and on to fall...

Ok, so here we go...I'm going to pack in a bunch of photos to briefly cover our last three months. Basically the end of summer and beginning of fall - my favorite time of year.

Here's Rory at the Fire Fly Festival at the Botanical Garden of the Ozarks. She was playing the drums at the drum tent, and dressed very appropriately for the event.

This year we drove up to Ohio for Grams' birthday. Here's Rory with her counsins Spencer, Dillon and Ethan.

We made sure to go camping down at the Buffalo River again this year at Ozark Campground. We went with our friend Kara and her little boy Rylan. So this was Rory's first time swimming in the Buffalo National River.

Here we were in West Virginia for our friends' wedding. Rory was (gleefully) trying to tickle me with a leaf.

Now that Rory is getting older, it's been great fun taking her to things like pumpkin patches and corn mazes. Here we were on a hay ride.

Ok, so these are a little out of order, but here's Rory at the Yonder Mountain Harvest Festival on her birthday. We celebrated at campsite with our friends and apple spice cupcakes. Rory almost made herself sick on the icing...but that's what you're supposed to do on your birthday, right?

Again...at Harvest Fest. Dressed warm for the cool weather...

Say "trees"

This is a pretty cool picture of Rory playing fetch with Raine...the black nose/mouth in the front of the picture catching her donut made like a tennis ball.

Another local pumpkin patch. Rory was enjoying trying to pick up all the pumpkins.

"Blow on the dandelion, Mama?"

Mama and Rory - self-portrait

Chad and the rest of "The Band Who Shall Remain Nameless" played at our friends' house for their "Fire on the Mountain" Festival. Good people, good food and good music.

Chad gettin' down on the bass...

After watching Fantasia a few times, and then seeing people dressed up in mushroom costumes at Harvest Fest dancing in the crowd, guess what Rory wanted to be for Halloween?

And here she is with our favorite local weatherman, Dan Skoff. He's actually helped me a bunch with locating and downloading historical precipitation data. He's a great guy with a little boy who's just a little older than Rory. For their 10:00pm broadcast, he was dressed up like a cloud and used the green screen to hide his body. It was awesome.

So that's a rundown of our last three months or so in pictures. There are a bunch more, but we're limited on space. I'm currently job hunting so any postive vibes you can send my way are much appreciated. Filling out applications and working on research is definitely keeping me busy along with all the traveling this summer. (Obviously since I've been lax in my posing on the blog.) Hope this entry finds you all well. Looking forward to a great November and my favorite holiday - Thanksgiving. Here's hoping you have a lot to be thankful for this year...