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.

Wow.. I’ve been home for a week and I haven’t updated this thing! There really isn’t much to say though. Here’s the rundown of my trip:

Friday. I left the house at 10am. After a quick stop at my grandma’s to kiss my babies one more time (in my head, I was convinced it was one LAST time, my fear of flying was so bad!) and we were on our way. We got to the Milwaukee airport around 2pm, but my flight wasn’t until 4pm. The Continental employee at the Check In generously put me on an earlier flight (3:00) so I wouldn’t have so long to wait. I boarded at 2:30 and was on my way to Newark, New Jersey where I would meet my connecting flight to Burlington, Vermont. The take off terrified me the first time and I seriously thought I was going to have a heart attack. However, we had barely any turbulence so I calmed down and relaxed the rest of the way there. We arrived in Newark around 5 and I waited there until 9:30. Luckily, I was hungry so I wasted a good amount of time eating and walking around the terminal. We finally boarded around 9. The trip to Burlington was through a lot of bad weather and the pilot kept saying things about lightning. There was a LOT of scary turbulence and I was freaking out to say the least!

Finally, we landed in Burlington. They made us walk from the airplane to the airport in the pouring rain. No ramp for us! I found my friend (Nikkie) and we went to collect my bag from Baggage Claims. It took like 30 minutes for it to arrive! By the time we got to her house, it was around midnight and I was exhausted so we went to bed.

Saturday. We woke up and started getting ready for her friend’s wedding which was at 2. We arrived and she introduced me to some of her close friends while we waited for the wedding to start. I began to feel like crap, sick to my stomach and light headed. By the time the ceremony was over, I could barely stand. I sat down for a bit and when I tried to get back up, my vision went black and I nearly fell down. I told her she should take me back to her house because there was no way I could make it through the reception. So I went back to her house and told her to go back to the wedding since it’d be dumb for her to babysit me when all I was going to do is sleep. Which is what I did. I slept from 3pm-11am the next day, on and off. So that was my Saturday.

Sunday. Nikkie was hungover from the night before and I was still feeling a little sick, so we sat around that morning for a little bit, watching a movie on TV. When it was over, we decided to head to McDonalds to get some food (neither of us had eaten since Friday!). I felt a bit better after that.

Later that night, we went over to her friend Sarah’s house to make stir-fry for dinner. Then Sarah had to go to Burlington for a tattoo appointment and we decided to follow. Nikkie wanted one more and I decided I wanted one too, since it was supposed to be pretty cheap for a little one. Nikkie and I ended up getting matching tattoos!

Here’s the background story about the tattoo we chose: When she came to visit me in April, we got drunk one night and ended up becoming blood sisters (you know, prick your fingers and share blood? utterly retarded, but like I said, we were drunk). So, we decided to get the Celtic knot for Sisters in the color of blood. I got mine on the inside of my wrist and she decided to put hers on her ankle. Its really pretty and was only $30! That’s really cheap.

After we left there, we went to Friendly’s for ice cream and then to the grocery store. After watching some more movies, we went to bed.