Monday, October 31, 2011

Maris Farms

We always like to go to a new Pumpkin Patch or farm each year.  This year we chose to go to Maris Farms in Buckley.  I'm so glad we did.  It was gorgeous country and the farm was really set up like a little carnival.  This was a fun treat for the kids this year. 


Cutest thing... they have these elevated goat walks and you can put food into a cup and hoist it up to feed them.

Monster Truck rides.  Fastest fifteen dollars we've ever spent!

Not sure if you can see the cow target off in the distance, but Luke had one shot and hit it dead on!

The Mine Shaft Slide

Luke was the obvious winner against Wes!


Funnel Cakes and Grilled Corn on the Cob... delish!

Off to choose pumpkins... pickins' were pretty slim.

We stuck with our tradition... you must be able to pick it up and carry it.  If you can't, we don't buy it!

Beautiful day with family.





Another Pinterest Project...

I've recently posted about my love of Pinterest.  It is so easy just to keep pinning amazing recipes, crafts and other ideas, so I'm really attempting to try some of these things out.  Here's my latest craft that my Cub Scouts completed.  I thought these Googly Eyed Halloween Frames turned out so cute!


 

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Happy Birthday Miss Hayley!

I'm playing a little catch-up on a few events that occurred in October!  I guess working more hours at my job in addition to coaching JV swimming at the local high school really took a toll on me.  Well, I could not let the month pass by without documenting Hayley's 14th birthday.  Because I was so busy, and the fact that we are trying to watch our pennies lately, I had been trying to convince her to just have a family birthday celebration.  She was a good sport and went along with the idea, but I knew that deep down she really wanted to have a party with a few of her friends so I decided to try to pull off a surprise party.  It was awesome and she was definitely surprised and overwhelmed with emotion!  Here are some pics that captured the evening.
We went to the local Japanese restaurant for what she thought was just going to be our family birthday celebration.  Here she is doing the birthday dance while the wait staff was singing and banging the drums.

Once dinner ended it was still too early to go home, so we walked down to the local coffee house for her B-I-G gift.  She has been wanting a really nice camera and we were able to get one at a steal (she contributed for half of it)!

The look of surprise when she realized what she just got!

She was so overwhelmed that the tears started a few seconds later... :)

Cute pic of the kiddos.

Once we got home we sent Hayley upstairs.  Half of her friends were hiding in her closet waiting to jump out and surprise her.  She looks like she's upset in this photo, but really she was just crying from happiness (her words...).  She truly didn't expect anything after her family dinner celebration.

Then she went into another room and the rest of her friends jumped out and surprised her again!  So, there were more tears of joy from Miss Hay...

Sarah, Matt, Maddi, Harrison, Maddy, Hailey, Gabby, Hayley, and Savannah

Blowing out her birthday candles.  The cake was another surprise for her.  She had been asking me a few days prior to her birthday what kind of cake I was going to make her and I asked her if she'd mind if we just picked up an ice cream cake.  I usually always make homemade cakes, so I knew she was disappointed at my response, but she was trying to roll with it because she knew that I had been so busy.  She loved the rainbow layer cake!  Anyway, the evening was full of surprises and her 14th birthday will be one that she won't soon forget!

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Life is very Pinteresting!

I hesitate to use the word 'addicted', but I think I may have to in the case of Pinterest! I love, love, love it! Check out my Pinterest page to find out more about it. Anyway, there are so many creative and amazing ideas on Pinterest (and out in the blogging world)! Usually I just ooh and ahh at all of the ideas and creations, but I've decided to start trying to tackle a few. The first one that I did was the Rainbow Cake in honor of Hayley's 14th birthday.

I only had to use two cake mixes and I divided each of those up into three seperate cakes.
Each layer is quite thin.
Isn't it so pretty!?

I used some rainbow colored Sprees for a super simple decoration.

So fun, right?!!


Hayley had no idea what she was cutting into! She was so surprised!