Fall 2012

Fall in Maine is like that huge tomato right out of the garden that you can slice and eat with a fork....just without all the work of growing it.

It's just there.

Serving you up a dish of breathtaking beauty every time you look out the window or step outside.

Like this tree just down the road:

 Or this building I pass every week on my way to church:

Just look at that thing!

But I have to say that the very best gift Fall brings to me each year, is my dad.

He comes and spoils us rotten with m&m hunts for the kids every day and the request of a list of things he can fix for us around the house.  I call it my "daddy do" list with gratitude dripping from my heart.

It's all Hallie has ever known, and without fail, as soon as those leaves start changing, her Grandpa Higgins is all she can talk about.....and I love it.

And this year was extra special because he brought his lovely wife, Bertha with him!

And boy was it fun getting to know her better.

She is one fantastic person who is not only blessing my dad's life, but my little family's as well.

The kids loved her right away.

She helped me so much in the kitchen with the cooking and cleaning and the holding of fussy babies.

One night she made the most delicious chicken enchiladas I've ever had!

We tried to cram in as much fun as we could, and started the week off with our traditional Halloween Family Home Evening, where we ate doughnuts on a string, carved pumpkins, and unwrapped candy using restrictive winter wear.

And for some strange and mysterious reason I don't have oodles of pictures of it all.

Hallie fiercely won the doughnut game.

Then of course we had to take them to the apple farm.

Aren't they cute?

They were such good sports when I asked them to go all Lady-and-the-Tramp with that apple.

And because we picked a bushel and combined it with a bushel that so generously came from my mother in law and sister in law, Bertha and I headed up a day of canning.

And canning....

...and more canning.

I underestimated this kind of undertaking, and found myself feeling so grateful and so sorry at the same time.

Because it became grueling by the end.

Poor Bertha was on her feet the entire time, keeping everything going for the majority of the time as I got nursing breaks and needy-Chandler breaks.

I mean who subjects their vacationing houseguest to a day full of labor?

And she had never even canned applesauce before! Talk about a crash course.

And when we were all done, there were 36 or so quarts sitting on my counter:

Which made two things for sure:
1.)  I am extremely grateful.
2.)  There are some major blessings coming Bertha's way!

Thank you Bertha!  I promise never to do that to you again.

So then, we took them to Belfast, and on the way stopped at this sign:

See, Maine doesn't just offer beautiful foliage.  If you want to travel the world, we have that too.  And this is no joke folks, these are the names of real Maine towns.

Because we're original like that ;)

Anyway, Belfast was beautiful.

We window shopped the "strip".

At some point Elon had possession of the camera and shot some dreamy ones of Chan.

And this house on a hill far away.

There are some interesting little shops in Belfast that offer some pretty nifty works of art.

 And Hallie made bosom friends with this mannequin.

 yeah...not quite sure what was up with that.

But I am sure that as soon as her new plastic friend came crashing off the table on which it was perched, I was the most embarrassed mommy around :/ 

Then we headed to a little restaurant overlooking the water.

Where Bertha and my dad got to try lobster for the first time.

 And I'm not quite sure if it was love at first taste - (on my dad's account) ;)  But it was fun to experience it.

We had so much fun with them, and wished like crazy they could have stayed longer.

But I guess it was good they were safely home before the hurricane.

Dad left his stamp on our house and once again left us better off than when he found us.

Chandler's closet door now opens and closes the way closet doors should.

Our hot water pressure in the downstairs bathroom now flows like the Nile.

The kids' wobbly handleless rocking horse now stands strong and hold-on-able.

The smoke detectors are all up and in working order.

Hallie's princess mirror is on the wall ;)

The little ring that circles the drain in our bathroom has been glued down.

Light bulbs have been replaced.


And he went ahead and added a big ticket item to the list and that was our broken garage door motor.  And boy do we ever appreciate that!  No more getting out of the car each and every time we come and go to manually pick up and pull down that old heavy door.  

I know a lot of these tasks seems so doable and one might think, is it really that hard to replace a few batteries and turn a knob downstairs which connects to the hot water in the bathroom?  And I'm here to say that with schedules and babies and laundry and dinner, sometimes it really is that hard.

And I'm so thankful that my dad is so willing to put all of those little (and big) to-do's on his priority list for us.

Thank you for everything dad and Bertha!  We love you so much.