Signs of fall

The kids and I ran some errands late this afternoon. Some of these were taken in the parking lot of a Wachovia bank near our house,

and some of them were taken when I pulled over on the side of one my favorite streets in our neighborhood.

These are our pumpkins...after being nibbled on by squirrels. I even watched one of the little devils have a snack yesterday. I'd like it if they left our pumpkins alone...at least until they're carved, but it's hard to reason with a rodent...especially a hungry one.

Before we moved to North Carolina, I didn't think much about acorns. One of my favorite Stampin' Up! stamp sets is one with pine cones and acorns. I thought that set always made beautiful cards and scrap book pages, but I never really gave the whole acorn thing that much thought. I'm well versed in acorns now, though.

This is our swingless swing set. It's getting a bit rickety and broken, so we took the swings off of it in the hopes that we could prevent some injuries. See the trees? They're turning...

This is also our back yard. I love the red of the trees here. Aspens are gorgeous...no doubt about it. But these reds...wow. 

Acorns. Again. This is where the truck is usually parked, but a few weeks ago, I moved it because I'd heard a few of the little buggers drop. I don't really want Steven to come home from Germany and see his truck all pitted by acorns. This is directly beneath one of the walls in our bedroom and I hear them all night long, plink, plink, plinking through the tall branches of the trees and hitting the side of the house and the cement below. They're very loud, they're absolutely everywhere and they hurt your feet, even through the soles of your shoes. They're kind of a pain in the you know what, actually...but the mature oak trees sure are pretty. I guess it's a trade off.

It's been raining here since last night. It looks kind of chilly in these pictures, but at about 4:30 this afternoon when they were taken, it was 70 degrees and very humid. It's cooling down slowly, and the colors are starting to pop. I love our North Carolina autumns.