I’m thirty-five (and how we’re spending fall in the pandemic)

Fall in Minnesota is usually breathtakingly gorgeous and this year hasn’t disappointed. I don’t usually talk about my birthday, but this year I turned the big THREE FIVE in the midst of beautiful fall colors, a baby turning a year old, a COVID kid birthday party, and lots of outdoor time. So this is going to be one of those posts with a ton of photos and recaps more for my benefit than yours.

Olivia made me breakfast in bed for my birthday last weekend, like she did on Mother’s Day a few months ago, and sat with me eating. Truly, I think she just likes eating toast in my bed. I made sure she stayed on Chris’s side.

Chris did some raking that afternoon while I ran errands. I can’t remember what I was doing, but I was probably buying yarn. I brought him Starbucks and we took some photos of the kids playing in the leaves. Emelia picked that moment to crawl a little bit for the first time, only because slithering around on her belly on the cold ground was no bueno.

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The last weekend in September, we did an impromptu family outing to a nearby historic town for ice cream and a walk along the river. We found a rock garden and Olivia and I each took a rock and I told her we needed to come back to leave some of our painted rocks there for other people to take.

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We’ve also been taking walks in our neighborhood and Olivia’s finally been wanting to ride her bike more. There’s a trail nearby that’s beautiful this time of year. Olivia found some little yellow flowers and decided we all needed to wear one, minus the baby since she’d just eat it like she does everything else these days.

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Finally, this past weekend, we were debating on whether or not to go to the apple orchard and went back and forth on how we’d do it with the baby’s nap schedule. But then I saw there was a scavenger hunt close by where you could win gift baskets. We all headed out and picked up some beverages in my favorite local coffee shop and a Traveling Passport and went to fifteen participating stores to get their stamps. It was so fun just getting to look inside stores I’d never been in and making small talk with the owners. They all loved Olivia and she did a great job dragging me away from browsing the racks to get our signoffs.

“Come ON, Mom! We need to get dis signed!”

We got some ice cream afterward and then I dropped Olivia off at her grandparents to sleep over. Chris and I really wanted to do a date (with the tiny third wheel) at our favorite Mexican restaurant because we had passed it during the day with everyone sitting outside and it was so nice out. Of course, Emelia refused her nap, but we were determined and went anyway.

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It went well for the most part. She screeched at the top of her lungs unless she was shoving food in her pie hole, so we didn’t exactly have any prime conversation going on, but I got my queso and chips fix so I call it a win. To be fair, she was charming the pants off two women at the table across from us, and it was her first time officially eating in a restaurant since she was a newborn.

I’m still hoping to get to the apple orchard this year, but I’m just really thankful we’re getting this outside time as a family. The colors came really early this fall I think with the up and down temperatures, and I don’t want it to end.