Pumpkin Fun!

Just a quick post with some pre-Halloween fun! 

First, Friday the girls’ school, Cannery Row Preschool, had a Halloween party (of course), so they headed off that morning dressed up.  Here’s the first look at Cinderella, and her little sister, the jack o’ lantern!  Pretty cute!

Audrey fills that jack o’ lantern costume out a little better than Laney did when she wore it!

Friday evening, we finally had a chance to carve our pumpkin!  Like everything else, Laney had to do it in a princess dress.  She was a little reluctant to touch the guts of the pumpkin, but did eventually stick her hand in there.

Finally getting the courage to stick her hand in after the seeds!

Showing me her yucky fingers!  Love the outfit!

I will fully admit that Josh did most of the work.  He asked Laney what kind of pumpkin she wanted, and she said she wanted a “scary dinosaur pumpkin.”  So, that’s what he gave her…

He did some serious carving, especially on those teeth!  But it turned out great!!

And, of course, we had to set it out on the front porch and light it, and have a little photo shoot…

Pretty cute girls we have!

Funny part of the photo shoot was when Laney said “Now can you get her off of my legs?” and started pushing Audrey off of the front step!  Guess big sister tolerance only goes so far!

One more shot of the cool pumpkin!  Pretty scary dinosaur pumpkin, if you ask me!  Laney has shown it to everyone that has come to our house since we put it out.  Guess she’s proud of it, too!

Peach Tree Farms

On the 18th I had the pleasure of going with Laney on a field trip with her daycare, Cannery Row Preschool.  2, 3, and 4-year olds on a field trip, well, that was a treat too tempting to pass up! :)

So, bright and early Monday morning, we loaded up and headed a couple miles west of Columbia to the Peach Tree Farm Pumpkin Patch.  This place had everything!  There were animals of all kids (goats, cats, donkeys, pigs, ducks, turkeys, chickens, even 2 giant catfish), a pumpkin patch (duh!), a hayride, a straw maze, a giant cornstalk horse… seriously, everything you could ask for at a pumpkin patch!  We couldn’t have asked for better weather for an October day- sunny and 70!

And, as expected, getting 20-some 2-4 year olds around all that stuff without losing anyone was, well, kinda like herding cats!  Personally, I think the pictures speak for themselves…

We started off with a group picture… (notice the kid making a break for it in the bottom right)

Laney was clearly not happy about the whole picture-taking thing.  She wasn’t sure why she couldn’t stand by me.

Everyone’s attitudes improved when it was time to pet the first goats!  Love the nametags on the back of their shirts!  Best trick ever for keeping stickers on little kids!

Pretty soon it was time for the hayride, which was lots of fun (despite many warnings about sitting on bottoms and not throwing hay)!

The hayride dropped us off at the actual pumpkin patch, and the kids got to wander around and pick out a pumpkin to take home with them!

Laney showed off her pumpkin with a decidedly fake “CHEESE!” smile… in her defense, it was very bright!

Her new obsession is picking flowers, so, of course, she couldn’t resist the big yellow ones on the pumpkin vines.  She couldn’t quite comprehend why picking all the flowers would mean no more pumpkins.  Guess that science lesson will have to wait until later…

The real tragedy happened about 5 minutes later, when she stuck the hand holding the flower too close to the goat pen and a goat ate her flower!  Talk about melt down!  Luckily, one of the other moms picked her another one… which she promptly made me hold, and which wilted to death in my pocket, goobering up everything else in there!.  Oh well… she enjoyed it while she had it! :)

Laney and her friend, Ali!  Cute little sunflowers…

Petting a goat (clearly she forgave them for the flower incident)

Showing her true colors while riding the cornstalk horse!

Looking pitiful… although not as pitiful as the kid next to her.  That kid’s gonna be an actor! :)

And, when it was time to leave, after some serious Purel action, it was time for one more attempt at a group shot…

Which Laney was still not happy about…

Despite the unhappiness during the group pictures, this really was a great time!  Totally worth the $4 (and we got to take our pumpkins home with us), and highly recommended to my Columbia mommy friends! 

CARPET!!!

WOW!  So, carpet has been a long time coming in our house.  It was an incredibly long process, and I’m gonna make you relive it with me if you want to see the pics of the new stuff!  Or, I guess you could just scroll to the bottom to see the finished product… but where’s the fun in that?! :)

We started in July by going to Home Depot and picking out some carpet.  We scheduled a measurement (it took them 2 weeks to even get to our house to measure!!), and then they gave us a bid… which was considerably more than we had planned on!  So, we stalled… and talked (ad nauseum, according to Josh)… and decided to look at some different carpet.  So we were off to Lowe’s.  We found a good carpet that came with a premium pad for considerably less than what we found at Home Depot.  And they work with a local installer, which we liked.  So we ordered the carpet, it came mid/end of September, and we picked our first free weekend, which was last weekend!  We decided to remove the old carpet ourselves, since it would cost about $400 to have it removed, and we could do it ourselves and have the city pick it up for free.  So last week we packed up all of our extra stuff.  The house looked like this:

 And there’s a refresher on what our old, grey carpet looked like, too!  Then, Thursday evening, our wonderful friends and family came over and helped us move all of our furniture out.  Dad loaned us a box trailer (he just parked it in our driveway all weekend), and everything except for the TV in the bedroom went into it (or the garage).  We spent the next couple of days sleeping on air mattresses and having to go to the garage to get our clothes (made us think twice about what we needed, ‘cause nobody wanted to make a second trip for socks!).  It was funny, because we just kind of camped out in our bedroom, since it still had the TV…

Our camp… isn’t my family cute? :)

Saturday we ran to Walmart for carpet removal necessities (utility knives, duct tape, masks, goggles, gloves… of which we only used the knives and the tape, but oh well).  We got into a rhythm pretty quickly: I cut and rolled the carpet and pad in 3-4 foot strips, taped it, and carried it out to the garage.  Josh went around the perimeter of the room and used a hammer and prybar to take off the tack strips.  It was hard work, but not difficult!  We started in the blue room, since we use it the least…

It was kinda gross how much dirt was underneath the carpet and pad… a look at our dirt pile in the living room… 

We did the two front bedrooms, then the living room, and left our bedroom for last, since the TV was still hooked up, and that was about the only good way to keep Laney from running amok in the house!  Our bedroom started to look a little rough by the time we wanted to get started on it…

About the time we were done with all of the rooms besides our’s, it was time for a nap for the girls, so we set them up in their room on a comforter, and we took a break for lunch so they could fall asleep without the pounding hammer.  They looked pretty cute in there… I am so blessed to have such flexible sleepers!

After lunch, Josh & I tackled the bedroom, and finally finished, after about 6 hours of work.  We were left with this pile of carpet in the garage:

And a house with floors like this:

We lived on those floors, with air mattresses and camp chairs, all day Sunday, which was kind of a rough day.  We just couldn’t find anything, and the floors were cold and dirty, and we’d been sleeping on air mattresses since Thursday night… everyone was a little cranky!  But we made it through to Monday morning, when the girls and I headed out and Josh stayed home to watch.  I must admit, I was pretty jealous that he got to stay home, I really wanted to.  But, he did send me some pics throughout the day, and I was quite excited to see progress being made!

Pad first… we got a pad with a moisture barrier, since our house is just on a concrete slab…

And then I was so excited to see actual carpet laid out!!

Shortly after I got home around 5:30, the carpet was all finished!  So I immediately ran around and took pictures of all of the rooms… So excited!!

Love how tiny Audrey looks in this one!

So, anyway, Monday night we had all of those same wonderful friends & family came over to help us move all of our furniture back into our house!  We’ve spent the last week organizing and unpacking all the stuff we packed, and our house finally looks back to normal! 

We absolutely LOVE it!!

Fall Fundraising!

So, obviously this is several weeks late… but we haven’t had time to stop and think lately, so better late than never! 

And I know I owe everyone a carpet update… but we also haven’t had time to stop and put our house back in order!  So, coming soon, I promise.  In the meantime… a look back!  It’s a long look, but there’s a really funny story at the end, so stick with me…

In September, we had two major fundraisers for two organizations that are very important to us!  The first was our church’s annual fish fry.  This is the 9th year we’ve been doing it, and it is a tremendous amount of work, but it is really fun and we enjoy doing it!  I am not very good at stopping to take pictures, so the pics are kind of random, but here’s a few good ones…

Hate that this one is blurry (I was learning to use a new lens), but it gives you an idea of how many people show up to help during the day!  People showed up before noon, and stayed until 9… it’s a long day!

Laney insisted on bringing her “purple puppy,” complete with pink ribbon leash.  It was pretty funny!

Eventually she got tired of carrying the puppy around, so she tied it to the trailer underneath the tent and told it to “Stay.”  Her puppy is very good at stay, and she stopped by several times to remind her to stay!  Too cute, but one FILTHY dog by the end of the night!

My dad, doing his thing!

The youth are always in charge of the games- mostly keeping the younger kids busy so that the grown ups can enjoy the Silent Auction and the Live Auction.  Laney certainly enjoyed the play-doh, painting, bounce house… she was one busy little girl!

One of the youth, helping a painter!

These girls were too cute… they moved in a pack!  One minute they were all coloring, the next they were all at the play-doh table.  Guess that mentality starts young!  This is after the rain started, and we had to move the play-doh and coloring tables inside.  All things considered, though, the rain didn’t bother us much!

So, that was the Fish Fry… always a good time, and a pretty good success- we raised over $5,000, despite having 200 fewer people (threats of ugly storms and an evening MU football game hurt our attendance). 

The weekend after the Fish Fry, we headed to Southern Illinois for the Galatia Stride & Ride.  This is an MDA fundraiser that the Price family helps put on every year, and it is a MAJOR undertaking, and a really good time!  We’ve only been two years now, but we love it!

A big part of the fundraising comes from a Silent Auction that is HUGE, and has a little bit of everything in it!

These two are the reason the Price family is so involved… my two cousins, Beau and Gabe, who both have MD. 

Beau and his Momma, Jenny:

A lovely family photo, courtesy of Charlie!  I was just trying to take a picture of Mom, Dad & Ruth and Charlie had to help.  Really, it’s kind of a telling picture of our family! :)

A random line-em-up-and-shoot-em shot…

Beau, holding Audrey…

My dad, doing his thing again! :)

One of the funniest things the whole day was watching Sam and some of the other too cool boy cousins play with Laney.  Just goes to show you that no one is too cool to have fun with a 3 year old!

And I have to say THANK YOU to Maggie, who played with Laney for a good portion of the day.  We really had a good time… except for one little incident, probably one of my more humiliating mommy moments…

So, they have a bunch of games for kids, which Laney and Maggie had been exploring all day.  Josh and I were watching one of the games, when I suddenly heard “MOOOOMMMMY” from a voice I knew was my little girl.  So, I turned around, and there is Laney, in the middle of the field full of kids’ games, with her shorts around her ankles.  She was pulling at her underwear, so I went running, thinking she had to go to the bathroom or had gone in her pants and was about to take them off.  Right as I got to her, another mom came up to me and asked “Did you see what happened?” I said no, ‘cause I hadn’t, and the mom said “Well, I guess she had to go to the bathroom because she just pulled her pants down, squatted and peed right there.  But she peed all over her shorts, so that’s why she was taking them off.”  Yeah, I was mortified… my daughter PEED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PARK SURROUNDED BY PEOPLE!!!  Oh, the humiliation… needless to say, I rushed Laney to the bathroom for a change of clothes and a nice, long discussion about asking someone where the bathroom is if you have to go, and never, NEVER peeing in the middle of a park full of people. 

Besides that one incident, we really had a great time.  We bought some fun stuff in the silent and live auction (including a handmade Saluki corn hole game that Josh wanted), and totally enjoyed spending the day with the IL family.

So, there’s the quick update on the craziness of the last two weekends of September!  I promise a carpet update will be coming as soon as the house is unpacked and straightened enough for an “after” picture!