.at the adventure farm

I love the fall… I wish that when fall was over, we could just start over again with another fall… and then another one, and another one, and just skip out on all of the other seasons every year. That would be my idea of a perfect world. But ah! Where would all the leaves come from without a spring? Ok so maybe we just switch between spring and fall. Is that do-able?

One of my favorite things to do in the fall has always been corn mazes and pumpkin patches. Especially big farms that have it all in one place (plus a butt load of other things on top of that). We’ve been going to Prairie Gardens Adventure Farm every year and we love it. I see no end to this tradition in sight …unless we move away of course.

The first thing we did there this year was a hay ride around the enormous parking lot. Woo! haha

 

We took pictures of the babies with piles of pumpkins.

 

Ames went crazy for all the random toys they have scattered around the whole place. Busy busy busy little three year old he is.

Petting zoo loaded with goats of all shapes and sizes.

 

They have live music and playgrounds and beautiful yellow leaves falling everywhere.

Cute Tiana had endless fun on the swing.

I think Ames’s favorite thing was the bouncing piggy pen… haha!

 

He made it look like so much fun—Tam, Jake, and Tiana had to join in. haha

Teepees are beautiful, aren’t they?

And then we entered the corn maze…… (the kid sized one, at least)

 

Um this corn maze is easy peasy, but it really is just the perfect amount of walking through corn for me.

Then we played some more…

 

Finally our Hatch cousins showed up for our big turkey dinner picnic! (ps. this was Canadian Thanksgiving weekend) We rented a picnic site and so glad we did, it was way way fun.

Oh my goodness, so much delicious food… AND PUMPKIN PIE! (someone went a little crazy with the whipped cream)

Oh Alice, your eyes…

After we were stuffed we ran over to watch a pirate shoot pumpkins out of a cannon clear across a field at a pirate ship.

…and just like every year, Ames hated every loud banging second of it, but we forced him to watch for as long as we could. Maybe someday this anxious little guy will MAN UP!? haha joking

Here he is plugging his ears as we finally walk away.

I love little goats so much. These ones go up and down ramps to the rooftops all over the farm.

And for the grande finale of the day, we all got a treat from Air’s Mom. Yum

Thank you to Air’s family for coming with us again this year! Loved it and love you!

.eleventh month

This girl had an eventful month, but she came out alive thank goodness. Honestly for a few minutes one night I had the terrible experience of thinking she might leave us, so it is an extra wonderful thing to still have little Alice here with us.

Here’s the story—it was a Saturday night and she woke up screaming at 12:30am. I got her and she seemed hot so I took her temperature. It was 101.something so I got out the infant Tylenol and put a few ml’s in a syringe thingy. She was drinking it down like a bottle but the last little bit slipped and shot into her mouth too fast. It startled her and she made a concerned face as she stopped breathing, became unresponsive and started convulsing. I thought she was choking so I started the baby heimlich but nothing was helping so I ran downstairs with her yelling “help!”. Air and his friend Jordan were down there watching a movie, and they also tried the heimlech while I ran back upstairs and called an ambulance. I was crying so much by this time it’s ridiculous. While I was on the phone Alice finally stopped convulsing and started breathing again. She was still out of it for quite a while. Unresponsive and looking confused. The ambulance finally arrived and they checked her out, told us she seemed fine now, and it may have just been something called a febrile seizure… apparently pretty common in babies with sudden high fevers? Also turns out that Air used to get them when he was little.

Yikes.

After an experience like this I am reminded of how fragile life is and how grateful I am to Heavenly Father for protecting our family. I’m grateful for the times when I’ve seen his hand working small miracles that help us on the way. And I’m grateful for the times when I had no idea that these small miracles were happening all around us, day to day, to protect us. There is so much to fear in the world these days, but the more I experience this life, the more faith I get in the fact that God will never let us go through things that we cannot handle. And we can handle a whole lot with him by our side. I know that everything is in His hands and I just have to let go and trust Him.

These photos were taken only a day and a half after this craziness. She was still pretty sick with random fevers, but as you can see, she is an amazing little champ to be happy and smiling through it all.

     

I can’t believe her first birthday is coming up… I’m in complete denial and I don’t want to think about it. Guess I better start thinking about it soon though, otherwise she won’t have any cake or presents? Eek!

Enjoy these photos of Alice doing her most favorite thing in this world (hanging upside down):

We love her so much.

.Learys in Canada!

We had the pleasure of having my parents spend a week with us in August. We all loved having them around and wish they could’ve stayed for, like, the entire month of August instead? Maybe next time they come to Canada they’ll both be retired and stay forever. We’re hoping anyway.

Ames especially loved having them here because they brought an entire suitcase full of toys and presents just for him. What a lucky little guy.

 

The next day they came along with me on our regular boring stuff, like grocery shopping and walking to the park. But can I just tell you how much more I enjoyed this stuff with them here?? It was awesome!!

I was excited to show them our new library too. We took Ames to the “Lego at the library” day where he gets to make his own Lego creation and put it into the display at the front of the library all by himself. I helped him out a lot, but he does really obsess over Lego these days.

 

Next day we spent at West Edmonton Mall Aquarium! We went to the sea lion show and had soooo much fun.

 

This is definitely the smallest aquarium I’ve ever been to, but it’s the only one we’ve got here so we enjoyed every inch of this place.

Oh I especially loved the penguins. They were really active and funny swimming around near the kids.

 

We wandered up and down the mall to see all the crazy attractions at this huge place.

Ames and I even got to ride the carousel at Galaxy Land.

We played at another park after our day at the mall. We were happy for a warm day in the middle of a pretty cool week.

The next day we put them to work babysitting while we worked on tiling our basement bathroom shower. We’ve still got a long way to go with that project.

We had strawberry shortcake for dessert. One of our favorites around here.

On our final full day with my parents, we took them for a little walk on the Rundle Park bridge over the North Saskatchewan River. A beautiful little spot close to our home. It was cold.

That night as I prepared for the next morning of saying goodbye to my parents and watching them drive away, my heart was breaking. I couldn’t think of letting them go that easily. The only way I could think of it was if we went with them… as far as Red Deer (about 2 hours South) to the new Peters’ Drive-in. And so it was.

That milk shake sure made the goodbye easier.

Thank you for coming to Canada Mom and Dad! We sure love you and appreciate everything you do!