Pumpkin Patch 2014

I thought I was pretty smart this year when I suggested we go to the pumpkin patch on a Friday afternoon to avoid the huge crowds.  Well, I was right, we had the place pretty much to ourselves....the only issue was, it was freezing cold!!

Goeberts is just minutes from our house so going on the off times really is a good idea.  Especially for Abby.  She tends to be timid when it comes to new things and loud places.  There were tons of activites and areas for kids but her two favorite (by far) were this giant corn box and the pumpkin eating dinosaur (below).

We've been hearing about this dino for weeks now.  See that little red shed to the far right hand side.  Someone must control the dinosaur from in there.  Every hour this guy wakes up and starts talking and snorting smoke out his nose.  He moves up and down and side to side and will duck down to pick up one of the pumpkins laying on the ground only to smooosh it between those big white teeth of his.  Abby loved it!!!

Who am I kidding...so did Ryan.  Just look at those smiles!

The other huge hit was this giant box of corn.  Believe me when I tell you that I'm STILL finding corn kernels around the house.  Abby even had them stuck in her diaper and I found some in my Northface pocket just yesterday.  Ryan is convinced that we should build one of these instead of a sandbox.  He also thought we should make a bed out of it...yeah right!

They had TONS of animals at the pumpkin patch too.  Like two giant giraffes, a tiger, camels, lamas and all the other assorted petting zoo animals you'd normally expect.  We thought she'd have loved the animals more but the giant parrot screaming at the front door sort of scared her to start off with.  He was just a little too loud for her liking.

Oh, and I forgot...the other huge hit?  Apple cider donuts of course! You can't go to the pumpkin patch and miss out on hot cider donuts.  Abby loved them just as much as her Mommy!

1 Family x 12 (October)

I keep forgetting to hit "post" on this one...so here's our family picture for October.  It's from our bike ride on the world's coldest camping trip.  Abby was more excited about "I see da cows Mommy" than anything else....but another family picture in the books.

Annual Cousin's Camping 2014

This past weekend we went camping.  Yep, remember when it SNOWED on Saturday....that happened!  Let's back up a little bit.  Remember when we went on the best RV trip ever a few years back with some of Ryan's cousins.  Well, little did we know, we'd started an annual trip right then and there.  We didn't end up planning a trip in 2012 because, well, who knows why, but I'd guess a baby, a move and life had something to do with it...but in 2013 the cousins were back at it again.  Our 2013 trip was on one of the hottest weekends of the year so it only made sense that our 2014 trip would end up being on the first cold weekend of the season.

It was cold, but I'm super proud of our group of sticking it out and deciding that we were going to have fun rain or shine.  Abby however, was NOT convinced!

Here's the thing.  I have GREAT memories from being a kid and doing big group camping trips like this.  I think there is something to be said for getting used to being away from the TV and spending some time outdoors enjoying what's all around us.  I want Abby to grow up knowing the smell of campfire in her hair and the feeling of not wanting to crawl out of a warm sleeping bag in the morning.  I want her to appreciate that we don't need screens and toys to have fun....playing outside, building fake fires with sticks and just having the freedom of the outdoors is just as fun, if not more!

Back to the trip.  This year we ventured to the Elroy Sparta trail in western Wisconsin.  It's a 30 mile bike trail that runs along an old train track bed and includes 3 tunnels!  We stayed at the Tunnel Trail Campground which is usually exactly the type of campground that I try to steer away from (I've found that the state parks are usually the best) but it was a really beautiful place and we loved that it was right on the bike path.

Everyone arrived early Friday evening and we set up camp.  Friday night was cool but the weather held out and we stayed up late enjoying the fire and just catching up life with each other.  Saturday morning though, that was the hardest part.  Sometime during the night the rain rolled in and switched to snow.  Yes, snow.  Not a lot, but enough to put a light dusting on the cars.  Jamie/Zach and Ryan and I have campers so we were pretty snuggled in, but Brenna/Chris and Sarah/Dan were tenting it with space heaters and warm sleeping bags.  Greg/Meg bunked in our camper and I am pretty sure they didn't regret that choice one bit!

I think Dan had it the worst because he somehow didn't have a sleeping pad under him and spent the night shivering wondering just why exactly  he wasn't at home in his comfortable bed with the heat on.  He was a good sport!

Saturday morning we were all pretty slow to crawl out of bed.  Something about hearing the pitter patter of rain drops on the tents just didn't equal motivation to get up and start cooking breakfast!  Eventually though we got up and got going.  The promise of delicious egg sandwiches with fancy bacon does wonders on a cold morning.  The guys started a fire and we all huddled around keeping warm and chatting while the babies took a quick nap.  By the time the girls woke up the temperatures were raising and the sun was even peaking out every now and again.

We decided that the whole reason we came to this specific campsite was to try out the bike path so we pulled all the bikes off the cars, did a few quick repairs, pumped up a few flat tires and loaded the babies into the Burley for a bike ride.  I'd camped here as a kid and remembered the tunnels being cool and kind of scary.  I thought I remembered they were pretty dark but I didn't want to get everyone all hyped up about them and find out they were a few feet long and really not that cool.  Luckily a fellow camper came over when he saw us working on the bikes and gave us a few pointers on which way to go and confirmed that the tunnels were in fact pretty dark.  So we grabbed all the head lamps we could find and set off on an adventure.  Lucky we did!!  The tunnel we went through was over a 1/4 mile long and DARK.  Of course, somehow we missed the sign that said "WALK BIKES IN TUNNELS" so we peddled through all silently wondering if everyone else was as scared as we were.

We rode for about 15 miles with a stop off at one of the local bars.  We treated ourselves to a warm place, fried everything (curds, onions, sweet potatoes, pickles) and a few beers figuring we'd earned it after freezing our butts off outside for nearly 24 hours.  One thing I love about Wisconsin is that the local bars will NEVER disappoint.  This one for instance came stocked with its very own husband and wife team that managed and owned it.  Tessa and Chet are set to get married in just two short weeks from now with their SIX kids by their side.  We heard all about the other three business they ran including a landscaping company and a wood cutting business.  HA!!  At any rate, they had good beer and decent food and we were entertained by their stories.

After the bike ride we headed back for dinner and another cool night.  Thankfully there was no more rain after the early morning drizzle and we had an easy dinner planned (Italian beef and potatoes).  We stayed up late (and by we I mean everyone else....I went to bed early!) and drank too many beers.

Sunday morning we didn't have much planned so we cooked up breakfast, cleaned up, packed up and headed out.  By this point in our cold muddy trip Abby was pretty much over camping.  When she woke up Sunday morning she said "Mommy, I want go baK home"  Emphasis on the "K".  After hearing me say we have to eat breakfast first she revised her tag line to "Mommy, Abby eat breakfast and go baK home...ok?"  I know she loves being outside and having all the fun adults to entertain her (especially her best friend in all the world "Greggy") I think the cold, mud, and lack of any real place for her to sit down and play had gotten the best of her and she was ready to call the trip over.

1 Family x 12 (September)

We've finally decided on the "rules" for which team Abby will support when the Bears and the Pack play.  Home field gets the baby.  I was just sad that my little peanut had to support the loosing team this time around.  

Funny story - at breakfast that morning Ryan was trying to get Abby to say "Go Bears".  Her response: "Go Pack Bears".  She get's us....

Go Pack, Go!  That is all.

What's on my Kindle? - Fall Edition

You guys - I have SO MANY books I want to read...and so little time.  If I'm being honest I've read a few of these already over the last month or so and there are a few books from my Summer edition that I didn't get to...but that's the way it goes.  If I've read it already, I'll include my thoughts....if not, I'll include the synopsis from Amazon.

**I've started using Amazon Affiliate links here.  What's that mean?  Consider it my little piggy bank.  Basically, if you click on one of my links AND purchase the book, Amazon will add a few little pennies to my piggy bank at no cost to you.  Easy peasy!

The Things They Carried - This book was actually part of my high school reading list so it was a rare re-read for me.  There are so many good books in the world that I rarely go back to re-read a book.  I'd referred to this book in conversation with a friend about perspective and knew it deserved another reading.  Sad, but good.

All Fall Down - I'm reading this one as we speak.  I'm about 20% through and it seems good enough.  An easy beach read for anyone that's looking.

One Plus One - "Suppose your life sucks. A lot. Your husband has done a vanishing act, your teenage stepson is being bullied, and your math whiz daughter has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that you can’t afford to pay for. That’s Jess’s life in a nutshell—until an unexpected knight in shining armor offers to rescue them. Only Jess’s knight turns out to be Geeky Ed, the obnoxious tech millionaire whose vacation home she happens to clean. But Ed has big problems of his own, and driving the dysfunctional family to the Math Olympiad feels like his first unselfish act in ages . . . maybe ever."

The Last Time I Was Me - I've not read this one yet, but I love Cathy Lamb to the moon and back.  After reading Henry's Sisters I was hooked.  I have a feeling that this one won't disappoint.

Some Luck  - This one doesn't come out til next week but Mom and I are big into generational novels so this one looks right up my alley.  "On their farm in Denby, Iowa, Rosanna and Walter Langdon abide by time-honored values that they pass on to their five wildly different children: from Frank, the handsome, willful first born, and Joe, whose love of animals and the land sustains him, to Claire, who earns a special place in her father’s heart. 

Each chapter in Some Luck covers a single year, beginning in 1920, as American soldiers like Walter return home from World War I, and going up through the early 1950s, with the country on the cusp of enormous social and economic change. As the Langdons branch out from Iowa to both coasts of America, the personal and the historical merge seamlessly: one moment electricity is just beginning to power the farm, and the next a son is volunteering to fight the Nazis; later still, a girl you’d seen growing up now has a little girl of her own, and you discover that your laughter and your admiration for all these lives are mixing with tears.   

Some Luck delivers on everything we look for in a work of fiction. Taking us through cycles of births and deaths, passions and betrayals, among characters we come to know inside and out, it is a tour de force that stands wholly on its own. But it is also the first part of a dazzling epic trilogy—a literary adventure that will span a century in America: an astonishing feat of storytelling by a beloved writer at the height of her powers."

Forth of July Creek - Pulled this one from my former English teachers book list.  Knowing him, it's a good one.  "After trying to help Benjamin Pearl, an undernourished, nearly feral eleven-year-old boy living in the Montana wilderness, social worker Pete Snow comes face to face with the boy's profoundly disturbed father, Jeremiah. With courage and caution, Pete slowly earns a measure of trust from this paranoid survivalist itching for a final conflict that will signal the coming End Times.

But as Pete's own family spins out of control, Pearl's activities spark the full-blown interest of the F.B.I., putting Pete at the center of a massive manhunt from which no one will emerge unscathed."

Big Little Lies - "Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. She’s funny and biting, passionate, she remembers everything and forgives no one. Her ex-husband and his yogi new wife have moved into her beloved beachside community, and their daughter is in the same kindergarten class as Madeline’s youngest (how is this possible?). And to top it all off, Madeline’s teenage daughter seems to be choosing Madeline’s ex-husband over her. (How. Is. This. Possible?). 

Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare. While she may seem a bit flustered at times, who wouldn’t be, with those rambunctious twin boys? Now that the boys are starting school, Celeste and her husband look set to become the king and queen of the school parent body. But royalty often comes at a price, and Celeste is grappling with how much more she is willing to pay. 

New to town, single mom Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for the nanny. Jane is sad beyond her years and harbors secret doubts about her son. But why? While Madeline and Celeste soon take Jane under their wing, none of them realizes how the arrival of Jane and her inscrutable little boy will affect them all.

Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands and second wives, mothers and daughters, schoolyard scandal, and the dangerous little lies we tell ourselves just to survive."

We Were Liars - You guys, this one is SO GOOD.  It's written for young adults so it's a quick read and that's all I'm saying about it.  Read it...thank me later.