Fun Fall Festivities

Fall begins a very crazy, but fun and exciting time. In the past, I never really cared for this time of year, but now that we have kids, it is so much more exciting and enjoyable to experience all the little fun things that happen. It also begins my baking spree, which also means I need to be back at the gym more consistently. Between cut out cookies and pies and bread and all sorts of yummy things, I can already tell this year it is hard to say no to sweet things. We began with a single batch of pumpkin cut-out cookies, and since I still have half a bowl of frosting left, I am sure they will be followed by more soon! We made a single batch of cookies, which we only got about 22 cookies or so. They are pretty big, but the boys and Blake had fun rolling, cutting, and sprinkling, and of course eating!

Rolling out the dough

Cutting out the cookies

There they are!

A very important cookie making step: cleaning the frosting off the beatersOn go the Halloween sprinkles. This was definitley the messiest part

Nothing like black lips and teeth. Need more brushing!

Another fun activity is going to the pumpkin patch. This is a relatively new thing for me as we did not have pumpkin patches in Abu Dhabi and I had never really been to such a place until we moved here and went to Sauvie Island. This year we did a laid back approach and went to The Olsen Farm pumpkin Patch in Boring, Oregon. There was no one there, we took our time, got great pumpkins, and it is so laid back that they don't even have people attending the stand. Your just put your money in a box! The boys loved running around looking at all the pumpkins and trying to pick them all up. We are currently searching for the perfect carving patterns, so the carving event post is soon to come!

They each got to pick out a teeny tiny pumpkin. Baby pumpkins as Evan was saying.

The pumpkin field. We did not have to go out there. They bring all the pumpkins in to a smaller area and arange them by size and stand them all up in rows. Very organized, which John commeneted on.

Wandering around looking for a good one

It was a pretty hot sunny day and Evan took on this pose a lot.

Two happy pumpkins

We found some good ones!

Beaver Game

So I am finally writing a post. For awhile I did not have much to report on, and then I had a cold/sinus infection, so I did not feel like doing anything for about a week. But now, I have something to write about!

On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday morning of last weekend we had our first garage sale in seven years. I know why we wait so long because it is quite an ordeal. I was shocked that so many people came on Thursday and that it was our highest money maker day. Go figure! We got rid of a lot of stuff and it felt good to be rid of things that we just did not need. We have a few pieces of furniture that we are going to attempt to sell on Craig's List, so we will see how that goes.

This past weekend we went down to Corvallis for a Beaver game. Eli and Evan had been talking about it all week and were very excited. We got all of our Beaver colors on and packed up all of our cold weather gear, and headed out after noon. The weather was perfect, much warmer than I had been anticipating. Last year we were cold and drizzly. The sun felt good this year! We drove down with Jessica and Jerry and The Klobas's and met up with some other people from church and Nana and Baba, and some of their friends. The boys had a great time being at the game with family and good friends! And to top it off, the Beavers won by about 50 points! We got home pretty late, but the boys crashed and dreamed of Beaver football.

When we first got to the game, Evan was a bit overwhelmed, and would not smile nor be present in any pictures. This is the best we got with Nana and Baba.

After the first half of the game, Evan warmed up and was his usual self.

Beaver buddies