Leaves (and children) succumb to gravity!

About 5 years ago we planted a stick of a tree in the back yard - a Chinese Pistache, carefully chosen because in the "fall" the leaves turn red and fall off. Well our little stick has done us proud and dutifully sheds its leaves every year in January after about a week or so of showy "fall" colors (this year was more yellow than last year's red). It suits us quite well because we now have an annual "raking of the leaves/jumping in the leaves/knocking all the rest of the leaves off the tree" fun saturday morning project. This year's was yesterday.

Jumping off the castle...

Jumping off the sandbox...

Jumping off the ladder...

Just hanging out...

And then cleaning up...

I have to say that Autumn is definitely my favorite season.

Emma's first steps

This post is a long time coming, we've been slacking off!
This video was from December 21 and Emma is actually walking a bit more now. Just thought we'd share the 'first' steps video. Enjoy! (Good job Jakob as the event cameraman/director)

If we'd been a bit more on the ball we would have posted this as "Here Comes Trouble's Cousin" in honor of Emma's 9 month old cousin Jaxon ("Here Comes Trouble" on the Stanford Family blog) who started walking before her.