It's Fall, Baby

Here in southern Indiana the landscape is shifting. Leaves are coloring and dropping and as the trees transform from full, green, and lush to their sparse, stoic, stalky winter selves, all of the sudden you can see things you couldn't before--houses through a patch of trees, the shimmer of a lake in the distance. It's like the land suddenly spreads out and reveals itself. Deciduous forest, how I love you.

(Also, jackets with random ears on top, how I love you too.)

For the Pace family, however, Fall is never quite fall (do you like my haphazard capitalization of  the word 'fall'--I think it adds flavor to my otherwise dull grammatical obesiance--however you spell obesiance) until the first hearth fire, which happened yesterday (though not technically under a hearth--I just thought that would sound more poetic than "until their first wood-burning stove fire"). It's so warm, so beautiful, so magnetic. Suddenly, all the slightly chilly rooms in the house seem frigid and I only want to sit entranced in the family room. Ditto for Pippi and, alas, Emma, who kept trying to crawl up to the woodburner. (We had hoped that with the heat some sort of primal instinct would kick in and she would sense danger. Not so. Why is it that human babies lack instinct? Like the instinct to sleep for example. Cat and dog babies have no trouble with this--human babies on the other hand...)

Anyway, here's a picture and I bet it makes you wish you were here or at least that you had a really great mug of hot chocolate in hand.

 Also, if you would like to be here, you are more than welcome to come. We will even provide the hot chocolate.

And then, of course, with Fall, we also get pumpkin bread. Here's my number one baker helping out.

I'll save the pictures of the actual bread for my new food blog which will be coming soon (eatingcheaptogether.blogspot.com). Very soon, I hope. But you guys are lucky. You get to see the cute kid, not just the food.

And, of course with fall comes a bunch of these cute people dressed up so as to further accentuate their adorableness. Tonight we headed out to our ward's trunk-or-treat. Here are a few pics. The ones with everybody are blurry (to say the least--and yes, Kip, I did hold the button down to focus it--it's just that my subjects were not cooperating and neither was the light and people were just so wiggly. We will use it for memory purposes only and try to refrain from entering any photography contests any time soon.)

Here's Savannah with her part of the package from Aunt Sarah. Oh boy. (We love you Aunt Sarah--and Jake, you're okay too, though I'm not sure you would send cute and edible care packages, so we'll have to think about that one a bit. But good work in the wife choosing.) Perhaps it appears that Savannah isn't wearing any pants. I'm sure that that is riduculous as my children would never think about running around half naked. Never. In this family we wear pants, okay. Okay.

Here's Elizabeth showcasing her cat costume as well as the upper tooth she lost yesterday. Savannah's the only one not resembling a jack-o-lantern this year.

Oh, and speaking of jack-o-lanterns. Here's what the kids designed, though Kip did the cutting.

Anyway, back to children...

I don't know; maybe I do hear a prize in photography calling. What do you think? We had a huge issue with Savannah and her costume. She'd been planning to be a witch for a couple weeks--a witch with a different hat and dress. Then she suddenly didn't want to. She wanted to be a cat. But the cat costume was spoken for and had been for a while. We have tons of costumes, but she didn't want to be any that fit her--the dragon or the ballerina (my pick; it was so cute). She wanted to be a tiger (an 18 month costume) or Snow White (a costume she runs around in a lot, but it's too big and falls off). Finally, after much ado--tantrum style, she found this orange and black hat and decided to be a witch. Then she wore the hat for maybe 2 total minutes the whole night. Oh well, she sure is cute anyway. And speaking of cute... come on.

Have you ever seen such an angelic-looking devil. Me neither. And, yes, I dressed up this year. I'm cool like that.

Aha, 30 seconds with the hat on.

Mark, if in later years you wonder why there are so few pictures of you, it's because you were so elusive. I could barely find you, much less photograph you. Think of it this way, at least we'll have less to show your girlfriends when you finally decide that kissing isn't a reason to forego marriage (Mark claims he will not get married because that will mean he has to kiss a girl).

And if you're wondering how I ever managed to get so many pictures up, you can thank the new computer Kip bought this week. It was a present for, uh, me, which I think we all know is a stretch. But even though Kip's motivations may not entirely have been driven by his utter love and concern for his beloved, I sure like the darn thing anyway. It's so amazing to have my email NOT run like it's dial-up. So, thank you, my dear.

And a Happy Halloween to all and to all a good night.