Family Fun

For her birthday party she wanted to just take one friend to the corn maze and hay ride place outside of town, rather than invite lots of friends to the house for a traditional party.  BUT, on the day of the "party" it was FREEZING cold and it was raining.  So we took her friend to a movie and pizza instead.
THEN, the next time Tyler had a day off from work, we headed to the maze and pumpkin patch--it was much sunnier and well worth the wait!

The hay ride went around a beautiful farm and creek.

Then it dropped us off in front of the corn maze:

A woman that had been on the ride with us offered to take our picture, and I am so grateful to her for being so kind. 

(I am grateful for snapshots like these, all of us in one picture together--at this point in my life I have a REALLY hard time taking official "family" pictures.  We know we want to look back at snapshots of our kids at these moments in their lives because they are changing soooo quickly, and a day may come that we will pay for a photo shoot, but because it's not our WHOLE family, it just feels so wrong and painful to pose for the camera on purpose and call it a family portrait.  

But, it is nice to have moments captured of all of us and the time we do spend together, enjoying our moments here on earth recognizing the beauty of the world around us and how lucky we are to have and love each other.  And, perhaps, that little ray of sunshine shooting down through the photo is a reminder of our special boy that is smiling down from heaven, happy that we are spending time together and warming our hearts with more compassion and appreciation for each other.)

Evaleigh really wanted to keep up with the big kids.  They were all so happy and excited to be wandering through the corn--they were NOT very good at having a sense of direction though--haha, we were in the maze for quite a while!

And then we each picked a pumpkin to bring home and decorate.

Though the decorating had to wait for another day because we had to build a cannon and make muffins for the party:

We had fun bringing our family circus to the ward trunk-or-treat.  And thanks to a sweet sister in the ward, whom had her husband hurriedly pull over in the parking lot so she could jump out and grab the camera from Tyler, we were able to get a picture of the entire crew together!

It was a pretty great family day!