Thanksgiving (and the "after party")

This year for Thanksgiving, we were with the Ran family. It was the first time since I've been in the family that all the brothers were at Aunt Polly and Uncle Dirk's house at the same time. So things were lively and young! :) 

That evening, after Dirk and Polly's, Matt, Erin and the kids and Seth's parents came back to our house for the weekend. On Friday, we hit up Candylane together. It was chilly but not uncomfortably so, which was nice. Seth, Matt and Emily even did the new drop tower! We ended up getting on quite a few rides and having dinner there. I think the kids would have definitely stayed longer, too! 

Opa being silly on the antique car...driven by Carter! 

We had a really fun time!

"Thanksgiving" on the farm

Because we were planning to be with the Ran family for Thanksgiving this year, we had a little "couple days before Thanksgiving" day at my grandma's house the Sunday before. I made a TALL chocolate peanut butter cake which was delicious! :) I forgot to take pictures inside the house that day but we spent quite a bit of time out at the barn. 

A baby calf was born so while Pa prepped the bottle for the baby, the kids tortured the big cows with their hooting and hollering.

The kids took turns feeding the baby, and even got a ride on the quad with Uncle Seth/daddy!

Carter's first time playing soccer

Well, soccer is just about coming to an end...Carter has one more game on November 4, and then his first season is in the books. I've got to say: soccer is FUN to watch, and I thoroughly enjoyed being soccer mom (and Seth enjoyed being soccer dad) this season. He did SO well for his very first time playing; we were really impressed, actually. He was aggressive, really practiced his footwork, and developed some serious stamina. After each game, we take a picture with him holding up fingers for how many goals he scored. Gramma and Pa pay him $2 per goal, so he has to make sure to get that in the books. Plus, Gramma saves the pictures too. Here are a few of his game day pics. They're not all in the post, but you can tell he had a great time!

I actually really can't wait until the next soccer season! (Addison says she's playing, too, so I'll be a REAL soccer mom then. Good thing I already have the minivan to play the part!)

Halloween 2017

The kids had a blast for Halloween 2017 and, as always, we did a lot of activities to get plenty of use out of those costumes. HA! First,we went to our town's Halloween parade where the kids absolutely cleaned house on the candy. My goodness. :) 

Then, we went to Hersheypark in the Dark one night. It was really warm that day, so that worked perfectly with their costumes. It was so full so we didn't do anything but trick-or-treat at the park, grab a milkshake and head home. 

On Thursday, October 26, Oma came for a visit to see the kids go trick-or-treating, and to spend the night so she could attend Carter's Storybook Parade at school on Friday (I was going to be playing room mom at Addison's party at the exact same time and it broke my heart that no one was going to be there for Carter's parade). But Oma saved the day! The kids got SO much candy on our trick-or-treat night. 

On Friday, Addison had her Halloween party at school (no parade) and Carter had his Storybook Parade where they choose a character from a book and write a short report and dress like them. Carter choose the "angry boy" from Angry Dragon. It was perfect because we had everything already except the red hair spray, which we were able to grab from a local store. I thought he looked just like the character and he really got a kick out of having his hair sprayed red for the day! (My shower, on the other hand, looked like a crime scene washing it out!) 

Thanks for coming, Oma! 

Addison takes gymnastics!

Addison has desperately been wanting to take dance class, but the classes around here are all held during the day when I'm working, or fill up too fast to grab a spot. I did manage to find a studio that we could get into but the dance "season" is a full academic year...and that's a no from us. That's too long for a five year old. SO we did some digging and found out that our local Parks & Rec department does 8-week dance classes for little kids. Unfortunately, we missed the cut off for that for the fall, but they had gymnastics so we signed her up. She was THRILLED. The class meets once a week for 45 minutes and it is just perfect. Here she is in all her sweet, excited glory. She's having a blast! :) 

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!

DATE NIGHT!!

It's been a crazy month with Disney, Roxbury, home improvement and back to school, so last night, we went on a date night. We went to Millworks, one of our absolute favorite restaurants. Seriously, we've never had something bad there. It is consistently amazing. Because there are just two of us and no distractions, dinner seemed to go by kind of quick, so we headed to do some mini golfing on City Island. (I was winning big-time, but I had a downward spiral in the back 9, so Seth took the game.) We got engaged on City Island...ON this mini golf course actually, so it's always super nostalgic! YAY for date night! 

Home improvement: deck repair nightmare

You know how they say that nothing's every easy in life? This project proved that. Repeatedly. When we moved in, the back deck was made of nice materials, but the previous owners had just chosen to use multiple different looks to complete the deck. It always drove us a bit crazy but we never got around to it. Well, the one side of the deck was really starting to sag a bit by a rotting board. So, this entire project began by us thinking we'd life up the deck boards and replace that beam. (Do you hear the same laughing in your head as we now hear in ours? Sigh...)

It turns out that the board was SO rotted that it literally crumbled in Seth's hands as he touched it....and it ran the entire length of that portion of the deck. The more we stood and stared, the more we realized it would just be easier and more aesthetically pleasing to just remove that whole side of the deck. 

 Well that turned into some serious hard work for Seth, and too much processing for me. :)

Seth had to build a new step, we had to fix the sides of the deck, and we had to de-rock the entire space, which was FILLED with small and medium sized rocks. Then, we had to get top soil, of course. And grass seed. And fertilizer. And mulch. And plants. (Remember, this was to be replacing one board. HAHA)

When all was said and done, it really looked a million times better. I don't have pictures of this just yet, but we also removed the railing the entire way around the deck, too, because it was majorly ugly and it is not necessary for PA code regulations. So...gone! (Edited on November 2: the grass is still not full grown from August 20. In fact, it looks so crappy that Scott's Lawn Care gave me my money back and we may need to wait until spring to re-seed. Can anything ever be easy?!)