Spooner Farms

There wasn’t any school on October 14 so I took it upon myself to have a little excursion with the kids and head down to our ole favorite pumpkin patch in Sumner.  Abigail had to work in the afternoon and Carly decided to hang out with friends after cross-country practice so it was just me and my “littles”.  It was a beautiful day.

The kids were excited to do the corn maze.  The theme this year was “Welcome to the Jungle”.  We love that’s it’s a big five-acre maze with over three miles in paths.  We took our time and probably walked each bath half a dozen times – ha!  I let the kids do the navigating until the end when they’d found all the fun stations and were ready to be done.

We walked around the farm a bit afterward – check out some animals and played raced some rubber duckies

I knew we’d be able to buy pumpkins much cheaper at the nearby Winco so we headed there afterward and picked up some goodies from the bulk section as well so that Jason wouldn’t be as grumpy about “shopping”.

The day ended up being awesome and I’m so glad I decided to make it happen.  Gotta take advantage of these little opportunities before these kids get too busy to hang out with mom.

Homecoming 2019 {Oct 12}

Abigail doesn’t have a lot of boys in our area, her age that are members of the church, but there is a big group a grade younger.  Now that a lot of those boys are doing running start those two age groups have meshed together and have gotten to be good friends this year. The boys decided to ask the girls to Homecoming.  There was some back and forth about whether they would all go as a group or as dates – in the end they went as dates.  Abigail’s friend Chase asked her to be his date.  He lives in our neighborhood and they go on lots of walks late at night so Abigail can close her activity circles on her apple watch – “just friends”.  Abigail ordered a few dresses online; however, they got lost in the mail and someone ended up bringing them to our house over a month later when they found the package in their backyard.  She ended up wearing the homecoming dress she wore as a freshman which worked perfectly.

Kalli’s mom took this picture of Abigail and Kalli heading to pictures with their dates.

Of course there’s always lots and lots of photos taken before the date even gets going.  

After pictures, Abigail was part of a small group that went to dinner at a nice Italian restaurant while the rest when to a nice burger restaurant then they all met up at a trampoline place and then hung out at someone’s house. Actually going to the homecoming dance wasn’t on the agenda – so funny.  It sounds like they all had a great time and I love that Abigail has such a fun group of friends.  

Another group of girls showed up to the same place we were taking pictures at and the difference was astounding.  Abigail and her friends looked so much more confident and happy than the other girls that were dressed in revealing clothing.  Grateful for our community of like-minded families!

September Snippets

Sept 5: Beautiful fall sunset!

Sept 15: I couldn’t resist snapping this photo during sacrament meeting of Katie drawing.  Looks exactly like something I would have done at her age.

Sept 19: These throwback photos popped up in my feed this morning.  Oh, how I miss Krispy Kreme's Talk Like a Pirate Day!  Can’t beat dozens of free donuts.

Sept 21: Drew and Katie were invited to our neighbors birthday party today at DEFY – a fun trampoline place. Jacquee sent me this picture of Drew and said, “Your kids are so good!”  They had so much fun!

Sept 25: Time to replenish the pantry

Drew’s cute little art project to help his classmates get to know him better:

Sept 27:  I returned to the gym today after eight weeks of “recovery” – I could have returned earlier but with all my traveling this month I decided to hold off paying for the membership until I could attend regularly.  It was ROUGH and I only went to the second of two back-to-back classes I usually go to.  How soon the body forgets!

I was surprised to see Jason walk into the house from school this afternoon wearing this…

Apparently the annual Hawk-a-thon was today and this was how he chose to dress up for the event and for the entire day and the bus ride home.

Tonight Justin and I went to the T-Mobile employee appreciation night at T-Mobile Park to watch the Mariners play.  In addition to free admission we were also given gift cards for food.  We enjoyed our food and watched about half of the game before Justin was ready to leave.  Of course after we left the Mariners started to score and the game got more interesting.  And we missed the after game firework show.

Sept 30: We still a family that loves Chick-fil-A – especially when they’ve been so generous this year with free food promos through some locations.  Today I finally tried their new macaroni and cheese – it was very good; however, it costs more than fries so I probably won’t pay more for it very often.

Weekend in Austin, Texas {Sept 20-24}

I had five days back home between my girl’s weekend in New York and my girl’s weekend in Austin, Texas.  Austin was reuniting Sommer and I (Snoqualmie) with former Snoqualmie-ites - Camden (Atlanta) and Laura (Dallas).  The four of us communicate regularly (near daily) on Marco Polo (a video chat app).  Sommer introduced all of us to Poldark during our couple’s trip to Sunriver, Oregon in 2016.  Since then we would chat about the goings-on of Cornwall via Marco Polo.  With the last season airing this fall someone came up with the brilliant idea that we should watch the entire season together.  Camden became a PBS subscriber so that we would be able to get early access to the entire season before it airs in the US. Ironically, we planned our trip a week before we were able to get access to the episodes so Sommer’s husband Benjamin had to bootleg the season from a server in the UK.  Quite the process, but it worked!

In addition to watching 8 hours of Poldark we also had a long list of things we wanted to see in Austin and places we wanted to eat.  We rode scooters to our first breakfast in Austin – making a quick stop at a cool mural for a photo opp.  It was HOT in Austin!

We stayed at The Line hotel which is the white one just behind me in the picture above. Perfect location!  I think we spent a little time at the pool this afternoon but it was crowded since it was the weekend.

Dinner that night was a bit of a drive, but so worth it.  Justin and his Dad were very jealous that I got to eat at The Salt Lick BBQ.  It had a very cool outdoor area with tables and live music.  Loved the vibe and the food was fantastic.

We tried to catch the bats nightly flight, but lost our patience after waiting and waiting and waiting.

We attended church at a nearby University singles ward – we’re just a wee bit too old but it was convenient.  Lunch was at Hula-Hut where I had a yummy stuffed avocado.

We cooled off at Barton Springs – which wasn’t nearly as neat as we’d imagined.  What we really needed were lounge floaties for each of us.

Gourdough’s Donuts was AMAZING!  Such unique flavors.

Camden brought each of us a Austin t-shirt she’d found at Old Navy.  We wore it tonight as we enjoyed a few episodes in bed and dinner delivery from Torchy’s Tacos.

This morning we wore the cute Austin tees Laura made for us and checked out some of the fun murals in SoCo District.

Laura headed back to Dallas after breakfast – Sommer, Camden and I relaxed at the hotel pool for a few hours and then went out to dinner at Terry Blacks BBQ and scootered around the capital.  I was surprised how fun the scooters were – I had no problem riding along the busy streets of downtown on them.  They weren’t actually cheaper that it would have been for us to collectively pay for a Uber but so much more fun.

We were lucky tonight and witness the bats take flight.  Hard to take any pictures of videos of it, but very cool.  There are 1.5 million bats under Congress Bridge! 

We capped off the evening getting some ice-cream at a nearby convenience store.  We sat down on a bench to eat it and heard music coming from a nearby saloon.  It was so enjoyable we couldn’t resist going inside.  First time in a saloon.  I could have sat there for hours listening to the little two-man band playing.  This was one of my favorite memories of the weekend.    

We watched a movie back at the hotel and then we all had EARLY morning flights back home. Seriously, such a fun weekend. I consider one of my greatest blessings to be the women in my life that I’m lucky enough to call friends. These three ladies are some of my most favorite and I loved catching up with them in person.  Hopefully it isn’t another three years before we find ourselves in the same place together.