Okay so this last weekend was soo much fun! I had offered a little while back to bake a cake (duh!) for my cousins daughter and I was so excited to do it. I just love seeing the joy on their face when they see a super special cake made just for them. Not one you can pick out of a magazine, not one that any other kid will ever have EVER and it just melts me. Completely and utterly melts me! Sophie turned 3 and her theme was Dora, I had fun with this as lately I have only baked cakes for all the little men in my life. A little bit different to use pinks and purples and such! So excited. We showed up a little bit early, there were lots of folks there and it was just a good time with good company. The kids had a blast but we did have to leave early as we already had some plans that evening as well. Not to mention I was exhausted and had I sat for my longer at my cousins I would have surely passed out for 3 days. No joke. I was up baking that cake until 4:41 in the morning...but it was all worth it and have I ever told you that rest is overrated anyways. I don't know that I believe that but with all the plans I have scheduled all the time I bet I sure have you guys fooled! Either way the party was a blast, we missed the pinata hitting, present opening and we missed my other cousin who showed up just as we left but it was a blast either way!!!
So we all know Carina just turned 12 and for those of you who didn't know Lauren was out of the country for a couple weeks and this included during Carina's bday weekend. So to make up for it we took Carina to the City to celebrate and have some fun! We walked around China Town and we also went to Little Italy for some fun and desserts. It was great. We did a lot but the few hilarious moments were...
1. Walking next to alleys in the dark and making sure that Carina got sufficiently freaked out.
2. Handing homeless guys money and having them mumble under their breath at us
3. Watching a taxi driver get punched
4. Taking mine and Carina's first ride on public transportation
And to just get to the meat of things, here are the few pics from the night!!!
After our night in the city we decided we did not have just enough jam packed into our weekend yet so we decided to wake up nice and early, meet up with my parents and little bro and head to breakfast in Winters and then we went to the pumpkin patch. The place that we went to for breakfast was called Putah Creek Cafe and as we walked up I saw that they had a little scarecrow version of Guy Fieri from Triple D (Diners Drive-ins and Dives) and the food was really good. The whole service area somewhat lacked but for the most part if was great!
We normally go to the local pumkin patch but this year we decided to go to a GIANT corn maze in Dixon. It was 45 acres of CORN! It was fabulous. It was in the guiness book of world records and of course it was hot as you know what as we went through it and all you got was some map that showed you the landmarks (forts) to hit and then had to find our way out on our own. I am terrible at directions, like beyond terrible and yet somehow I managed to lead us through half of the maze successfully! Ya buddy! It was all in all a fabulous time and we all left sore and sun burnt. We did get pumpkins and we had a blast at that to. The downside to going to such a huge pumpkin patch is that you have sooooo many pumpkins to choose from. I mean goodness, we chose 8 pumpkins and we only really looked at like a 20th of the area that had pumpkins laying all about! They had white pumpkins, green pumpkins, small, huge, gords of all sizes and many other things. We also launched some pumpkins and although I didn't get to take pics of that I have some videos. You can really only hear the compressor but it was soo fun. You hit a car and uh...hello...this momma got it directly through the window. Yeah I rock! Rian loved it and although we all took turns I think the grown ups loved it more than the kids. haha.
We have also since then done our pumpkin carving and normally this means its us hanging out in our house in AZ carving pumpkins in the heat or in fact, not carving at all and just buying those Mr. Potato Head type things that are soo awesome and easy to use when you just don't have time to carve. This year we had Lauren come up with us, grubbed on pizza and carved us some pumpkins. I am glad that I took plenty of pics that night because folks, I have some bad news! Reason #145,678 to NOT live int he boonies...deer eat your pumpkins while you sleep and then drag them around your yard. Yeah. They have successfully eaten the details out of each and every damn pumpkin we carved! I mean sheesh...this lady is old, we were SORE after hunching over carving those damn pumpkins and they think they can just come up to our patio and EAT THEM! The nerve. Needless to say, these are all the pics I got and you better enjoy. Sadly Rian really wanted NOTHING to do with carving, the guts or anything. Sometimes I think my 'clean' nature has rubbed off on him a bit to much. We are totally goign to have to wait for the first big rain and take our friends quad out to my dads vineyard and go mudding because this little boy of mine needs to get some more 'boy' put into him! hehe. Either way, carving was a blast but I have come to the conclusion that the knives they now sell are not what they used to be. RC and I reminisced for a minuted and we used to have wood handles, nice blades and now if you use too much pressure it freaking breaks and shazam you gotta carve with some other crappy knife that will surely break as well. Needless to say we had some good ones and you can see our sweet carving skills just below!
