Pumpkin Picking 2015

Let's be honest... The real reason we go to the pumpkin patch to pick pumpkins is the donuts. Seriously though, their pumpkin and huckleberry donuts at this stand are amazing! And we love the name of their business: Glazed and Confused. Too bad they don't have a permanent local shop. This area is seriously lacking in good donut shops, but then again maybe that's a good thing! ;)

It's become an annual tradition for our family to visit a pumpkin patch. It's cool to see a big farm and it's always fun to see little kids trying to lift big heavy pumpkins :) This one has a big corn maze with a castle and pirate ship playground and all kinds of fun things for kids. We just let the girls do the giant slide and ride the Little Toot - a little train made out of big water barrels that just kids can ride in. It looks like so much fun I wish I could ride it too. Definitely put a smile on Lily and Sierra's faces.

Posing politely for her Dad

They had all these wheel barrels for people to use and Sierra was determined to have one of her own!

Lily had to have her own too :)

Ready for a free ride :)

Lily and her Dad

He took the rest of these photos:

They were not excited to pose for pictures, and the sun was really bright! 

But we found a few shadier spots and coerced them a little bit so we got a few cute ones.

I can't believe how grown up they look!

Time is going by way too fast!

We are so grateful for these two sweet daughters of ours!

Goldilocks and Little Red Riding Hood

Lily has known for months or longer what she wanted to be for Halloween. Sierra has been much less certain... At one point she even decided she wanted to be Little Red Riding Hood too. That would just be too tragic for Lily, and we didn't have that much red velvety material from my mom to pull it off either. So I read her a cool 3-D Goldilocks storybook we have and talked that up to her and she got excited about being Goldilocks, for a day. The next day she had other ideas, so I was determined to make her costume really cute so she'd be excited to wear it. Nothing worse than spending time making something for your kids they don't even like, and then fighting and forcing them to use it! I was determined to have a cute bear border, but I couldn't find any teddy bear print fabric (which would have made it so much easier), so I bought puffy paint and embroidery floss for the mouth and noses and painted the bears along the border. (Sometimes it's easier to just work with what you can find than look all over only to still not find it.) I only had to buy the buttons, paint, floss, and ribbon for both outfits and got the rest of the material from their Grandma's so we did pretty good on our budget! I bought some white fabric and tulle for petticoats, but several days and 2 late nights sewing I didn't get that far! They look pretty cute without it anyway. It's the girls in them that make them the cutest! Wish I had an old fashioned dress to wear!

 

 

Sierra was so star struck meeting these princesses!

This is at Lily's new dentist's office Halloween Carnival to get donations to help needy kids. I was determined to get the costumes done so they could go to this because Lily needed 2 baby teeth pulled the day before it and this event was a major distraction that helped her get through it like a super star. Such an amazing kid's dental office! Lily has had bad past experiences and had to be sedated to get any dental work done, but this time she made it through like a pro. Major milestone!!! I am so proud of my Lily girl!

A Big Ole Pile of Leaves

We went to Grandma Elsie's to jump in the leaves and raid her fabric stash for Halloween costume material. Mike brought his camera took practice shooting outdoors & got some fun shots. (I took the first 4, and the last ones of our yard)

 Mike took these:

I haven't really been getting outdoors too much except to drive the kids around and do errands, but I've sure been enjoying the nice fall weather we've been having, and all the beautiful changing colors. We've been lucky to have more sunny days than normal for here this time of year. I think it's going to be a rainy Halloween :( Boo!

These are from my back patio. The sky and trees were just so beautiful that afternoon! We don't really have the greatest yard to hang out in, it's kind of 2 side yards and we can see right over the fence out our back windows, but the neighbors yard is kind of wooded. And looking past the wires we've been seeing deer out looking for food over the fence almost every day. It's weird because we are pretty close to a big shopping area, I wouldn't expect them to come in here, but there was a whole deer family sleeping just a few yards away from our back door for almost 2 weeks! Mike's parents had a whole flock of wild turkeys our their front window this morning, & they are not exactly out in the country either. Cool happenings!

So speaking of our back yard... One of the previous owners of our house thought it would be a good idea to re-purpose the broken slabs of concrete from an old driveway they replaced as raised garden beds in the backyard. They also made a path and lined them all along the fence in an attempt to keep wild critters out (so a neighbor tells us). There was a lot of broken concrete, and it was not exactly a selling point in our minds. (So ugly) So we planned to get rid of it, but when we looked into dumping it, or hiring someone to help us we got some pretty crazy estimates of what it would cost. $5,000 to $10,000! Um, what!? We were imagining late night ditching it out the back of the car over the next year or so - because it was a lot of concrete! Maybe more than just the one driveway's worth... And it was heavy. Total back breaking work lifting even one block. But anyway, we totally lucked out and the nice neighbors who have had our girls over to their girls' birthday parties since we moved here happen to be affiliated with a concrete cutting company. Mike asked his advice and he totally offered to lend his "little" dump truck and bobcat and ended up loading it all up for us on his own time (3 loads) and taking it to a concrete dump that was much cheaper per cubic yard (since concrete is super heavy) and all we had to pay was the dump fee!! It was awesome!!! Talk about going above and beyond! He even took the gravel from the front side yard that we wanted to get rid of (Load number 4) and dumped it on his dad's gravel road. We lucked out with some pretty nice neighbors! Tried to find a before shot of the garden beds, but since I didn't like it I didn't really take any pictures of them, but you can kind of see part of one in one of the photos above. But here's the after. It's so nice to us to see it gone! Feels like a much bigger yard, and a clean slate for us to start on in the spring.

Super nice neighbor in that bobcat right there. We totally owe them!

It's so nice when some things work out!!

Oh, and a funny one to end on:

Love my little character!