Saturday in Falls Church

We started the day off with a trip out to the Falls Church farmer's market. With summer over, there weren't many tomatoes, but we saw at least a dozen varieties of apples and pears, tot soi greens (look it up, I had to), and these beautiful squash blossoms. For dinner, I stuffed them with homemade ricotta and some leftover pulled pork, then dipped them in a light batter and fried them. Jake didn't like them, but Ali and I fought over his leave-behinds. They were awesome.

After the farmer's market, we played on the playground and went on a "spooky adventure" in the woods (Jake is already in Halloween mode), and then went over to the Father & Son Barbershop for Jake's haircut. It's still one of my favorite images of Jake. He takes it very seriously and sits very still, but every once in a while sends a little smile your way to let you know he's ok.

It wasn't quite naptime, and everybody was hungry, so we went over to Elevation Burger for lunch. We hadn't been there in a long time. It's a really bright, cheery counter-service restaurant, but last time we went the burgers just weren't that great. They used to advertise that they used some kind of "kobe" beef, but now they just say it's beef from "grass-fed free range" cows and they tasted much better. Plus, they have three different kinds of root beer so Jake loves it. This may be a new regular spot for us.

On our way to Elevation Burger, we saw signs for the Falls Church Obama/Biden headquarters. I pulled in and picked up a lawn sign. We aren't lawn sign people, but our neighbors recently put up a big McCain/Palin sign that stares at us every day. I couldn't let them claim the whole cul-de-sac for McCain and the hockey mom. But the funny thing is, when we got home from lunch we saw that our other cul-de-sac neighbors had put up an Obama sign. So now the cul-de-sac is 67 percent Obama.