Thankful Thursday & a Little Yee-Haw!

This Thursday I'm thankful that we're a part of a loving church family. We're really starting to feel connected there and I'm so excited about it!

Last Saturday the church had a barn party at the home of one of the members. First of all, it was a gorgeous locale. It was right along the Pine River with plenty of wide open spaces to run and play. And boy oh boy did Norah take advantage of that! Of course, I left my camera in the car and was too busy chasing the teeny tornado around to get it, but fortunately my friend Jan snapped a few. The rest you're just gonna have to imagine... sorry.

****But first this breaking news!!****

There were multiple cake walks at this barn party (of course, what's a barn party without a cake walk or twelve?). For the kids cake walk we were asked to make cupcakes and (drumroll please) I baked them. That's right folks, I may not cook - and I mean I really can't cook - but I can bake! I even got a little creative. Observe:

That's right. I mixed me up some neon frosting and went to town! I even piped on a few flowers for added effect. Sadly, on the drive to the party we lost one. We hit a bump just right and poor Orangie with the purple flower did a kamikaze move and landed head first on Mark's upholstery. Don't worry, it came out.

Now, on to the main event:

Norah's favorite part of the barn party was by far her first time ever in a bounce house. We happened to see that there was only one small child in there so we and our friends hijacked it for the babies. Jan and Jason have twin 20 month old boys. They're not really too much bigger than Norah so they were the perfect bounce house companions for her. At one point, Reed even tackled her - because that's what boys do - and she didn't so much as flinch. In fact, she was surprisingly daring in the bounce house. Man! Wish I had gotten pictures!!

Her second favorite activity, I do have a picture of. They had a little game where you toss bean bags into buckets. Well Norah thought it was great. At first she was very carefully placing the bean bags into the bucket of matching color (side note: No one demonstrated this. She matched the colors all by herself. She's either a genius or she's going to drive me crazy when she's older saying that her shoes don't match her outfit because they don't have "the same color pink" on them.). Once the boys got involved the game changed a bit. They showed her that the point of the game was, in fact, to put as many rocks from the driveway into the buckets as possible.

That's her and Kyle (Don't be fooled by the sippy cup that says "Reed". They're tricky like that.) putting rocks in the buckets as fast as their little hands can grab 'em. When I dumped the bucket out so we could eat she almost had a fit. You'd have thought she'd proven String Theory and I erased her white board (she's a genius, remember?). By the way, that's oreo on her face, not dirt. Jason was making friends with her by feeding her snacks. They next day when she saw him at church she was visibly disappointed when she realized that he had neither fritos nor mini oreos in his pockets. Sorry Jason. She's fickle.

Jan took a couple of family pictures of us to show off some of the amazing scenery. Unfortunately Norah was still upset that I'd just dumped her bucket o' rocks so she refused to display her rapidly growing collection of teeth (6 so far, by the way!).

So Happy Fall-idays, or Autumnal Equinox or Harvest or whatever, from our family to yours!