as she started out picking due to the possibility of dogs having peed on them.) Bella shared on of her plums with Cameron.
We came acorss a woman walking her friendly golden retriever. We have met this golden retriever before and the kids enjoyed petting him.
The kids climbed down the steps to the tiny bit of waterfall in the creek. By then we were getting rained on, so we didn't stay long.
When the kids climbed back up from the creek, we found out that Cameron had pulled Gabby's beret out from the basket under the stroller and decided to wear it.
Nearing the end of our walk, the kids all climbed on some large rocks that were positioned around the park.
After that, the rain started falling much faster so we had to hurry home.
I hope they enjoyed the day as much as they seemed to. I like creating memories for them with simple days like this.
