Apple Orchard... Er, Pumpkin Patch Fun

So last weekend we decided to (finally!) head to the apple orchard that we've visited the past handful of years. William was super excited to pick apples because he remembered doing that on our trip to Omaha. We were all set for a fun Saturday morning... Until we got to the orchard and they informed us that there were no longer apples on the trees. Rant: Admittedly, I had worried that might be the case--it was pretty late in the season and we'd already had a mild frost. But, I had diligently been checking the website and Facebook page for the orchard, and there had been NOTHING to indicate that the apple-picking season was over. I heard at least five other groups go up to the counter asking for apple bags as well, so we weren't the only ones who thought apples would still be available to pick. Needless to say, I was not impressed by the lack of updates (especially for poor William's sake), plus the person behind the counter informing people that there were no apples to pick had really bad customer service about the whole ordeal. Majorly soured our morning. Rant over.

Fortunately, the same orchard had a few pumpkin patches, with plenty of pumpkins still to choose from. William enjoyed picking out a pumpkin for himself and a pumpkin for Garrett (and then didn't notice when we swapped one of them for one that didn't have a hole in the bottom), plus we were still able to take a short ride on the tractor, so the morning wasn't a total bust. He did have a minor meltdown when we left and kept asking "Where apples go?", which made Darrell and I feel really guilty. Darrell did spot a tree with apples as we were driving away, so he jumped out of the car and pulled one down for William to eat on the way home, which seemed to be more than enough to make him happy. Plus, once we got home, we had the added fun of decorating the pumpkins!

It wasn't exactly the day we had envisioned, and it definitely took a conscious effort on our part not to let the incident at the orchard ruin our whole day, but I'm proud to say we all went to bed Saturday night feeling pretty darn content. And I even remembered to take (a few) pictures!

Doing our best to enjoy the chilly tractor ride

Tried to get a decent picture of the boys at the little photo staging area. There's always next year, right?

All that remained of the apple Darrell grabbed for William. Needless to say, he most the most out of the one apple he got

William painting his pumpkin

Daddy decorating Garrett's pumpkin

Token photo of Garrett with his pumpkin

The finished products! (I'll take all the credit for the ideas--Darrell gets all the credit for the execution. We make a pretty good team.)

Note: Wordless Wednesday is on temporary hiatus until further notice. My phone and iPad have decided to stop wirelessly communicating with Blogger, which means that in order to get photos for the posts I'd actually have to (gasp!) hook my devices up using their USB cords. Momma ain't got time for that every week, so until I get the problem fixed I have no easy way to access my photos (plus I've been majorly slacking on taking pictures anyway). But I'll try not to let that keep me from posting altogether--and who knows, maybe this will inspire me to pull out our actual cameras more and take "real" pictures!

Ten Years

Ten years ago, Darrell asked me to be his girlfriend. It's probably one of the best things I've ever said "yes" to (behind, of course, to saying "yes" when he proposed). My roommate was pretty surprised; I'd spent the majority of my freshman year of college hung up on my high school boyfriend (who I broke up with because I didn't want to do a long-distance relationship), and had subsequently turned down a handful of other potential boyfriends because they also had the potential to turn into long-distance relationships. Dating a senior (who I barely knew) who had plans to return to his home state of North Carolina after graduation didn't exactly promise safety from a long-distance relationship. When my roommate (rightfully) questioned my decision, I told her that I had decided I was done worrying about the long-term prospects of potential boyfriends: Darrell made me happy and we had fun together, and as long as that remained the case I didn't see any reason not to be his girlfriend. I think it's safe to say he still makes me plenty happy and we still have plenty of fun together.

And--just for fun--here's our little story of how we went from barely knowing each other to boyfriend/girlfriend in a matter of weeks.

Sometime in early October, the dorm we lived in (called a "Manor"--it had two floors, boys downstairs and girls upstairs, with a common area in the middle) had a house meeting.

Ernst Manor 2005--Where the magic began

I knew of Darrell; my roommate knew his roommate and she had told me one time that "Phil's roommate is pretty cute but he's too short for me", but that was about it. Well, at the meeting it came up that I played soccer, which caused Darrell and me to strike up a conversation because he had played soccer in high school. Either at that meeting or sometime later in passing, I mentioned that we had a home soccer game coming up Homecoming weekend (October 15th) and that he should come. And he did.

Thankfully for both of us, he disappeared before the end of the game--which meant I never knew (until awhile later) what he and Phil ended up doing that night for Homecoming, and he never knew (until much later) that the people he had assumed were my dad and two brothers at the game were actually my dad, brother, and high school boyfriend.


The next ten days were a whirlwind of flirting opportunities. There were evenings goofing off in the manor, a manor Halloween party which consisted of carving pumpkins and watching Donnie Darko (during which people may have conspired to ensure Darrell and I were seated next to each other), decorating for the annual Haunted Manors, and a prank war that Darrell started against me and my roommate.

We were about all things Nerf in Ernst Manor

Pumpkin carving fun

Darrell working on his masterpiece

Acting like the monkey he is to hang spider webs for the Haunted Manor



My roommate and I swapped (some of) the furniture in Phil and Darrell's room with the furniture in the lounge to retaliate for the war they started

 On the evening of October 25th, the Charlie Brown Halloween special aired and Darrell made me watch it with him because I had never seen it. After it finished, Darrell went back to his dorm room so I could finish a lab report that was due the next morning. A short while later he came back up to my room, visibly shaken. He had just found out that a high school classmate of his had been killed overseas. We chatted for a little bit, but then he left again because he knew I needed to finish my homework. After a little bit, I sent his roommate a message via AOL instant messenger (ah, the good old days of instant messenger) to see how Darrell was doing. His roommate was confused about my concern; apparently Darrell hadn't shared the news with him and had instead simply grabbed a jacket and left the manor. Concerned, I decided to go looking for him (which Darrell claims I was motivated to do because I had feelings for him; I maintain that I would have done the same for anyone who I didn't think should be alone at the time). It was easy to determine that he hadn't gone far--his was the only NC car in the parking lot--so I hopped on my bike and started riding around campus. It didn't take too long to find him (Wartburg is a pretty small school), and after walking around campus for a little bit we walked back to my dorm room where we hung out for a little while longer before Darrell asked me to be his girlfriend (and it was technically after midnight by that time, but because we hadn't slept yet, we didn't see it as being the next day yet, so we've always celebrated our "anniversary" on the 25th).

Ten years seems like a long time, but it also feels like it has gone by incredibly fast. I look back at those pictures and feel like we have changed so much, but then in some ways I feel like we haven't changed at all. Except instead of being two college kids who are constantly goofing around and having a good time, we are parents who get to share that wild craziness with their two boys. It's a pretty darn good life I have.

Weekending, Minneapolis Style

So I know it makes more sense to do my weekend recap at the beginning of the week and not the end of it, but hey--at least I'm getting it up before the next weekend starts (although not by much!)

We headed up to the great city of Minneapolis this past weekend, pretty much for no other reason than we could. When people asked why we were up there (which was just about everyone--apparently people with two kids can't just travel for the fun of it), we said it was to visit a friend who recently had a baby. While that was definitely a big motivator for making the trip--as was visiting the other family and friends we have in the Cities, it certainly wasn't the whole reason. Similar to our Omaha trip a few weeks ago, I mostly wanted to travel just for the sake of traveling. Just to prove--if to no one but ourselves--that we could still do (not-so-spontaneous) weekend trips with two kids. And I'm so glad we did, because we had such a wonderful--and yes, even relaxing--weekend.

Pretty much the only thing we actually had scheduled all weekend was head to Como Lake to meet up with our friends and their newborn for a walk. And while we failed to take any pictures of them and their sweet baby girl, we did have some fun snapping some photos of our boys enjoying the fall leaves.

We stayed with my aunt and uncle (who graciously watched the boys Saturday night so we could meet up with some friends for a drink!), and William was in heaven. He is all about trains right now, and was soooo excited to get their train set up (and Daddy may have had just a little bit of fun setting it up). Pretty much every waking moment at their house was spent playing with the trains--and even today he's still asking to go to Tom and Rose's to watch the trains more.

Wordless Wednesday

Garrett: Eight Months!

Height/Weight: Nothing official. Knock on wood, we haven't needed any appointments except for well visits, and our next one isn't until nine months.

Wearing: 6-9 month clothes with a few 12 month items slowing creeping in. Still in size three diapers.

Eating: Everything he can as often as we'll let him. Can't believe I ever thought we were going to have issues with this one and solid food. New purees this month: banana, oatmeal, carrot, apple, zucchini, green beans, and peach. Carrot is a little hit or miss, otherwise he pretty much gobbles it all up. We've tried a few foods as finger foods as well (avocado, banana), and he does pretty well with those. He's also still nursing, although mostly between the hours of 7 pm and 7 am. Super fun.

Sleep: Let's just say that I'm discovering that I can function on far less sleep than I previously thought I needed. Not surprisingly, I'm also discovering that with the right amount of coffee, I can pretty much do anything. I should probably warn our doctor to block off extra time for Garrett's well visit next month, because if things don't improve significantly in this category, you can bet I'm going to be talking his ears off about the lack of sleep happening in this house. Because I need answers. And suggestions of new things to try. And something--anything--that will get my child to sleep more than three hours at a time. For the most part, naps are actually going pretty well, so I keep holding out hope that nighttime sleep will fall into place as well, but so far, no such luck on that.

Likes: Moving. Eating solids. William, Mommy, Daddy (usually in that order). Being outside. Bath time. Putting whatever he can find into his mouth. Abusing Mommy (Pulling my hair. Tugging on my earrings. Sticking his fingers in my mouth and nose).

Dislikes: Being told no. Actually, to be fair, he seems to think being told "no" is funny and always gives us the cutest little smirk. But when we move him away from whatever he is not supposed to be getting in to, man oh man does he pitch a fit. I don't remember William throwing tantrums this early, but that is definitely what Garrett does. He will throw himself backwards (which has caused him to smack his head on the wall on more than one occasion), arch his back, lay on the floor, and scream. Good times.

Firsts: This section could alternately be titled "Reasons Why We Did Not Get Any Sleep This Month". Since my last update, Garrett has gone from army crawling to inchworm crawling to hands and knees crawling--and he's crazy fast. He can get himself to a seated position from his stomach or any crawling position. He pulls himself up on everything (which required lowering his crib at 830 one night). He can walk using push toys. He can even climb up the stairs. Additionally, he cut his two bottom middle teeth and got his first cold. So even though he is (logically) tiring himself out by constantly being on the move, he hasn't been sleeping soundly at night due to other discomforts (at least that's my current theory).

It's been a trying month at best, but just when I think I'm at the end of my rope, Garrett flashes the biggest smile and babbles the cutest story to me, and I think of just how lucky we are to have him in our family. I certainly wouldn't complain about getting a little more sleep, but at least he is (usually!) adorably cuddly and snuggly at night (which NEVER happens during the day), so I'm trying my best to enjoy this stage of his life and not wish it away.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

#HarrisburgStrong

On Wednesday there was a shots fired incident at the school I used to work at. I've debated whether or not I even want to write this post, because honestly, having not been at the school when the incident happened, I don't really feel qualified to talk about it (and I can't even begin to imagine what kind of emotions the students and staff must be going through). I know little more than what has been released via the major news outlets--and what additional information I do know I'm not really in a position to share.

What I do know is that the assistant principal, who tackled the shooter, and the activities director, who helped hold him down, are well-deserving of the "hero" title they have been given. I do know that the principal, who suffered a flesh wound to his arm, will not let this incident define the school or change the way he leads his staff and students. I do know that the counselors, who probably never thought they'd have to deal with an incident like this, will provide exceptional care and guidance to all those who are struggling to process the incident. I do know that the staff, who have always been an amazing tight-knit bunch (and who made my decision to leave and stay at home a difficult one), will not only continue to be there for and support one another, but they will also continue to provide that support to their students, in addition to giving them an exemplary education.

No one in Harrisburg asked for a situation like this. And I'm sure no one quite knows exactly how to handle it and move forward from it. But I do know that they will come out of this incident as a stronger community than they have ever been.

Wordless... Thursday?

After forgetting to post last week (although admittedly, I don't think I had any pictures to share...), I was determined not to bypass this week as well. So even though it isn't actually Wednesday anymore, better late than never, right?