We absolutely love the fall season! The evenings are finally cooling off and the morning air is feeling slightly crisp! It’s a great time to be an Arizonan. Out of all of the seasons, fall has to be at the top of our list. It is the trigger that initiates fun holidays and family gatherings. Seeing the change in the weather brings about a change in us. We are no longer huddled close to air conditioners everywhere we go. We are playing outside, going to the park as a family, and trying to rationalize that wearing long sleeves and pants just because it is 75 and sunny is OK. Hey! It’s a whopping 40 degrees cooler than we are used to, so it’s totally acceptable!
In honor of the season, we thought we would share out Top Five Fall Traditions with you!
The Pumpkin Patch!
It seems like no matter where we move, we are always near a farm. There must be some magnetic pull that draws our city hearts in towards them! 🙂 We started taking our kids to the pumpkin patch every year since Brody was old enough to walk! We love the fun we see on our kids faces as they get to pick out their own pumpkin and play fun games together. The pumpkin carving? Well, that part always gets interesting. Brody and Paislee lose interest quickly, especially since they aren’t quite of knife wielding age yet. So the pumpkin carving usually turns into a stiff competition between both of us based on speed, skill, and who can make the most ridiculous design!
(Side note: We also almost always save the pumpkin seeds and bake them. Then we each eat like two and throw the rest away! Why? No clue!!)
Wassail!
We cannot believe that it took us so long to discover Wassail! We were first introduced to the festive drink when we were in college in Texas! Leave it to them Texans! If you aren’t familiar, Wassail is a holiday drink made by slowly simmering apple cider, oranges, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg and a whole bunch of other lovely holiday-ish spices and things to create the best smelling and tasting drink! Seriously, we love making Wassail during the holidays because the entire house smells so festive!
Here is a good recipe if you’re inspired to make it yourself!! (Link: https://ourbestbites.com/2009/10/caramel-apple-cider/)
Music
Erica is a Christmas fanatic. Big league. The Christmas season just makes something inside her click, and everything is always better! Erica also operates a lot like big box stores….she starts getting the Christmas decorations out before Thanksgiving! It’s a cardinal sin to most. Jon tried fighting it for years. But then he realized it was give in or get gone!! So…every year, our Christmas tree is up before Thanksgiving, and Jon is already tired of Jingle Bells before the local Christmas station starts broadcasting their playlists!
Crock-tober!
At the risk of sounding like all we talk about is food…fall is also the time of year where we permit ourselves to eat warm hearty crockpot meals! One of our favorites is Erica’s chili. Neither one of us are knock out cooks. We try. We try hard. But we rarely succeed, and when we do we count it as pure luck! So there is something magical about putting a bunch of ingredients in a pot, turning it on, and coming home to a warm meal! It makes us feel like we just won Master Chef every time!!
Pumpkin Spice
#PSL!!!! Well…for us, maybe not so much. We aren’t knocking it! We are just more simple coffee people, but we do love us some pumpkin spice! And nothing says ‘fall’ quite like seeing pumpkin spice everything hit the shelves! Last year, we were introduced to a new family tradition by our sweet friends in Washington! Trader Joe has a brother and he is a baker…his name is Josef. They are close pals. And Baker Josef sells some amazing pumpkin spice muffin mix in his brother’s store! You could fool us telling us that they were gluten free! They are amazing, and thanks to them, we can’t experience fall without making them with the kids!
What are some of your family’s favorite fall traditions? We’d love to know!!
Comments +