Doughnuts. Kensington, Pumpkins & Potter Park Zoo

Grandma came to visit us and with Fall in full swing we made sure to enjoy all things Fall to the fullest while she was here! Well, except for her first full day here when we hit up the outlet mall, that was not so Fall-ish...Unless you consider shopping for shoes and clothes a Fall activity? But it was still super fun and surprisingly the girls did really well with hours of shopping. My mom and me also went to a not so Fall-ish book club that night where we ate French Bread and talked about the Scarlet Pimpernel (which apparently we were the only ones who didn't love the book).

The next day we got into genuine Fall things. We started off our morning by walking the boys to school in the crisp autumn air and then we dropped by the bakery for some yummy doughnuts!

Then after taking a little break, we headed to Kensington for another walk. Penny was super irritable for most of it, snacks and lollipops just would not persuade her to calm down, but wouldn't you know that just a few minutes before we arrived back at our van, she conked out. Despite her craziness though, I think we still managed to enjoy the beautiful Fall colors:

That night we headed to the Oak Haven Farm in Holly because with 5 acres of pumpkins we were sure to find the PERFECT pumpkins for Halloween. It did not disappoint! Before pumpkin picking though we had to take advantage of a photo opp. Too bad Tyler and Penny were to LAME to fill that one empty spot: 

With the sun in our eyes, we didn't manage to get great pictures with the pumpkins, just one cute one of Ben, but we did end up with 3 very heavy and very good looking pumpkins (30 pounds worth of pumpkins people!) and I can not wait to pull out all their guts and get carving. Ok, that is a huge exaggeration because I dislike the pumpkin gut removing, but I am excited for the final results :): 

On Friday, I let the boys ditch school and we took Grandma to Potter Park Zoo. This Zoo is in our state's capitol, Lansing, which is a long ways away but I think it was worth it. Not only was it super affordable compared to the Detroit Zoo but it was also way less crowded (as in there were only like 2 other people there) and way smaller (as in my kids were able to see the whole thing without complaining about tired feet). It was the perfect zoo for the kids and I think Grams enjoyed it too.

There are only 3 out of the 4 kids in the picture below because the eldest child tripped right before this picture was taken and managed to get a rock lodged in his hand. It was a sad story.

Penny was not very nice to Grams for most of her time here (crying at poor Grams when Tyler and I went out to dinner Friday night) she definitely has issues with pretty much everyone that is not me, but at least I managed to get this sweet picture of them at the zoo:

Grandma was the perfect kind of Grandma and bought the kids some popcorn at the zoo. Lucy laid claim to this popcorn fairly immediately:

But we also had about 3 peacock friends that wanted to lay claim to it as well and they hovered about waiting for it to fall- can you see the one behind her head? That one behind her head had some guts and tried to steal some goldfish right out of my backpack. They are sneaky things!

The lion at the zoo was by far the biggest hit with my kids. This guy got up on his rock, looked at us and then roared. Not a super loud roar but a perfectly entertaining roar. It reminded me a lot of the lion on Madagascar, like he was performing just for us. The kids thought he was absolutely hilarious! Not the best picture but it was the only one I got: 

Although this guy is probably my favorite lion:

After seeing the performing lion, and the monkeys that look way to human like and bats and snakes and penguins, and... I managed to get a great shot of Grandma with all her Hatch Grandchildren:

Such a fun day at the Zoo!