Celebrating the Start of Fall

This weekend was so much fun, and it was the first weekend that even started to feel like fall.  It was still a little hot out, but we had a great time getting out of the house.  

Jonathan was also able to finish up a project he has been working on for Jack for the past couple of weeks.  A few months ago we found a product call the "Learning Tower" where kids can come up to the level of the counters to help with cooking and be more involved in the kitchen.    We thought it would be fun, especially since Jack is always bring chairs over to the counters which can easily tip.  Jonathan found plans on the Ana White DIY site for the similar "Helper Tower" so you can build it at home.  Jonathan basically went and bought pieces of wood from Home Depot and was able to build it from scratch and paint it to the color we wanted.  Once you finish a project you can post it on her site in the Brag Book section.  If you're interested, Jonathan wrote how he completed the project and included some pictures: http://ana-white.com/2012/10/helper-tower

This weekend he finished it up with a few coats of paint, and of course Jack had to be there to help.  As you can see it the picture below, I tried to give Jack his own painting project so Jonathan could finish, but he got tired of painting on paper and wanted to move on to bigger projects.

                                                
Such a good little helper :)

After painting, we went to a dog park in Laguna Beach to give Izzy some quality time.  Jack loves using the ball thrower, and he's surprisingly good at using it.  You have to help him press hard enough to get the ball in the holder and to throw it far enough so Izzy feels challenged, but he loves it.

 We took a quick picture it front of these pretty flowers outside the park:

On Saturday, we went to Tanaka Farms pumpkin patch where we did a corn maze, picked out some pumpkins, saw goats at the petting zoo, and did a wagon ride.  It was actually a pretty fun day, and Jack had a blast.  On the wagon ride, they stopped at a canon where they shot a pumpkin across the field.  Jack also hugged almost every goat at the petting zoo...too cute!

Jonathan's friend, Chris, had joined us at the pumpkin patch and helped pick out 2 yellowish/white pumpkins and 1 orange pumpkin.  Here they are with the stash using the Helper Tower.

The Helping Tower is all dry and in use in our house.  I can't say that I'm a fan of it, but Jack loves it haha.  He pretty much pushes it all over the kitchen to gain access to whatever he wants.  It keeps me accountable to keeping dishes, particularly knives, off of the counters consistently.  In this picture, Jack is on the prowl for a banana (he's obsessed with them):

Last night, Jonathan carved the first pumpkin.  We are leaving the others until closer to Halloween since they go bad so fast, but we wanted to do at least one.  Jack didn't really get involved in the carving, but he enjoyed the finished product.

 We also went to the park, and I just had to include this picture.  Jack loves swinging on these saying "Wheeeee!"

We're loving the start of fall, and we're just waiting for the weather to catch up with what month it is!