Appreciating Autumn

Driving to and home from church a couple of weeks ago, I was struck by the beauty of autumn.  We really do have a beautiful drive to and from church.  Our church is being remodeled, so we have about a 20 minute drive to church, which I love.  It’s through mostly farmland and hills and it’s really lovely.  The vineyards are so pretty and in the fall all those leaves turn bright yellow and are just stunning, which I should try to get a picture of some time, but maybe I don’t need to because here is an excellent example from George Fox University’s Flickr page.

When Grandpa was here visiting and saw the location of the church, he thought it would be a perfect spot for a temple because it’s in such a nice setting, and I have to agree it would be perfect!  I sneaked out to the car during church to eat a little snack (3 hours is a long time to go without food!) and happened to have my camera in the car.  Here’s the view from my car window.  I think it’s such a peaceful place.

(That is also when I took the picture that is my current blog header.)  So anyway, driving home I decided the family needed to go on a fun outing to really enjoy the fall beauty while it lasted.  The following Tuesday seemed perfect.  We had no sports or piano or scouts or mutual or anything.  Gabe had a cross country meet on Wednesday, so he’d be getting out of his practice early on Tuesday and we could just leave right after school.  We decided on the zoo because the kids thought that would be fun and I figured it was surrounded by trees and would probably be really pretty too.  We also haven’t been to the zoo for awhile, so it seemed like a good idea.

It turned out the zoo closes early in the fall, boo hoo, so we missed out on that, but it is located in the beautiful Washington Park, so we decided instead to just go to the playground, which actually worked out better.  Gabe wasn’t feeling well and couldn’t have handled walking around the zoo.  In fact he just rested in the car the whole time.  It was relaxing just letting the kids play.  The leaves weren’t quite as spectacular as I had envisioned, but they were definitely pretty and it was just nice to be outdoors and doing something fun.  While Josh and Sammy were playing, Noah and I took a few short walks on the surrounding trails.  He is a fun hiking companion.  I need to take him on more outings like that.  Here he is standing next to what he decided was his favorite tree.  I liked that one too!

The playground was a lot of fun and the kids enjoyed that, but mostly they wanted to play in the sand.

(More pictures were included in this post.)

And Josh had fun being a model.  Here are some of  the pictures I got of my cutie pie.

done

It was a really fun evening and I’m glad we got that break before whatever bug that was starting in on Gabe worked it’s way through the whole family!

~ by Kathy on November 3, 2009.