St. Paddy's Day at the Ran house

With St. Patrick's Day approaching, the kids' after-school program worked on building Leprechaun traps to catch the little guy. They thought it was the coolest thing ever! Well, of course we needed to build some at home too. Legend has it that the Leprechaun is the size of your thumb and he has a pot of gold to give away to the person who can catch him. But he's not easy to catch so you've got to be EXTRA prepared. The kids built a trap with gold coins to lure him in. 

 ...but they DIDN'T catch him! So close! He even left tiny footprints all over their things to show how close they were!

Even though they didn't catch him, Lucky, the Leprechaun that visits our house each year, left them some special treats (and tricks!). He left a special breakfast, complete with green milk and yummy cinnamon rolls. He also dyed the toilet water green and left donuts and a dollar for each kid! Even though they didn't catch him, they quickly forgot with all the surprises he left them! ;)

Apple picking

The yearly tradition with Oma and Opa....APPLE PICKING! It seems like we chose the hottest day of the year (not really, but it kind of felt like it) to do the most fall activity. We loaded up and headed to our normal, Paulus Orchards, for apple and a hayride this past weekend. We picked the apples kind of quickly because the bees were so bad. The kids got a kick out of the heavy duty wagon. I got a kick out of how sweet they looked in the orchard. Love those little blondies! 

After we were done picking apples, we decided to forego the hayride to play in their gigantic play land. It is normally super expensive but it happened to be teacher day, so teachers and all their dependents got in free. WOO HOO. I don't have any pictures of that portion of the day because I was too busy searching for shade to not sweat to death. :) But the kids had a blast!

Our annual tradition

Our annual tradition: 

Voting. 

Taking the kids.

Taking this photo. 

Dealing with the meltdown about the baked goods being sold on the way out. 

(All in a day's work.)

Apple picking 2014

It's that time of year for apple picking! Seth's family came this past weekend, and we did our yearly tradition of apple picking at Paulus Orchards and then dinner at Pizza Hut. Carter started soccer Saturday morning (post to come), so they were also able to catch his first day of soccer, too! It was definitely warmer than normal this year. The weather was still really nice...just pretty warm! 

Every year, I take pictures of the kids on the apple crates. Usually they have ones that say Golden Delicious (which is perfect for those little blondies!) but this year they didn't, so we just grabbed the nearest one. It will be so fun to look back on for size comparison. I remember when  Carter's legs stuck straight out! 

 

Now, we need to get crackin' to make our applesauce and who knows what else!! Yum!

Breakfast with Santa

On Saturday, we went up to my parent's house so that Seth could go hunting and Carter and I could go to Breakfast with Santa with McKenna and Eli (and my mom, Jason, and Michelle). I knew before we even went that Carter wouldn't be all oblivious and smiley like he was last year. I was fairly certain he would be a hot mess.

Case in point:

We had to give him his gift bag before we could even think of getting him close to the big guy, and he was clawing my neck as we neared him. I'm not that bad of a mom. I only snapped this one picture and quickly got him off. He stopped crying immediately, though watched him quite closely all of breakfast to make sure he didn't come too close. :)

When we got home, there was a package from Aunt Polly and Uncle Dirk for Squirt. We told him to smile for the camera and out of nowhere he said "Cheeeeese." No idea where he learned that from - we never say that to him! It was so adorable!

He was very excited about his new ornament and it will find a place on the tree that is in the "safe zone" for little boy hands. :) Thanks, Aunt Polly and Uncle Dirk!

Making cookies!

One thing we've never been super good at each year is making cookies. I'm not really good at making them, and we hardly ever eat them for more than a day or two. But this year, I was really wanting to make them with Carter, and decided to just freeze most of them to pull out here and there when needed over the next few months.

Here are a few pictures of the fun - he was so excited to watch them in the oven!

Weekend Recap

It was a busy but fun weekend. Matt, Erin, Emily, and Logan and Oma and Opa came for a visit. We did some hanging out, the guys did some work, and the girls did some shopping. Seems about right (at least from the guy's perspective). :)

On Friday, the kids did some playing outside, and we just hung out and relaxed.

Saturday morning we woke up and made pumpkin pie french toast which was super yummy. I can be skeptical of things like that sometimes, but I saw it on Pinterest and decided to give it a whirl.
After naps for the kids, we went apple picking. Aunt Polly and Uncle Dirk joined us, too. We went to Paulus Orchards in Dillsburg where we went last year. The weather was seriously gorgeous - mid 70s and sunny! We picked apples and did the obligatory photos and then headed to Pizza Hut, the yearly tradition.

Saturday night was....rough. Mr. Carter decided that he wouldn't sleep a wink and would keep the entire house awake. We didn't really know what was going on, so Oma and I stayed home from church on Sunday and took him to the doctor. Basically, it was just something viral so there was nothing they could do. He was happy and played fine during the day so after church the kids played, and then we had lunch before everyone headed out.

It was a great weekend and fun to keep the apple picking tradition going another year!

Traditions...

I'll admit it: I'm a total sap when it comes to holiday traditions. I always seem to hear people talk so much about holiday traditions. I tried to think of some that Seth and I have, and really....we don't. It's kind of depressing, but we haven't really begun much of anything as a yearly occurrence yet. Sad to say, but I've never picked apples, pumpkins, or a Christmas tree (can you believe it?!), I've never been to a corn maze, I've never fully decorated the tree with him, and since we got engaged, we've never carved a pumpkin.

Don't get me wrong...we still have fun around the holidays, but it seems like the busy-ness of the holidays, work, remodeling, traveling, etc. tend to make those traditions hard to finagle.

This year is the 2nd year in a row we did something on the same weekend as the year before, so I'm going to step out on a limb and call this a pseudo-tradition. Year three will make it official ;)

Our tradition? We made homemade applesauce! YUM!

Here are some pics from our day:








As much as it pains me to begin Christmas shopping yet (we didn't even give thanks yet!!), I'm trying to get some of it done early so that we can really spend some quality time together this holiday season.

And I think if we plan it just right, we will have time to pick a few apples (...off the ground because most are probably gone from the trees), grab a pumpkin from the field after we run through the corn maze, speed home to carve it, put it on the porch for a night, toss it in the garbage in time to go Christmas tree shopping and decorate the tree.

Phew. Maybe one at a time.

What traditions do you have??