Who is that in the hat?

I love the fall in the northeast.  The season makes the scorching summers and blizzardy winters worth living here.  I won't do it justice in words.  There's a crispness you feel when you first open the door in the morning.  I spend the days pointing out red trees that inspire me to repaint rooms in our house.  Orange trees that look perfect against the blue skies.  Yellow trees that look like they are on fire. There's a distinct smell of burning leaves most evenings.  The stars always seem more clear.

This fall the weather was particularly gorgeous, perhaps trying to make up for short changing our summer vacation with a hurricane?  I digress.

One beautiful Monday in November, Daddy stayed home from work.  We decided to hike Newlin Grist Mill.  Perfect scenery.  Sweatshirt and jeans weather. Well-behaved Salad.  Throw Daddy in the mix and it stands out as one of my most favorite days ever.

Wait!  Is that R?  In a picture?  On my blog?  See?  He exists.  And he's around quite a bit.  But he's camera shy, people.  And if I showed his face on the blog, I'd have to kill you.  Kidding.  Kidding.  Kinda.

Anyway, we hunted for frogs, tried to catch tadpoles with our bare hands, threw stuff over the waterfall to see where it would end up, watched the fish literally jump out of the water to eat the bread we were throwing to the ducks, climbed trees, skipped rocks and waded in the water. 

In what could have been a sad ending to the day, M slipped on wet rocks, fell into ice cold water and bumped his bottom on the way down.  Luckily, I foresaw just such a thing happening and had brought along a change of clothes for each of them.  Problem diverted.  Whew.