Busy Weekend

We stayed busy last weekend! Daddy left early Friday morning for a tractor show and didn't return until Sunday evening, so the boys and I did some fun stuff to pass the time. Friday afternoon L and I picked N up from school and headed to a nearby town for their annual pumpkin festival. Our plan was to eat some sort of pumpkin treat (N wanted pumpkin ice cream) for our after school snack, but the tent selling those treats wasn't open yet. We got a funnel cake instead and were just as pleased with it. I splurged and ate some funnel cake (major glutenous moment!) and enjoyed it too. We bought twelve tickets to use for the carnival rides. The boys had lots of fun going around and around on the boats, motorcycles and the green caterpillar. They bounced in the pumpkin shaped bouncy house and all three of us went down the huge slide together. That was fun! I've always loved that big slide! Our former music class teacher teaches music classes and also performs at festivals. She was singing while we were there, so we watched her for a bit. All three of us sat in the firetrucks that were open before heading home for the night. We ate fast food in the car on the way home and played outdoors with the neighbors for a bit before going into the night time routine. I'm so glad I took the boys to the carnival! I was nervous to take them without D, but the crowds weren't too bad, the boys were good and we took our time doing everything. It all worked out!
Saturday morning we headed out to a nature center about 45 minutes from our house. We ate a picnic lunch on the outdoor stage, looked at all the reptiles inside the nature center building and played in the outdoor kids' area. The outdoor kids' area is so fun because it has a log cabin, a little house, a tree house, a balance beam, monkey bars, an enormous dirt hole, a sand box, a zip line, a tree swing and a big tree to climb. The kids' area wasn't busy. In fact, we had the place to ourselves most of the time. A blacksmith class was taking place while we were there and a wedding was starting as we left. There were people around, but it wasn't crowded. It was a gorgeous, memorable day!
On Sunday morning we invited Grammy and Grandpa over to celebrate Grandpa's upcoming Birthday. They came over at ten and hung out with us until after lunch. We had a really nice visit while the boys dug in our dirt pile and played with their tractors. We had an easy lunch of pizza and ate brownies for dessert. We put three candles in the brownies, one for L to blow out, one for N to blow out and one for Gpa to blow out. Singing Happy Birthday and blowing out the candles is one of L's all time favorite things to do, so we sang once, blew out the candles, relit them and blew them out again. The boys and I took it easy Sunday afternoon. Daddy was supposed to get home around 2:00, but didn't get home until 5:00, so we headed to N's school playground around 4:30. He's really been wanting to show me the new tricks he can do on the monkey bars for a while.We were really glad to see Daddy when he met us at the playground! We ate dinner, hung out and hit the hay. It sure was a busy weekend, but the boys and I had fun!