It's Fall!!!!

One of the my favorite things about our relocation to Atlanta is getting to experience the fall season again!  It really is one of my favorite seasons and one I always missed when living in Houston.

And here we are at that time of year....I LOVE it!!!!  The weather is getting cooler in the evenings, there is that crispness about the air and the beginning of the leaves changing color.  This morning it was super rainy so when the sun came out this afternoon we threw on some rain boots and headed out to the backyard.  After swinging and playing on the playset for a while, the girls and I decided to collect leaves, acorns, pinecones, and various items that have fallen from the trees.  I just loved watching their curiosity with everything they found.

Evie loves finding roly poly bugs and usually runs off to get her magnifying glass to get a closer look.  Since it rained all morning there were many, many of these bugs crawling around the mulch.  This time she picked up a piece of mulch where it was crawling.  She loved watching it crawl!

 This is an old pan I have for the girls to play with outside, and today we made some "soup."

Okay, so technically these berries were not on the ground, but I picked a few from the tree for the girls to add to their soup.  Apparently Layla thought it was a very fancy dandelion since picked it up and tried to blow the berries off.  And she blew......

.......and blew......

and blew:0)

We had so much fun I didn't want to stop, but we really needed to go inside so I could start dinner. So we just decided to bring the fun indoors too.  We brought several of our collected leaves inside and spread them out on a tray.

Then I took some clear contact paper and taped it to the window, sticky side facing out.  I made a tree trunk and stuck it to the middle of the contact paper, then encouraged Evie to add some leaves to the tree.  At first she just matched one leaf to each branch.  Then we talked about how some branches have a lot of leaves and maybe she should add some more.  

She thought it was a great idea and started adding some more.

Then she decided she wanted to put some "falling" from the trees like she saw happening outside.

Her finished product:0)  The leaves look really cool when the sun shines on them!

 Then I gave them the pan with our other fall treasures and several small containers.

After playing with them for a while, Evie decided to start sorting the items into the different containers:)

These activities kept them very entertained and busy while I made dinner!

Oh how I love this time of year.....and the fun has just begun!