Making memories

One of my fall resolutions is to make more memories with my daughter and husband. We "do stuff" all the time, but so many weekends go by that we don't do anything memorable. Don't get me wrong, sometimes that's really nice! We enjoy having some weekends to do absolutely nothing, those are sweet memories, too. But like I told my husband the other day, I don't want to look back one day and think "Dang, I wish we had done more with C..." We already wasted a lot of opportunities this summer to go to the beach. We went twice, I believe. And I cherish those memories, but I wish we could have gone more. (Growing up, I was at the beach pretty much every weekend with my family, and I have so many great memories from those trips.) I'm so thankful that I now have an awesome camera so that I can capture all these memories and look back on them. (I have a Nikon D5000 if you're interested - totally worth the money!!!)

This weekend, we made plenty of memories. As you'll see, most of them were just plain, every day, around-the-house type memories, nothing "special." But they are precious to me. ( :

Saturday was an absolutely gorgeous day here in North Carolina, and me and C took advantage of it by going outside for several hours. It was one of those days where you need long sleeves and pants because the shade was pretty chilly, but in the sunshine it was glorious. Absolutely perfect. My mama came over with my cousin and another young girl and we all had fun playing on the swing set and in the grass.

I love this kid so much ( :
and I love how her diaper kept stickin out of her pants!

She has started doing flips...which really freaks this mama out!!

hehe ( :

She was kinda sad when everyone left us!

Yesterday, we decided to go to a pumpkin patch. I wanted to go to the State Fair, but DH didn't feel like driving that far, so I got online and tried to find a pumpkin patch close by. They are hard to come by around here! I did find one near us, but of course it doesn't open on Sundays. So I found a place about 30 minutes away.  Its mainly a corn maze, but the website said there was a pumpkin patch and lots of things for kids (including toddlers) to do. C didn't wake up from her nap until after 4pm, but we decided to go anyway.

This place wasn't anything like we were expecting. We were pretty disappointed. The arm bands we bought to get in didn't include any of the fun things, and we didn't discover that until it was too late. We didn't do the big 12-acre corn maze (well, its not really corn, but whatever) because you had to pay more for it, but we did do an itty-bitty toddler maze. I think if you're in a big group of older children/adults and you do the big maze and maybe the "haunted" trail at night, that would be a lot of fun. Or if you pay and arm and a leg to be able to have access to everything there! Despite our disappointment, we were determined to make the most of the trip. I think C enjoyed herself, and that's all that really mattered.  We won't be going back to that place, though!

Oh, and there wasn't even a pumpkin patch! That was the biggest disappointment for me. We're off to Gatlinburg, TN, this weekend and I am determined to find a pumpkin patch there!!

me and C in the "corn" maze

I need to teach my husband how to use the zoom! haha

C always twists her tongue like that...gets it from me ( :

Last night, we went grocery shopping and bought a ton of junk food for our upcoming trip. Normally, I don't like to have a lot of junk food sitting around the house. I mean, if its there, we're gonna eat it, right? And no one needs to eat that mess all the time! But when we go on vacation, that "rule" goes out the window. We eat at good restaurants while we're vacationing, but we make sure to pack a lot of goodies for the drive. We like to snack!

Our only mistake last night was me and DH were already hungry when we got there. Never go to the grocery store hungry!! We bought way more than we should have. But its okay; we had fun.

We got ingredients to make a homemade pizza (with store bought dough), and DH let C help him assemble it. She jumped right in like she'd done it a thousand times before, even though it was her first time.

yes, we make pizza in our diapers...don't you?

That pizza was pretty darn good, by the way. And I'm tellin myself its healthier than gettin frozen pizzas or ordering from Domino's....though its probably not. ( :

All in all, the weekend was excellent. This week will be crazy since I have a zillion things to do to prepare for our mountain trip, but I'm so excited to go. I have to go buy a new memory card because I know I'll fill my current one up. I don't even know what activities we have planned, but just being in the mountains will be enough for me, so who cares!