The Itsy Bitsy Spider

I really struggled with what Noah should be for Halloween this year. In the past he was a cow, and Kermit the Frog. I was at a loss for cute toddler boy costumes. I wasn't hit with any warm and fuzzy feelings while scouring all the Halloween magazines that arrived at my door starting in August. Honestly, I'm tired of firetrucks and Thomas the Train already.
 
Pretty much the only idea we had was to dress Noah up as Tucker and Tucker up as Noah. Years ago, and I mean 2003 or 2004, we dressed Tucker up as a Carolina frat boy complete with a Carolina Blue doggie polo and croakies attached to kid sized sunnies. The only thing missing was doggie Rainbows. It was pretty funy. But I couldn't find any brown dog costumes that looked like Tucker for Noah to wear.
 
I went to my go-to, Pottery Barn Kids, and picked up a costume there. I didn't love it, but Noah still looked cute. And the Editor went to The University of Richmond so... Go Spiders.

Noah is generally agreeable about clothing and wore this costume to a Halloween Playgroup Party on Tuesday and for Halloween on Wednesday. We actually didn't even talk about it before Tuesday either, so that was lucky.

Noah's hungry caterpillar treat bag is also from PBK.

He was very proud of the pumpkin he painted.

We trick-or-treated in our neighborhood with four of Noah's girlfriends. We had two wagons, which meant that one child had to take a turn walking. Surprisingly, with a group of 5 two year olds, they were pretty agreeable about sharing the wagon spots; I don't remember any tears (and we treated from 6pm to around 7:30pm). Noah was quite the gentleman and pulled his lady friends around a bit too.

 

I made some Hot Apple Cider for the parents to carry around. Sadly I didn't have any alcohol that lended itself to a cider drink. But it was good and it actually got cold (you never know in NC) so I'm glad I made it.

 

Noah was super excited to trick-or-treat and ring the bell. With a neighborhood as big, and as laced with kids as ours is, he didn't have many opportunities to ring the bell because most people had a steady stream of kids, but he handled it all really well. Even the scary houses. He said "Trick-Or-Treat" and would take 1 piece of candy. Then we would tell us what color he got, "I got a red one!" He didn't eat a single piece, and I don't think he ever realized what he was getting was edible (last year for that I'm sure). He told anyone who asked that he was "a spider web."
 
 
Hot Apple Cider Recipe (adapted from HERE)

• 12 cups apple cider
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• 3 cinnamon sticks
• 1 orange cut into 4 slices

Combine all ingredients into a crock pot, cover and cook on low for 3 hours, stirring occasionally. (I only had two hours, so I finished heating it up in a saucepan on the stove to get it piping hot).
 
 

1 Pumpkin, 2 Pumpkin, 3 Pumpkin, 4

Did we really go to 4 pumpkin patches this year? Yes, we kind of did. Our area of NC has no shortage of pumpkin patches with corn mazes, corn pits, hay rides, train rides, pony rides, tunnels, and more. And we definitely have a few favorites.

Noah with his loot.

We ended up at the first patch a little by accident. Green Acres opens at 11am on Sundays and we were looking for something to do on a beautiful Sunday morning in late September. So we decided to check it out. Noah had a lot of fun here, but honestly I didn't like this farm. You don't get a pumpkin with admission, which was $10, and we had to pay more inside for all the activities Noah wanted to do like ride the ponies and ride the train. We were able to ride the hayride with our admission price, but the tractor driver was an hour late to the farm that day.

Green Acres is Noah's dream, though. He could not wait to ride that little train, the ponies, and sit in all the 'diggers.' Though we had read enough seasonal books for him to also beg to pick out a pumpkin from the pumpkin patch so he was a bit disappointed we left without one.

Our second pumpkin excursion was almost exactly a month later, at the Museum of Life & Science Pumpkin Express. This was a lot of fun and definitely worth the $12 admission price with our museum membership. We got to ride the train out to the pumpkin field, pick a pumpkin (finally!), decorate it, and sling shot a few pumpkins. Noah even got to sit in the engineers spot before we rode the train back to the station.

Posing around hay bales proves to be awkward for us.

We actually hit up our favorite pumpkin patch twice... in two days. We had plans to go to Gaynard Hills Farm with friends and the Editor's sister on the Sunday before Halloween, but then Hurricane Sandy threatened to rain out our plans. We only had one little tiny pumpkin, we were less than a week from Halloween and this was our favorite pumpkin patch last year. I really wanted Noah to be able to go even if we got rained out on Sunday so Friday afternoon after nap, I made a quick decision that Noah and I would go by ourselves. We were disappointed to leave the Editor at home working, but we needed pumpkins and I really wanted Noah to have the experience again. So off we went and we had a lot of fun!

Lucky for us, it didn't rain all weekend, even though the forecast was pretty dreary. We were able to keep our plans with friends and family to go back to Gaynard on Sunday, making it our fourth stop. Noah had just as much (if not more) fun the second time around.

More awkward posing & this is also when I decided my hair is way too blonde.

What did we do with our pumpkins? Noah painted one on Monday when Sandy actually came through NC.

And we carved 4 of them.

 

Morning Tailgates

This year is my 10 year college graduation anniversary. For the past several years my friends and I have made a point to go to UNC's Homecoming game all together. It's a great chance to see everyone and re-connect. We actually start planning during the summer, though the date is noted as soon as the football schedule is released.

Now UNC is not really known for having an excellent football program, especially in light of all the drama surrounding the program in the last years- we don't even have Bowl eligibility this year. But usually our Homecoming game is a 3:30 game. This year, we didn't even find out the game time until 6 days before. Annoying! Adding to the annoyance was a 12:30pm game time.

At first the Editor and I were super bummed about this. But then I started thinking ... Mimosas! So this is how I put together a breakfast tailgate.

I had a few recipes up my sleeve and also used my pal Pinterest for some add ons. We started with bagels and cream cheese from Brueggar's and a Box of Joe from Dunkin Donuts. A little Bailey's and Kahlua made the perfect creamers for the coffee. The other store bought items were OJ and Champagne for Mimosa.

I made a double batch of Apple Cinnamon Scones a few days before and froze them until Saturday and just reheated them before we packed up. Somehow in my baking haze I accidentally left out the sugar! But they tasted perfect anyways. These scones are my go-to fall yumminess. Basically scones are my go-to all the time with different fruits.

Cinnamon Buns added some sweetness to the breakfast. I make Ina Garten's and really enjoy them once or twice a year. They are very sweet but as long as you don't have them all the time, it's okay. These were rolled out on Friday night.

From Pinterest I grabbed an Egg and Biscuit creation for a bit of protein. I used turkey sausage instead of bacon and they were delicious. These were actually the hit of the Tailgate. I was able to make them right before we left and keep them warm in separate tins.

And at the last minute I decided we needed a little bit of something somewhat healthy. So I found a Fall Fruit Salad on Pinterest and it was a great addition. This recipe calls for Flax Seed Oil but I omitted it because I didn't have any and it tasted great. I tossed it right before we left, though chopping fruit (or veggies for that matter) always takes much longer than I anticipate.

 

Friends brought blue Jell-) shots, a staple of our Homecoming Tailgates. We do toasts with our Jell-O shots. One of my favorite quotes of the day is a friend asking, "Tim's over 21 now, right?" Shoving a Jell-O shot towards my 17 year old brother. It will be a few more years before he's partaking in the Jell-O shots, but maybe he'll Tailgate with us as an alum one day.

We met at a free parking lot at 10:30am for our delicious breakfast and boarded a bus for the game around 12:15. We missed the first touchdowns by each team because we got to the game a little late, but we had the best time! UNC scored 50 points... and still lost the game (no defense anyone?)

Clearly I need a bigger table

 

I meant to take a few photos of my breakfast treats, but I forgot. We've got the fruit salad, scones, bagel guillotine, cinnamon buns, and some of our drinks and coffee 'creamers' in this one photo I took

So even though we could only tailgate for a short amount of time, I had fun, the food was yummy, and after the game we got to grab Noah from the babysitter and all eat dinner together at Nanataco!

A lot has changed since the early 00's and now that some of us have kids, some of us are pregnant with #2 (NOT ME!), we live in different states I look forward to Homecoming and it's always a must do Fall Activity because it brings us all together again (even though ALL of us don't end the fun at 2am anymore).

 

The Fair is Fun!

I know there are a lot of NC State Fair haters out there, but I am not one of them.  I love the Fair.  The Fair is fun, ya'll (I don't actually say ya'll ... ever.. but this sentence needs a ya'll).  I had to seriously convince the Editor to go to the Fair our first year together.  He finds it somewhat entertaining now (the people watching alone!).  I've been going since I moved to the area and have only skipped it once or twice in the past 14 years.

Last year, we quickly used up a book of 18 tickets on 3-4 rides so this year I bought two books in advance for the price of one.  I pretty much never tell Noah our after-nap plans before he actually takes a nap so the Fair was  a surprise.  We decided to wake Noah up from his nap right before 2pm.  One of the things I love most about Noah is he is ready for anything.  Even though we went to the Fair last year, I'm sure he doesn't remember.  But when I woke him from a dead sleep and said, "Do you want to go to the Fair?" He said, "Yes" without even knowing what I was talking about.  We explained there would be animals and rides and he was all in.  I was a little worried and even packed a pull-up!!  {I doubted him I know I shouldn't but he had 3, count them, 3 accidents the day before.  He had only had 4 accidents TOTAL in the 13 days since we started potty training; so more than one accident in a day was crazy to me.}  Anyways, he did not have an accident yesterday and I'm so proud of him.

So Noah is not yet 36" tall so he couldn't ride any rides alone.  One of us rode with him on everything, but we only gave the ride attendants tickets for one person (except for the Ferris Wheel in which we all had to 'pay').

 

As soon as we walked in, Noah wanted to see the animals.  So we headed to the E-Coli Barn and looked at all the barn animals.  I swear, every year they get farther and farther away from the public with more fences and cages.  I guess to prevent E-Coli!  Next Noah saw the ponies and had to ride.  Shortest $5 ride ever, but Noah loves riding the horses.

Next we headed to the Jollopy Cars.  These were a huge hit last year (Noah rode it twice last year).  And he really enjoyed it again this year.

 

Gotta love a self-portrait on a Fair ride.  Noah and I rode this Bumble Bee ride.  He wanted to ride some Elephants that flew (WDW rip-off??) but he was too short to ride it alone & I was too tall to ride it with him.  So Bees instead.

We got a bit ripped off on this ATV Jungle ride.  It was 4 tickets because it took your picture (which was not free).  I don't even know the point of this ride, but whatever.

We gave Noah a few choices as we went to some bigger rides, the slide, some motorcycles, but he chose these Bumpy Monster Trucks.  The Editor barely fit inside and the ride had a 160lb weight limit per rider.  If you know anything about the Fair, you know that only the children weigh under 160lbs - few of the parents.  After seeing some get on the ride, we figured the Editor at 180lbs was not going to be the one flattening the tires on this ride.  Noah loved it and was laughing and giggling so hard at the bumps.

 

We had walked past this creepy Circus Train earlier and Noah had to ride it.  It was all he wanted to talk about it.  So we rode it even though it was slow and boring. But he seemed to enjoy it anyways.

We ate some dinner; which at the Fair means anything thing on a stick goes!  And then headed for the Carousel and Ferris Wheel.  There are two Carousels and we were near the one Noah was too short to ride; which was lucky for us because we only had enough tickets left for the Ferris Wheel. 

The line was pretty short for the Ferris Wheel (only had to wait one rotation) and we were lucky enough to see a real train go by across the street from the Fair Grounds.

 

Last but not least, you have to get something Deep Fried at the Fair- candy bar, Twinkie, cheese, pickles, ice cream.  This year we opted for Deep Fried Girl Scout Cookies- Samona's! They were yummy and must better than the Snickers bar.  The Snickers just turned to goo, but the Samona's kept their form.  A big hit!  

Of course, when we got back to the car and had Noah tell his Lovey, Burpie (who was waiting for him) all about the Fair he yelled (hopped up on sugar) "Ride the Carousel? NO!!!!"  Guess he is really hung up on that even though he rode a ton of other stuff.  I see a Pullen Park trip in our future to get the carousel out of his system.