Our Thursday Night...

After work today we headed over to Mom's cottage. She had a table for us to add to the rec room downstairs for our upcoming parties. Noel and I picked that up and re-arranged a few things for her and headed home. Kelsey worked, but Alex spent the evening with her friends begging for candy from all the neighbors (trick-or-treating).

My friend Maxine came up to visit and drop off something Noel needed for work tomorrow. At his office, they are having a Halloween luncheon, with a murder mystery twist. Max had a lab coat for Noel's character. Here's a picture of me and Max, taken at our Fall picnic. She's one of the three regulars for girl's night out, so you may see her a lot.

Noel worked on the Valley Greenery website and added a great slideshow. You can take a peek at http://www.valleygreenery.com/ . He did a fantastic job! While he did that, I handed out candy to all of the trick-or-treaters that landed on our porch. Sooo cute! Well, gonna get ready for another full day tomorrow!

Sorry So Long...

Hello everyone! I am so sorry that it's been so long since I've updated our blog! We have been sooo very busy! Mostly with work-related things like tons of meetings, trainings and evening programs. I'll try harder to keep up, I promise!

Let's see...football team is doing great. We've been going to every game and they're on a nice little winning streak right now. We traveled to Mifflinburg on Friday and the Indians stomped the Wildcats with a score of 31-15.

Had girl's night out the night before that, this time at the new restaurant in town - Brewser's. Same trio - me, Rhonda and Max. We're trying to make it a monthly thing that we get together to unwind. Next girl's night out is already scheduled, but this time it's an all-nighter! We're staying at the farm to kick off winter. Getting the fireplace going, having some wine and not worrying about driving (or children!). Can't wait!

Speaking of girl's night out...everyone knows how there's two things that I really like to do. First is entertain, second is enter fun contests and stuff on the internet. Well, I have been chosen to be a host of an Alpine Lace® Cheese "Cosmos, Appetizers and A Movie" House Party. What happens is, the sponsor (Alpine Lace Cheese) is sponsoring a themed party. This one is a girl's night out movie party. It includes appetizers, the drink cosmos and the movie "Sex in The City". A few days before the party, the sponsor sends a party pack of goodies for your party. The party is held nation-wide on the same night by a predertimed amount of hosts. I invited all the girls and we'll take pictures of our party and post them on the host site. Then, we'll be able to see pictures from all of the parties of the same theme. (I'll do anything to have a party!) So, if you're going to be in the area on November 15, let me know, I'll add you to the list!

The Valley Greenery produce stand is winding down for the season, but we have come up with so many ideas for next year! We'll be planning all winter for sure!

Things around here are pretty status quo for now. Alex is planning for her upcoming birthday party, Noel is doing some hunting, Kelsey is still full-scheduled and I'm plugging along as well.

Oh, by the way, the lovely mums that were in the pumpkin cans that my mom made died. I know, we can grow an entire farm of produce, but can't keep three mum plants alive...go figure. So, I decided to reuse the cans and filled them with ornamental corn. I really like them! Now I can use them year after year...

Cute, huh?

Mini Vacation...

Hey everyone!! We just got back today from a long weekend in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. We had such a great time! We spent time at the beach, fabulous restaurants and quite a few shopping outlets.

We left Friday after school and arrived in Rehoboth around 9 pm. It's about a 4 1/2 to 5 hour drive for us. Here's a picture of Alex on the ride down:

We stayed in a lovely condo that we found on vrbo.com. I highly recommend that site to anyone that likes to travel. This is the third time we've booked through them and have never been disappointed. All the rental properties are listed by the owners, so no realtor to deal with. Great prices too!

Sorry, got carried away. Anyhow...we spent Friday at the beach. Noel fished, I read some of my book and the kids played and collected shells/rocks. Here's some of the beach pics:

You would not believe the fabulous weather we had...in Delaware...in October!

After the beach, we toured Fort Miles in Cape Henlopen State Park. Fort Miles was built to defend Delaware Bay and River and to protect domestic shipping from enemy fire, particularly from the German surface fleet during WWII. It is fascinating to see and to imagine it alive with soldiers. Here's some pics from our tour:

The scariest part of the tour was walking to the top of one of the guard towers. I HATE heights. I did rather well until coming back down. Had to steady those wobbly knees!

The Tower:

The view before the climb:

The climb UP:

And from the top:

Later that night, while we waited for our dinner reservations, we tried drag racing. How fun! This tidbit may be disputed, however I do believe I won hands down!

Ssshhhh, don't tell Noel,

he thinks he won!

The following day we did some early Christmas shopping, late back-to-school shopping and some just-for-fun shopping! The outlets are wonderful and have over 130 stores. With all of those stores to visit, you wouldn't think Kelsey would have time to "horse around", but she sure did!

After shopping, we drove down to Ocean City, Maryland for a seafood buffet dinner. Then, rolled ourselves back to the condo and had movie night. After packing the car this morning (how did we get so much stuff in such a short amount of time??), we had a big breakfast and headed home.

Unfortunately, reality has set in and we've already started preparing for the week by prepping the produce stand, reviewing our mail and scheduling some appointments. Well, it was nice while it lasted...

Nothing Earth Shattering...

Nothing really to report since the weekend. Monday was, well Monday. Brought Kelsey home from school as she wasn't feeling well. Otherwise, very Monday.

Today I worked 10 hours and am just plain old tired! My mind must have been somewhere else totally because I left my car keys at work when I brought a department car home to use for training purposes tomorrow. Not a real problem in itself except we were supposed to drop my car off at the garage tomorrow to get new tires! Soooo, had to call the garage and explain my absent-mindness and reschedule the drop off for tomorrow night.

Oh yeah, and unless you are very, very brave...don't come anywhere near our house for a while. It is a real:

Two out of three females are suffering from "The Syndrome". You have never seen such crying, laughing, anger, glee and everything in between all within a time span of about 20 seconds. EVERY 20 seconds! So, I love you all, but will have to visit next week, ok? Poor, poor Noel.

Busy, Busy, Busy...

Wow, the last few days have been so busy for us that it's really nice to be home on a Sunday afternoon, catching up on laundry and updating our blog.

Let's see, Thursday night Noel and I attended the Juvenile Court Services annual banquet. My mom is on the Advisory Board and made all of the center pieces. This is what she did to display the mums...

Those are paint cans sprayed black , with the images decoupaged onto the surface. The tables also boasted pumpkins, gourds and ornamental corn from Valley Greenery! The banquet was held at our Vocational School, with students from the Culinary Class preparing and serving the meal. I love to see the students involved in things like that!

Friday night, the Indians had a football game at home, so we attended to see Kelsey play in the band and cheer. Don't ask the score. Let's just say, it wasn't our best game. Noel and Alex then headed to the farm to stay the night in preparation of our big fall picnic, while Kelsey and I stayed at the house because Kelsey took the SAT's on Saturday morning and had to be at the school at 7:30 a.m. I cooked the majority of the food on Friday night, which turned out very well given the time constraints we were under for Saturday.

So, the day of the big picnic comes and I was up at 5:45 a.m. I was too nervous that the alarm wasn't going to go off and Kelsey would miss SAT's! After breakfast, we headed out the door and it was raining! I was soooo worried! 48 degrees and raining on the day of our picnic!

It all ended up working out in the end. We had around 55 to 60 people, the food and drink flowed and everyone had a great time. Mother Nature came through and blessed us with a fabulous afternoon of around 60 degrees with some sun. Here's some quick pics taken with my camera phone:



Good food, good friends, good times! We had it all! Of course, after all the preparation, cooking, cleaning and worrying...I felt the need to break into one of our gifts...some wonderful wine from a local winery. THEN it was time to relax!

The party went through the night and wrapped up around midnight. Even Bo, the party animal was exhausted and fell asleep by the campfire:

We all stayed at the farm last night. Poor Kelsey had to leave early this morning to be at work. Noel, Alex and I cleaned up from the picnic and headed home. Now, to prepare for another week of work and school...