(A Very Late) Weekend in Review, Part Two

Our weekend was so busy that even after breaking it down into two parts, this will be a long post.  Unless your name is Grandma or Nana, I give you permission to stop reading here.  If your name is Grandma or Nana, you don't have to read the whole thing, but you should probably scroll through the pictures. :)

After Pat woke up, it was time to head to the pumpkin patch!  We chose this patch because we didn't want to go very far, and this is the only one we knew about within a fifteen minute drive.  A local Methodist church runs this one.  It's not very big, but they have a few cute little photo op vignettes.  Or whatever you call them.  The problem with those little set ups was that they were in full sun!  Not good for my little pasty-faced baby.  We clung tightly to the shade of the only tree in sight.  Unfortunately, this tree was in the parking lot.  I think we'll try again this weekend, but this time we'll go earlier in the morning or later in the evening.

I'll always think of this one as the picture that could have been.  Patrick hates when I put big bows on her, so to compromise, we took half the pics without her bow.  If she had her bow on and the image wasn't so dang fuzzy, I would totally frame this one.  Dadgummit.  (Whoa, when you type dadgummit, spell check highlights it.  The suggested alternative is not a very nice word!)

 We, by pure dumb luck, were at the pumpkin patch at the same time as some sweet friends from our Sunday School class.  They were kind enough to take a family picture for us.  Unfortunately, I hadn't planned to be in front of the camera.  Oh, well.  That's life!

 When we brought our pumpkin to the little tent they had set up for the volunteers, those sweet friends tried to run us off!  They were in the process of buying our pumpkin for us.  Then the man-friend (Joe, actually, but I think man-friend sounds funnier) proceeded to grab the pumpkin from me and carry it to our car.  Some people are just too nice.

We got home around two in the afternoon, which meant we needed to leave right away for our niece's princess themed birthday party.  Of course, "right away" doesn't happen very often with a four-month-old.

Since all the girls at the party were going to be dressed as princesses, I wanted Madison to do the same.  I picked out one of her "fancy" dresses.  She looked like a little flower girl!  An hour later, as we were finally walking out the door, Pat asked me one last time: "Are you sure she should wear that dress all the way there?"  I replied, for probably the sixth time in five minutes, that she would be just fine.  Not so much.  Before we turned off of our street, she screamed.  I bet they heard her at the party (which had been under way for five minutes at this point)!

 I pulled over, raced to get to the backseat, and ripped the little red faced cotton ball out of her car seat.  With Pat's help, I (still on the side of the road) pulled off her dress and changed her into a onesie.  Patrick threw the dress so far into the back of the car that when I opened the back hatch the next day, it fell out.  He was gracious enough not to say "I told you so".  Thanks for that, honey!

We only stayed at the party for about thirty minutes, but it was long enough for Madison to:

Say "Hello" to Princess Jenna,

stop and smell the roses unidentified but pretty yellow flowers,

watch the big kids play on the blow up obstacle course,

and plot her escape from Cinderella.

 We got home with just enough time to clean our house before a few friends came over to help Pat belatedly celebrate his birthday.  I baked that yellow cake, which wasn't cooled, iced, and ready to slice until about an hour and a half after everyone got there.  Instead of frosting from a can, I decided to whip up some butter cream.  I used the recipe from the same blog that gave me the chocolate butter cream recipe.  And something was WAAAAYYYY off.  The recipe called for 3 or 4 cups of powdered sugar.  We ended up using about ten (we lost count), and it was still too loose.  We only stopped at ten because we ran out of powdered sugar!

Runny icing aside, the cake was delicious.  It was gone before the last guest left (meaning at least three people had two slices!)  Having friends over at night is so nice.  With Madison down for the night, Pat and I are free to just have fun and relax.

To cap off the weekend, the Texans demolished the Oilers Titans!

Good times.
-Kelli