The Leaves are A-Fallin

We have a ginormous yard, something that is usually quite a luxury, and one of the things that initially appealed to us about this house.  Obviously, we didn't think about what that yard would look like in the fall:

And that's only about 1/8 of the back yard, so you do the math...basically, we have a shit-ton of leaves aroudn here right now.  Josh is warming up his muscles to rake them this weekend (or taking out his wallet to pay someone to do the same thing...he hasn't quite decided yet!), but in the meantime, Colton and I decided to take advantage of them to cross some of our fall fun items off our list from a couple months back.
The first thing we did was decide to take a "nature walk."  Considering Colton is not exactly compliant when allowed to walk and roam, I figured our back yard was actually the perfect place to allow him to run and gather.  Once I brought out his trick-or-treating pumpkin and showed him how to put leaves and things in it, he really got into it (in fact, a couple of weeks later, it is still one of his favorite outdoor activities!).

While we were out there, I decided to rake up a little pile for Colton to jump in.  While he never really got the hang of jumping in, he did love running through them and kicking them...go figure!

The lack of jumping probably has something to do with my measly pile.  Hopefully, his daddy will rake him up a better pile.  I mean, look how much fun he looked like he was having last year (this was taken on Thanksgiving, hence the nicer shirt!)

But I digress...back to our fall fun!

As usual, my very curious toddler just had to pick up the rake after watching his mom use the thing.  He attempted to gather some leaves for us too, but unfortunately for Josh, I think his real leaf raking days are still a couple years off.

Once we were done with our "nature walk," leaf jumping, and raking Colton and I took our findings and used them to make a collage.  And when I say we, I mean I did most of the work, while Colton proceeded to throw leaves...although he did put a couple leaves on our poster board.

I know...impressive/riveting, huh?

A few days later, and with many more leaves in the yard (the nature walk/leaf pile picture were actually taken a couple weeks ago, while the first picture was from this week, which is why you can actually see some grass in the earlier pics), we decided to cross off another item from our list: make a scarecrow.  Honestly, when I first wrote out our list, I really didn't intend to actually make a scarecrow.  But Colton has been obsessed with them in craft stores and our neighbors' yards as we take our walks, so I figured it was worth a shot.  He had zero interest in actually making the thing...he stuffed about 2 leaves into the shirt, and then was off to play.  So I have no cute pictures of Colton making a scarecrow!

But once the Coltonish scarecrow was complete (we used his old clothes and put on light brown hair, so we could call him Colton!), he was quite intrigued with the guy.  

I personally think he looks a bit creepy, but Colton was totally into him, even insisting on carrying around for awhile!  

And with our fall fun done, I think we have managed to complete another list (except for apple picking, which I am going to INSIST upon for next year!).  Good thing, too, because I already have several ideas for our holiday fun list and if we're going to get them all in, we need to get started!