My Favorite Time of Year

Welcome to October--my favorite time of year. A lot of people feel the need to clean house and get the new hairdo/makeover in spring, but I get that urge in the fall. I love fall. I have a lot of great fall memories from childhood through the present.
I remember being a little girl and going to pick apples with my parents and grandparents. Then, for the next few days, our kitchen table would be covered in newspapers and apple peels, while Mom and Dad sat at the table, peeling and cutting apples for Mom's homemade applesauce. They would also move the little black and white tv into the kitchen. The kitchen was really warm, and on the stove was a big pot cooking the apples into applesauce, and an enormous kettle of boiling water for canning. I don't know how many quarts of applesauce were made, but I knew it was a lot. I remember breezing into the kitchen and eating long strands of apple peels and snitching a few slices as well. I love that memory.
Still later, I remember my best friend and I would have leaf rides in the wagon. We'd fill the wagon with leaves, and pull each other around, throwing leaves out along the way (how this must have upset some of our retiree-neighbors who kept their lawns leaf-free!). Then we'd take the leaves and make "blueprint" outlines of houses, and play house in them. They were pretty elaborate, too. Some had bay windows and some had closets.
In high school, fall meant school, volleyball for a bit, then later the fall musical.
College in the fall meant football (Go MU Tigers!), and homecoming, which I was only really involved with my freshman year. I drew the lifesize Calvin and Hobbes which got our dorm 1st prize for house decks and on the news! But more importantly, homecoming was the actual coming home. Driving home in the fall colors, rounding the corner of my neighborhood the trees were beautiful, and I always arrived home for dinner Friday night.
Today as an adult, fall means the windows are open, apple picking and pumpkin patch with my own kids, cozy nights by our outdoor firepit or inside with game or show, lots of playing outside, and it's capped off with our annual Halloween chili dinner/bonfire with a few of our neighbors. It's these fun activities and this time of year that make fall a perfect time of year. I hope someday my kids will look back and remember this time of year fondly, too.