Into the Fall

TongJie's birthday was September 1 and he turned three.  We had a little party with a fun "cake" made out of fruit to look like a bridge with a train.  He loves bridges and trains, and he loves the song "London Bridge is Falling Down."

TongJie made a "long train" out of leftover watermelon rinds from his birthday cake

The day after his birthday, we went to Smallwood's to celebrate the last of summer before the starting of school the following day.

We did a 5k later on in September:

We went to a hoedown in early October, put on by the Grace Covenant Church in Wenatchee.  It was tons of fun, and TongJie surprised us by wanting to participate in the huge line dance taking place in the street.

TongJie and I went to Lincoln Rock State Park one morning to enjoy the beautiful sunny weather and all the fall leaves.  TongJie collected a whole bag full of acorns from the ground, and enjoyed throwing some into the water and taking most of them home.

We've been doing a lot of yard work and TongJie always loves to make use of his wagon.

My parents gave us a very large apple from their tree and TongJie just couldn't wait to eat it.  He got such a kick out of eating the apple "like Daddy."  I guess TongJie is pretty impressed with how Jeff can eat an apple without even cutting it.  He says the same thing about bananas and hard-boiled eggs.  Except TongJie only managed to take 5 or 6 bites of the big apple before he gave up and I ended up cutting it like a regular apple.

Since TongJie loves bridges so much, we took a walk on the pedestrian bridge and then had a picnic dinner one evening.

The weather has been so nice for the last few weeks, it's hard to believe it's already the end of October!  We're definitely having a much more enjoyable fall season than last year.  Last year, we couldn't go outside for most of September and the first part of October because of the wildfire smoke, and right about the time the smoke cleared was when TongJie had his cleft palate surgery and of course the recovery from that was a bit rough.  By the time everything was all said and done, it was November and the weather was cold and grey, and we felt like we missed out on our whole fall!  Speaking of TongJie's surgery, we were talking the other day about how it's been a year since then, and we decided to get TongJie's arm restraints out to see what he would think.  He didn't mind them too much when he had to wear them last year, but he was ready to be done with them by the end.  Anyway, he saw me get them out last week, and he immediately and gleefully held his arms out for me to put the arm restraints on.  Then he proceeded to make a big show of pretending that his nose itched and he couldn't scratch it.  He ran around the room laughing and looking for things to rub his nose on.  I wonder if that's one of the things that he remembers from last year, not being able to scratch his nose.  He even wanted to wear his arm restraints to bed, but we wouldn't let him.  I should have gotten a picture, but I didn't.  Maybe I'll try to get one soon - now the arm restraints are in his toy box, since he seems to enjoy them so much!

Here's a final photo of Jeff and TongJie listening to some music together.  Actually, I think it may have been a sermon, but TongJie was still mesmerized.