This past week, my mother-in-law stopped by wanting to know if we’d go to the pumpkin patch with her. My friend Crystal was over, so it was quite a full car with two carseats and three adults! We headed to Ontario to an Amish farm. There we got about a dozen pumpkins, half big and half tiny (baby pumpkins, Mariah says). Gabriel enjoyed crawling amongst the piles of pumpkins while Mariah chased after a puppy. When we finished there, we headed to the Bent ‘n’ Dent where I found two awesome sippy cups for Mariah for a $1.00 a piece. One of them is goblet-style and the bottom has a Dora in a snow globe. The other is a regular sippy cup but you can stick a colored picture in the inside of it. Mariah loves coloring photos to decorate her cup with. Then we went to Linda’s so Mariah could see her grandpa for a bit. She fed the cows plenty of apples, one of her favorite things to do.

After that, we headed to Jollivette Family Farms to get some apples. I also grabbed Peach Butter, caramel for the apples, peppers, nectarines and some frosted pretzels. Two days after that, Linda taught me how to make apple crisp from scratch. It was actually a lot easier than I thought it’d be! And delicious. I can’t wait to try my hand at peach crisp next. For some reason, I’m just in the mood to bake lately. I want to make cookies, crisps, cakes, you name it. Must be the holiday season that’s approaching…

If anyone has any good baking recipes (especially holiday-themed ones) send them my way!

Here’s some photos from the day:

More here.

Ian and I had a pretty good holiday weekend. We had arranged to go camping, but I originally thought we were leaving Friday and coming home Sunday. Well, Ian called me Thursday night from his friend’s house and was like, “Are you ready to go?” I was so confused, all I could say was, “Uh.. go where?” Apparently, he wanted to leave THURSDAY and return home Saturday. Fine by me, but I didn’t have a babysitter for Thursday since I thought we’d be home all night. Luckily, his mom stopped by since she was in town and she agreed to take the kids with her and my mom would pick them up at her house the next morning. By that time, it was 8:30pm and Ian and I had to scramble to get everything ready. Ian started throwing coolers together (one seperate one JUST for alcohol!) and I hurried up and packed some clothes. Then we rushed off to Wal-Mart to buy a tent, flashlights and some Coke for my Bacardi.

By the time we got to the campsite it was nearly 10:00pm, so Ian and his friend had to set up the tent in the dark! They actually did it pretty quickly, too. Much quicker than I ever could anyway. After pumping up the air mattress and dropping our supplies in the tent, it was probably about 11:30, so we (Danny, Matt, AJ, Meghan, Ian and me) just sat around talking for awhile. We crashed pretty early that night.

Friday everyone was awake by 9 and we set about getting breakfast ready. It was then that we discovered how horrible we were at preparing for a weekend in the woods. By the time breakfast was done, we had a HUGE list of things we needed. The boys headed back to town while Meghan and I chilled at the site. After awhile, we got bored and decided to gather firewood. That kept us busy until the boys returned. The rest of the day, we just hung out and drank and talked. Later that night, Meghan and her son went home since she had to work at 6 the next morning. AJ decided to go home and join her a couple hours after that, so we were down to just the four of us.

We ended up just sitting around the table playing drinking games with shots of whiskey and rum. The boys were trying to outdo each other and ended up going through TWO bottles of whiskey. One of them even passed out at the table and slept there the entire night. Another slept on the ground. Lucky for Ian, I bullied him in to the tent, otherwise I’m sure he would have been sleeping outside SOMEwhere.

Saturday, we packed up and were home by noon. Mariah was camping at a different camp site with my dad and other relatives so we decided to head out there. Well, they had a kickball tournament going on and Ian and Chris (my brother) just HAD to enter it. Imagine a 26 year old and a 23 year old playing kickball with a bunch of kids! It was hilarious. After three games, we headed back to the site. We ended up staying until about 10 that night. Mariah was going to spend that night with my dad but decided to come home at the last minute. She was sleeping before we were a few miles down the road. Once we got home, we all crashed into bed.

Sunday we went to Ian’s parent’s house to hang out and visit them. My friend Rachel just returned from her Amsterdam trip and since I hadn’t seen her yet, she cruised over. We played some Phase 10 for awhile, then headed over to my mother-in-law’s pool. Gabriel LOVED the water and was content to just sit in his infant float and drift along. Mariah also got in for awhile, while means she’s finally getting over her fear of it. I would have loved to get in, but unfortunately its the wrong time of the month.

Blah. So today I have a bunch of things to put away and WHOLE lot of cleaning to do. Ian’s working up north this week so I probably won’t see him until Friday which REALLY sucks because I already miss him. Sleeping alone tonight is going to be hard.

What did you do for the 4th?