Apples, Mazes, and Pumpkins....Sounds Like Fall!

For awhile now we've been trying to get together with some of our friends who we haven't seen in awhile and a few weeks ago us mamas nailed down a date.  Then this past week we were tossing ideas back and forth and Rachel suggested we check out this farm near us.  It had a variety of activities and we figured we'd just see what was going on once we got there.

It was supposed to be in the 60s so we all showed up without jackets and it turned out to be so cold!  The wind was blowing and it was very cloudy and we all were shivering!  We decided to pick some apples and then do a corn maze.  The girls and I have never been apple picking and they really enjoyed it!  We wandered up and down a few rows picking red and green apples.  I think we ended up with Gala, Golden Delicious (which were more green than gold), and some Red Delicious apples.  The girls loved trying to pull the apples off the tree and we had a hard time grabbing the apple to check before they picked it.  They especially liked the apples way up high because Daddy had to lift them up to get them.

 

Noelle in orange, Natalie in white.

After apples we walked back to the car and stuck the apples inside.  Then we went over to wait for the hayride down to the corn maze.  The tractors were running a little slow and it was so cold!  We did get to see the pumpkin cannon fire a few times and we watched some cows mosey down to the pasture from milking.  The kids just enjoyed running around and getting dirty :)

The tractor finally came and we took a short ride to the corn maze.  This farm had two mazes.  One was one acre and one was nine acres!  We opted for the one acre one and it turned out to be pretty short.  I think we were only in there about 15 minutes but the kids seemed to enjoy it.

After the corn maze we checked out some pumpkins in the nearby patch as we waited for the tractor to come back.  Once we made it back to the car we all headed to the Greene Turtle for lunch.  We were starving!  After that the girls went home for naps and I hit up the grocery store and made sure to get ingredients for Ben's favorite, apple crisp!

The rest of the weekend was just stuff around the house like cleaning out the garage, selling our oven finally, cleaning, and working on Halloween costumes.  It was nice to stay home and just relax.  Happy October!

A Very Late Weekend Recap and Happy Halloween!

Ok so I started this post several weeks ago and then life got in the way.  Long story short, after much debate we decided to put our house on the market and look for a new home with a bigger yard for the girls and Riley.  We of course decided to do this mid-October, spent two weeks putting things in storage, fixing a few things, and staging the house to go on the market Nov. 10th.  And this was right in the middle of report card time for me, one kid was sick, conferences were coming up, my birthday was 10 days later, we had the open house, Thanksgiving, and Ben was sick too.  So we've been busy the past month with the house and trying to get everyone well and blogging fell to the way-side.  So just do me a favor and pretend it's right after Halloween, okay? :)  I'll be spending Thanksgiving weekend doing all my blog posts to get all caught up!

Happy Halloween everybody!  You know the drill by now, life is busy and chaotic and I always post stuff belatedly so here you go!

I kicked off the Halloween weekend by dressing up with my coworkers as Harry Potter!  Our PTA is doing a HP theme this year and we all LOVE Harry Potter so we dressed up as him and had so much fun waving our wands at all of the kiddos.

 

The pumpkins we created for the PTA Fall Festival...Harry Potter, Hedwig, and the Golden Snitch!

 

Me and my intern, Danielle

The girls and I kicked off the Halloween weekend with my school's PTA Fall Festival.  The PTA puts on a free festival for the kids with games, prizes, bake sale, a painted pumpkin raffle (pumpkins are created by staff members), and a trunk or treat set up out front in the bus loop.  Ben politely declined so that he could have some video game time :)

Saturday was spent cleaning and picking up around the house before heading off to a Superhero birthday party for our friend Charlie!  Natalie & Noelle enjoyed running around the backyard and swinging on the swingset.  We left the party a little early because it was past nap time and we had two cranky kids so we headed home and as soon as we got home Natalie threw up.  Sure enough she had a fever so the rest of the evening was spent trying to make her comfortable and keeping Noelle away from her...not the easiest thing to do!

I was supposed to work in the Totzone at church on Sunday but ended up cancelling to take care of our sick pumpkin.  Ben's aunt & uncle were in town fro TX so Noelle and I managed to sneak away for a bit to see them while Natalie stayed home with Ben.  Natalie was still sick Monday so she ended up not being able to go trick-or-treating for the first time which made me so so sad :(  She ended up being sick for a whole week!  Praise God that Noelle did not catch it, whatever it was.  Ben also managed to be diagnosed with bronchitis at the same time.  It was crazy!

Noelle and I went trick-or-treating to a few houses in the neighborhood.  I pulled her in the wagon, which she LOVED, and she quickly realized that taking candy from strangers was really fun, haha!  It only took her one house to realize these people were giving her things to put in her pumpkin and since the houses we went to knew her sister was home sick, they gave her double to take home and share, which really meant double for Ben and me!

We stayed out about an hour and when we got home, Noelle did not want to get out of the wagon.  We tried to take her pumpkin so she could climb out and she was NOT having it.  She threw a fit when we said it was time to go in so I guess it is safe to say she enjoyed trick-or-treating!  Once we got her inside we let her check out the candy and she chose fruit snacks to eat before bed.  Thankfully we were able to sneak her in without waking up her sister.

 

Having fun trick-or-treating!

 

The look you give when Daddy says it times to go in.

 

"Cheeeeese"

I felt so bad that I didn't get any pictures of Natalie in her costume that after she was feeling better I dressed them both up again and got some pictures for our yearly album.  I didn't want Natalie to wonder why she didn't have any Halloween  pictures some day!

 

They think saying cheese means get as close to the camera as possible.

 

How you feel when your sister has your pumpkin

 

Still won't give the pumpkin back

 

Success!

 

Happy (very belated) Halloween!