My parents came to visit October 15-22 and I never got around to writing anything about it yet. We always love visitors because it gives us an excuse to "be on vacation" and go explore things in Rochester that we haven't had a chance to go do yet. We of course also love having family come visit because we love to see everyone and it's fun for Kaden to get to know Grandma and Grandpa better in person and not just through Skype.
We picked my parents up from the airport and headed right to Powers Farm and Market in Pittsford to see the jack-o-lantern teepees and the animals at the petting zoo. Kaden loved the animals and we all took turns feeding them food you could buy out of our hands. May I be the first to say that it feels super weird to have alpacas licking your hands? Eek.
Kaden also found a chicken to chase into forbidden territory (note the orange cone) and wouldn't leave the poor creature alone.
Next, Kaden tried to lift every pumpkin in the patch. Much to his dismay, all of them were quite a bit larger than he could handle, until he found the wall of tiny pumpkins.
One of the coolest things about Powers Farm are the giant teepees full of jack-o-lanterns that go all the way to the top. I forgot to get a picture of the insides but they are pretty cool. Of course we had to get some of their homemade donuts before we left. Yum!
The next day Curtis had school and my dad had to work, so my mom and I hung out with Kaden. We went to the Museum of Play, which is always fun and out to lunch. On Friday we headed to Letchworth State Park, the "Grand Canyon of the East." It's such a stunning place and it's only about 50 minutes from our house, which is nice. It's at the top of the Finger Lakes region. It was beautiful but absolutely freezing wind and none of us were dressed properly, as you can tell.
There was a big pack of condors flying right by where we were taking pictures. We thought they were hawks or eagles at first, but Curtis, being the Google master that he is found out quickly that we were all incorrect. :)
Before we went hiking we decided to grab some lunch. When we were walking into the restaurant I was carrying Kaden and tripped going from the grass up onto the cement walkway. In an effort not to drop Kaden on the cement or hurt him, I tried to catch myself, which I was able to do. Immediately after though I got super dizzy and did this embarrassing dizzy stagger across the whole sidewalk with Kaden. It was like slow motion, extremely awkward, drunken-looking, prolonged tripping, type of staggering. I knew it was happening but I couldn't do anything about it. I somehow bypassed the whole sidewalk and Kaden and I both went right into the mud and grass on the other side. Nice. Graceful for sure. Lovely entrance for us both into a nice-ish restaurant.
After lunch we hiked around, enjoyed the fall leaves, the Upper and Lower Falls, and especially the playground at the end. Did I mention it was cold? Yay for crazy New York weather.
I have a mild, nay, major obsession with Fall. Namely fall on the East coast. It is just so stunning, I can't ever seem to quite get over it. Fall in Utah is beautiful but with all the millions of trees here it is seriously breathtaking. My ode to fall in more pictures...
We went to Mendon Ponds Park on Saturday and enjoyed the Wild Wings bird rescue and especially the Birdsong trail. You can buy a bag of birdseed there for $1 and the birds will literally eat out of your hands. It is so cool! They are tiny, quick birds so the first time one landed on me I didn't even realize what was going on until it flew away.
Saturday night we went to the Mt. Hope Cemetery Torchlight Tour. We heard about it last year but the day after it ended. (They only do two tours a year in October.) The guide takes you around and tells you spooky/crazy stories about the people buried in the cemetery. It was pretty wet and cold and even though the tour was supposed to last an hour and a half, Kaden only made it an hour, so we left early. The parts we heard were cool though!
I've always wanted to go apple picking since coming to New York and missed my window last fall. (Go figure, with a newborn we didn't get out much.) We went to Whittier Fruit Farm on Monday. Kaden absolutely loved the apples and was having the best time running and picking up all the apples that were already on the ground and then "tasting" them and grabbing another one. We were having so much fun picking lovely apples that we must not have realized how full our bucket was. We went to check out and we had 14 pounds of apples! Eek. Still not sure what I'm going to do with all of them (besides try to eat apples a LOT), but for now they are safely tucked in our cold storage room until the fridge can hold more.
Curtis has a night class every Monday night so we created our Minion Pumpkins while he was gone. I love the Despicable Me movies, and especially the Minions, so this was my Pinterest pin come to life. (I'm always proud of myself when I turn things I find on Pinterest into actual projects.)
On Tuesday we went to Palmyra to see the Sacred Grove. My parents have been there before since they were in the pageant a few years back but they wanted to see it in the fall. I always love the Sacred Grove. It is beautiful and has an amazing spirit about it. It's such a blessing to live 40 minutes from where the Restoration all began. Curtis had school so it was just the four of us.
After the Sacred Grove we ate at Athenia's Family Restaurant, which turned out to be a surprisingly tasty little family-owned restaurant in Palmyra. We drove back to Rochester and sadly had to take my parents to the airport. On the way out my Dad forgot his carry on bag with all of his stuff for work so Kaden and I made two trips to the airport. Luckily we only live about 10 minutes away and it only takes 5 minutes to get through security or they might have missed their flight. We had a wonderful time with both of them. It's always sad when family has to leave because we don't see family very often anymore except through Skype. Love you Mom and Dad! Thanks for coming to visit us!
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