Obligatory Pumpkin Patch Post 2010

We made our annual trip to Sweet Berry Farms for some pumpkin patch action earlier in October. Our friends Stan, Melissa, and Beth joined us with their kids. Sweet Berry Farms always does such a great job setting up tons of neat photo ops and having lots of activities for the kids. It was definitely worth the long drive through the Texas hill country to get there.

Getting a picture of all 4 kids together was impossible. This was our best try.
Jack getting a piggy back ride from Grammy.
Avery getting a shoulder ride from Poppa. Do these kids ever actually walk?
Avery on a horse. That look on her face cracks me up because I know she is terrified to be on the horse but she is trying to make us think she is ok with it.
Ah. Back on solid ground. Survived the horse ride and is now daring to sit on hay.

Jack in a horse trailer.

Jack was doing the chicken dance on a picnic table.
Avery was playing "Simon Says" with Grammie and Poppa. She is very bossy when she leads games like this. I wonder where she gets that from...

Avery and Grammie on a hay ride.

Jack with Poppa on a hayride.

Holding hands. I love this one. Makes you forget all about the box of raisins they dump on the living room floor on a daily basis.

We also went to the pumpkin patch at our church earlier this month so we could buy some pumpkins for our front porch. Look, I'm not going to lie. Right now the kids don't realize that you can carve faces into pumpkins and light them up at night and I am ok with that. We buy the pumpkins, put them on the front porch, and look at them every time we go in or out of the front door. Period. There is no cutting, messy gutting of the pumpkin, or post Halloween decomposition of said pumpkin and I am perfectly fine with that. I realize the kids are going to catch on to pumpkin carving soon enough and I will happily comply when that time comes. For now, no pumpkins will be murdered on my watch.

Not pictured: Jack's shorts don't match his shirt AT ALL. He was wearing blue plaid shorts with a green stripped shirt thanks to us rushing out of the house without actually taking a look at what he was wearing.
This picture cracks me up because it sort of looks like she is trying to choke him.

She is very much into making silly faces for pictures.

Out of 7 tries, this is the best I could get of the three of them together. At least this one shows Jack's mis-matched outfit. On the plus side, it was better than Matt could do. He didn't get any of the three of us.

Last but not least, it isn't all three of us but Jack's shirt made it in the background of this one.

Apple Geek

Matt is brain-washing her already. This could get expensive. sigh.

Hanna's Sip and See

One of my good friends, Lauren, had her third baby girl in August. My friend Josh and I planned to take her to the spa rather than throw a baby shower since everyone knows that a woman with three kids needs a spa day more than just about anything else! We still plan to take her but when the opportunity to co-host a "sip and see" came up, we couldn't pass up the chance to participate in the fun. We told Lauren if she keeps having babies, we'll keep hosting showers!

Our theme for the party was "Wild about Hanna" and we decorated with animal prints all over the place. (aside: decorating Josh's house for parties is so much fun for me because he does not like it when I move his things around. He thinks we should leave everything exactly as he normally has it and try to work the party stuff around his normal arrangement. I never listen to that since I usually have a theme in mind so it is always fun to watch him grimace as I replace his things with party decorations.)

(because let's be honest, it wasn't a housewarming party for Josh, it was a baby shower for Hanna. That's two completely different looks.) (I hope.)

Here's what we came up with:
The banner was hung in 2 other places before we finally settled on this spot. Josh doesn't have a bare space on any of his walls so it was definitely a challenge finding a place to hang this. He watched me hang it and when I was all done he said, "well I guess we aren't opening those blinds at the party." grrr. (also, those stupid wooden animals held up all night and day before the party but once the party got started they kept falling down. The banner was taped to the blinds also so the words didn't fall but the stupid monkey on the left would not stay in place. I tried to re-tape it each time but I finally gave up.)

The dessert table. Yum! We had cake balls, chocolate dipped oreos, iced sugar cookies and macaroons.

Matt made the food labels for everything. Keeping with the theme, I made the chocolate dipped oreos with giraffe print on top.

The cake balls had animal print designs also. Some were giraffe print and some were zebra print. They were chocolate inside.

My Aunt Debbie and Mom helped make the table runner for the shower. We tried to go with some "animal" type food--or at least we forced the food into an animal theme. We had "Safari Sandwiches" (which are, of course, sliders from chili's), tropical fruit salsa (what? that works), chicken skewers (they skewer chicken on safari's, right?), trail mix (obviously), veggies, and fruit.

I didn't want to have a typical veggie tray so I put dip in little cups and then put some cut veggies on top of the dip. It was less messy than a regular veggie tray plus it worked well for the kids at the party.

We gave little cookies as the party favors.

Any good baby shower has a good bar. I didn't get a picture of the full bar but here are some of the mixed drinks we had for guests. We always like to serve alcohol at baby showers because we figure we are just increasing our chances at throwing another baby shower in about 9 months....

These are Hanna's sisters, Amanda and Olivia. The third girl on the right is her cousin, Reagan. They had a good time playing together (and sneaking food from the dessert table) during the party.

Hanna was passed around from person to person at the party. There was no shortage of love for her there. Plus, she is so cute that she makes it really easy to fall in love immediately.

Even Josh had a soft spot for little Hanna. (it helped that she didn't spit up on him or his furniture!)

And like all good parties at Josh's house, there was a girl with her pants down at the end. :-)

Elissa, Josh, and I all had a great time putting this together. I'm so glad Elissa suggested it because we really did enjoy getting to spend time with baby Hanna and her family.

(Of course, the spa day should be equally fun to plan. Looking forward to that time away from kids, too.)

Congratulations to Lauren and Adam on their beautiful new addition, Hanna!

Someone Misplaced August!

That's weird. While I look for August (ahem)...and maybe figure out how to catch up on a month that was filled with class reunions, a great wedding, birthday parties and more...check out the latest from Jack.

Avery's 4th Birthday Party

This year we were on vacation on Avery's birthday, which was so fun because she was able to celebrate with her cousins. She really did enjoy herself at the beach during the family celebration so it was a huge bonus to know that she still had a birthday party to attend after we returned from vacation. We combined her birthday party with her best friend, Kendel, since they were born just 7 days apart. We also figured one party for both kids would be easier on many of the guests because they are in the same class at daycare so they have many of the same friends.

Kendel and Avery both wanted to have a pool party so we combined that with an ice cream sundae theme, which worked out perfectly--messy kids could just jump in the pool! Kendel's favorite color is yellow and Avery's favorite is pink so we used those colors as the basis for everything we did with the decorations.

All-in-all I think it turned out great! We had to work around the dreaded "no hanging decorations" rule at the pool clubhouse so we couldn't decorate to the degree that I wanted to. I really hate that rule because I always have ideas of ways to really bring the theme to life but I am always held back by the threat of the loss of a deposit. "The man" gets me every time. Besides that, everything came together perfectly and all of our little guests had a great time.

A few pictures from the party (click to enlarge if you want more detail):

Avery loves to spin around in the pool when she is in a floatie. It's about as far as she goes in terms of risk taking. She won't even go down the water slide--something her brother does regularly even though he doesn't meet the height or age requirements for going down the slide yet. She has been telling us all summer that she would go down the slide at her birthday party. Turns out she meant her FIFTH birthday party, not her fourth. Tricker.

Someone gave Avery a pool gun, which is never a good idea. No one was safe from getting a face full of water when they least expected it.

After a little more than an hour we went inside the clubhouse to have ice cream sundaes. I took a few pictures while we were setting up but we didn't give ourselves much time for set-up or clean up in our rental agreement so I had to take them quickly. I always miss pictures when I do that, and this time was no exception. Hopefully I will remember this the next time I rent a place for a party and give myself plenty of time to set up. Somehow I doubt it, though.

We gave the guests little bags of chalk in the shape of ice cream cones to thank them for coming to our party.

We also made these little jars of ingredients that, when combined with ice, will make ice cream. This idea was inspired by a Christmas gift our friends Michelle and Joel gave us 2 years ago. It was a large plastic ball that you fill with a cream, sugar and vanilla and then roll around for 30 minutes. For the party, we did a variation of that with dry ingredients thanks to the great info given at The City Cradle.

Everything was covered in pink and yellow--including the chocolate and sugar coated ice cream cones.

This was the ice cream sundae bar that we set up (minus the ice cream, since it was 103 degrees and we didn't want it to melt in the 5 seconds that it took me to take the picture).

Matt made all of the labels for the ice cream bar, the stickers on our favors, the invitations and the labels on the water bottles. It's hard to see from the picture but there is a little wafer in the ice cream with a number 4 on it. He was so patient with every little detail and change I asked him to make. He really was able to take all of the images I had in my head and make them reality. I'm lucky to have him around for these kinds of things!

I made strawberry and lemon (to keep up with the yellow and pink color pattern) as well as chocolate (because it is always a party favorite) cake balls that we served in place of a large cake or cupcakes. At the 11 pm on the night before the party I decided to make the cake balls look like ice cream sundaes. I really love how cute they turned out even though it meant working on them until 2 am. Next time, I hope my "brilliant" ideas come to me at a more reasonable hour.

We covered water bottles with the same ice cream sundae design that was on all of the other labels and the birthday invitation. There was a "nutrition facts" design on the back that I failed to get a picture of. It gave looked like a nutrition label but gave birthday girl facts for both Kendel and Avery. I hate that I didn't get a picture of that since he added it for me a few days after I had promised that I was done making any changes to the labels...(did I mention he was super patient with me?!) ha.

Some of the cake balls had the number 4 on them while others had an A for Avery or K for Kendel. I put some pink and yellow roses in ice cream cones to add a little more color to the room--and to hopefully distract from the bare walls.

The kids absolutely loved going through the sundae bar and putting their own toppings on their ice cream. We had all of the ice cream scooped into large bowls before the party started so we could just pull them out of the freezer and hand them out quickly when it was time to make the sundaes. It was really helpful because it prevented the normal bottle-neck of kids waiting for ice cream to be scooped for them. There were no fits and nobody cried when they were making their ice cream. That's huge, people. HUGE.

Jack took advantage of the fact that I was busy during the party. I believe he ate 6 cake balls, which was evident later in the day when he was bouncing off the walls. He used anything possible as a drum to beat on while singing at the top of his lungs. It was cute for about 4 minutes.

Melissa and Denali shared a sundae. Not pictured: Stan who had just wiped ice cream off of Denali's chin. She clearly didn't appreciate that. I love the look she is giving her dad off camera.

Avery clearly had fun eating her sundae. I love that little smile on her face.

mmm. The cherry on top. Gotta love that part!

Kendel, on the other hand, ate only plain vanilla ice cream. No toppings at all. She's the birthday girl so she can do whatever she wants!

PRESENTS! I love how excited she is as she figures out exactly what this gift from Uncle Josh is. She loves books and now she gets to make her own. Aside: he also got her a volcano kit. I was sure that it would not be age appropriate because OMG 4 YEAR OLDS CANNOT MAKE VOLCANOES but Josh smiled as he pointed to the "4 years and up" message on the box. Gee, THAT isn't going to be messy at all! Sometimes I wonder if Josh really does like me as much as he claims he does...

Here are the birthday girls sneaking to open more presents even though I asked them to wait a few minutes. You can tell they are doing something wrong just by the look on Avery's face. I kind of love that.

This picture is a tradition for us. We have a picture of Avery with Olivia and Josh at every birthday since Avery turned one. I love that these girls are so willing to give us a cheesy smile for pictures all the time. I think we took 12 of this pose and this was the best of the group.

As you can see, Avery's sugar high lasted long after the party was over. We left the pool around 6:30 pm (and can I just give props to our sunblock?! We had been at the pool since 2:30 pm and neither kid was burned!) and I believe I took this picture around 7. Both of my kids were on such a sugar high that they didn't go to bed until well after their bedtime.

It was a ton of fun and super easy to put together. I am so glad we combined birthday parties for Kendel and Avery. We were happy to see so many friends at once and both girls were excited to share a party with her best friend.

HAPPY 4TH BIRTHDAY!