October Trips

We went on three great day trips in October. In honor of Columbus Day (he did discover America, after all), we drove up to Lancaster County, PA, to enjoy Amish Country. We enjoyed eating a traditional family-style meal at Plain and Fancy (http://www.plainandfancyfarm.com/).

Alexandra tasted iced raisin bread, chow chow, apple butter, noodles, roast beef, chicken sausage, the best fried chicken EVER, chicken pot pie, carrots, corn, and ice cream - and then promptly fell into the most adorable baby food coma.


The next weekend, we went to Ft. Pickett to see Frank graduate from Officer Candidate School and commission as an officer with the Virginia National Guard. We are so proud of Frank! He also won a special leadership award and was given a sword.

We were excited to see Frank become 2LT Frank C. Yurasko. And happy to spend time with cousins (see Kelvin, Frankie, Jake and Bryce in the chairs ).

Alexandra had fun congratulating her godfather on this special day! For more photos and a video, see Melissa's blog in my list to the right (she's much more up-to-date than me and covers this trip in an October entry).

The next day, we headed up towards Baltimore. We were supposed to meet up with Margaret at a corn maze, but, as it was sold out for the day, we had fun at a local farm instead! This trip ended up being a perfect fit for me, as I recently finished reading The Omnivore's Dilemma (thanks, Dad!). Alexandra really wanted to pet these turkeys.

Alexandra and Christopher are not sure what to make of this horse.

Margaret assuring Alexandra that the horse is friendly.

Alexandra really wanted to pet the horse- but she got a little shy!

Halloween!

I hope everyone likes our new layout! My wonderful cousin, Rachel, re-designed The Yurasko Difference, and I'm super happy with the results.

We had a great Halloween! Since Alexandra loves Tigger, we thought that she would make a perfect Tigger for her second Halloween. She loved her costume, and actually has enjoyed dressing up in it since Halloween. I had to snap this photo below of her pushing her Tigger while dressed as Tigger.

We started our festivities of the day by visiting the NRA, since they had decorated their museum as a "haunted" house for kids. Alexandra learned how to get candy out of a pumkin holder, and she got to try her first piece of candy (a twizzler stick). It's actually a very cool museum that I highly recommend (and I'm not into guns, so that's saying a lot!)

Christopher had a lot of fun leading our little Tigger through the NRA museum, but had even more fun. . . . .

HOLDING ALEC GUINESS' ACTUAL LIGHTSABER FROM STAR WARS!!! Yes, the NRA has this, and yes, they let us hold it!!!

Next, we visited Rachel, Sol, and Finley, and were happy to spend time with Laura, who was visiting during a short med school break. Finley was the most adorable monkey for his first Halloween. Laura is helping him model the cute hood in the photo above, and then Rachel is showing his face in the photo to the left.

What could possibly be cuter that a toddler Tigger on Halloween?

How about TWO Tiggers?!? Alexandra's cousin Will also decided to dress like Tigger for his second Halloween. Grandee and Granddad had to come and visit the two Tiggers on Halloween.

We had a lot of fun taking the two Tiggers trick-or-treating. They were great at getting the candy, but not so great at putting it into the bag, so we ended up with a lot of candy that had been melted by little Tigger hands.

We didn't have any trick-or-treaters come to our door this year, but Socks made sure that our candy was well protected.

We have a Toddler!

Alexandra started walking on her own at 15 months, but has recently (at 16 months) started to perfect it. Now, she likes to try to walk everywhere!

Here she is walking with Grandee. . . .

And with her daddy. . . .

And with her mommy!

And yes, as I explained to her cousins last weekend, she can also walk by herself (but it's definitely cuter for photos if she's holding someone's hand!).

I'm so proud of my little girl! She's talking and now walking!

Alexandra's Stocking

One of my favorite things from my childhood is the Christmas stocking that my mom made me. She made a beautiful, personalized felt/sequinned stocking for each of her five kids. I bought a stocking kit to make a similar stocking for Alexandra last year. I wasn't able to finish it before Alexandra's first Christmas - it was so much more labor intense than I initially thought (which means I am even more impressed with my own mother's ability to have done five such stockings)! I finished Alexandra's stocking last month, and hope that she will love it as much as I loved mine that my mother made me :) Here it is:

Ham

Alexandra loves the camera. Whenever she sees a camera (even if it's just sitting out), she poses and demands that you take her photo. Here are some of our recent favorite poses.

Yes, she's wearing two hats at a time. She loves hats!

She looks like she's about to start rapping in this one. . . . .

This is probably my favorite. . . .

She looks a little worried here. . . .

And yes, she asked to wear mommy's sun glasses! I have no idea where she gets her diva tendancies from :)

September Re-cap

Where has the time gone?!? I'm going to do a re-cap of all of the fun that we had during the month of September with this posting, then will have to do a couple others really quick to catch up before it's November. . . .

In September, we had fun picking apples . . .


And meeting a friendly goat. . . .

And picking raspberries (Alexandra and I ate one for every three we picked). We made use out of our water-bath canner and canned batches of applesauce, apple butter, and raspberry-currant jelly. Christopher would prefer not canning late at night, but it's the only time we can guarantee that we won't have to worry about a little one roaming around while literally gallons of hot water are boiling on our stove.

Alexandra had fun playing with her cousin, Finley. We sent her jumper over to his house so that he could play with it for a while. Alexandra hadn't played in it for months (at the end of its lifespan with her, she would scream when we'd try to leave her in it), but all she wanted to do was play in it while Finley was here. Yes, that's her diaper cover coming off in the photo - my baby girl has a small derriere and it can be problematic when we try to have her wear diaper covers, shorts, pants, etc. I'm sure she'll appreciate this problem when she is older, though.

My tomatoes were finally ripe enough to pick! I've gotten to enjoy about 8 home-grown organic tomatoes. Here, Christopher made a wonderful salad for me with homegrown organic basil, mozzarella, and olive oil.

We went to the National Book Festival. It was Alexandra's first outing to the National Mall (can you believe it?!) I'm so glad that this event, started by former First Lady Laura Bush, has continued beyond her eight years! It's one of my favorite DC events.

This year, we had a special treat at the book festival - we saw ELMO in the PBS tent! In the words of Christopher, we were thrilled to see "the real flesh-and-blood muppet!" We saw the actual puppet and puppeteer! The real Elmo! Christopher and I might have even been more excited than Alexandra!

Laura came with us to the Book Festival, and introduced Alexandra to Sid the Science Kid. She only gave her a sticker (which Alexandra is holding in the photo below), but we can already tell that Alexandra is logical and has an aptitude for higher education.

Whew! That's September in a whirlwind. . . .I'll blog about Alexandra's crazy camera poses and my recent crafts next!

Wrapping up our Colorado Photos

Hmmm. . . I've been blogging about our Colorado trip for a while. It wasn't a particularly long trip, I've just been really behind in my blogging! Well, I'll finish up the trip with this post. We had a lot of fun hiking in Colorado. Here we are on a family lunch outing walking around small lakes near Eltron.

Note Alexandra's stylish hiking shoes.

Grandpa and GG.

Blizzard and Kody probably had the best time on the hike.

Here's Emily hard at work at Eltron Water Systems.

We spent one of our last days touring the Coors Brewery in Golden. Even though Alexandra is too young to drink beer, she now knows exactly how it's made.

After the brewery tour, we took a couple of trips down the Alpine slide (what visit to Colorado would be complete without it?).

Yep - Alexandra rode down with her mama!

Alexandra discovered her grandparents' gong and figured out how to take off mallet and ring it all by herself. What a clever girl!