Indiana Blizzard

 

Our street.

 The past 48 hours has been a crazy whirlwind of heavy snow and desperate ploys to keep my toddler entertained. With a snow emergency comes beautiful and amazing scenery.

 

Back yard.

 

 

Front of the house.

 

Buried mailbox.

 

Gorgeous snow!

Fun in the snow? PLUS: snow ice cream recipe

We have had some crazy weather these past few days and thought I'd share some amazing and fun photos I got of the Indiana blizzard. Starting 2014 off right, I guess. State of emergency. Quarantined to the house. Any travel made illegal. 

 

 

Then, temperatures with windchill in the negative 30's and 40's. It was so cold that there was frost on the inside of Brad's truck. 

If anyone wants to know, ice scrapers do not work on the inside of windows.

 

 

 

 

Some of these pictures show just how wet the snow was. My jacket was soaked! It was so wet we used an umbrella to keep the snow off of the camera.

Snow Ice Cream

Later that night I saw a friend who posted that she made ice cream from snow. Who even know that was possible!?

 

Just take a bucket of [clean] snow (around 1 gallon) inside.

Add about 1/2 cup sugar, 1 tsp vanilla extract, and 1/2-1 cup of milk. (Add the milk in small increments until the consistency you want.)

 

Add sprinkles or other toppings.

 

This was such a fun thing to do with the kiddo. 

Tuttle Orchards

With the end of summer (and baseball season), comes fall.

Fall means delicious apples, homemade apple sauce, beautiful fall leaves, pumpkins galore, and lots of yummy not-so-good-for-you treats. :)

We decided to visit Tuttle Orchards last weekend after I learned about them from a friend. They provide everything you need to pick the apples and even have tons of red wagons which the kids end up riding in by the end of the trip.

They even had a huge play area with two mazes, a red tractor, a few play sets, swings, and more. Camden loved that area and when we left kept asking to go back to the "apple trees" over and over again. If I have ever been to an apple orchard, I don't remember but this seems like a great place to go every year!

Camden loved to play with the corn hole set as well!

They had two barns of delicious goodies and treats. We all split an ear of corn and a caramel apple. Brad wanted a cold apple cider (YUCK!) and I wanted a hot one so we each got that. I wanted to try the slushy, but we saved that for next year. They also had a neat little honey bee hive case you could see the bees. Cam really loved that!

 So far, fall at home has been wonderful and our little man is growing up so fast! *tear*

If you are as excited and ready for fall as I am, I highly suggest visiting Tuttle's for apples and in October they open the pumpkin fields! We usually always go to a certain farm for our pumpkins, which we still love, but this place just had much more to offer and is slightly closer. It's so hard to break tradition, but Camden loved this place!

Indiana State Fair

The Indiana State Fair has long been an annual must-do activity for my family. Brad, Camden, and I went this year and it was fun!

 

Side note: I wish the Fishers Train had a better schedule with closer times as we barely made one lap around the fairgrounds and had to run to catch the train (or stay another 2 hours when it was Cam's bed time).

 

We will most likely drive next year to avoid that and be able to come and go whenever we want. This was the year of Popcorn, which was a little disappointing that I didn't see more popcorn-themed food or displays. I couldn't find the giant ball of popcorn everyone posted pictures of and I only saw two popcorn stands. The Kettle Corn was still pretty amazing!

 

What I enjoyed most was the fact that Cam was so into everything and could even ride the kiddie rides! He loved the giant slide and the rides so much I can't wait to take him to an amusement park.

 

We haven't had much time to do any kind of vacation so this was a nice break from studying and work to be able to enjoy some time together. It was a perfect day (and $2 Tuesday) so we really enjoyed the weather! 

 

Brad and Cam waiting to board the train!

 

Camden was pretty excited to ride the choo choo train, as you can clearly see.

 

Riding the fair Shetlands!

 

Picking up some seeds in the kids area.

 

Enjoying his hot dog and fries. :)

 

He LOVED this slide! LOVED!

 

The yearly DNR photo. Man, he's getting too big! ;)

 

Saying bye-bye to the train.

 

All in all we had a good time and it was pretty inexpensive since it was $2 Tuesday. $2 entry and $2 food. Win-win.



Christmas Cheer

I hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday! We celebrated Christmas at home, just the three of us and it was so peaceful and wonderful. It's almost 2013 so I've got to catch up on updates since I know there won't be too much free time I will have in the next few years.

 

Camden is keeping us on our toes and is constantly impressing us with his smarts, good looks, and quirky noises. :) I'll have a special end of the year post (that'll make it to the blog I'm sure some time early January) to update everyone on Cam's personality, things he's doing lately, etc. I can't wait to update! He's so smart (and yes, I'm biased.)

 

 

 Camden had several Christmas' that he celebrated. His auntie Rachael and grandma Sharon came up the weekend before Christmas, we celebrated with grandma Laura the next day and then Christmas Eve we celebrated with grandpa Ivan. This past weekend he got yet another Christmas with his other grandpa Jones! He's the first grandchild for all but my dad so of course he gets every single toy at the toy store. (Talk about spoiled!)

 

 

Santa. Usually Santa is the scariest part of Christmas for a toddler. Not my son! I don't know how we did it, but he loves Santa! He is totally infatuated with him and probably set some kind of record for the only 18-month-old to not cry on his lap. Hah! I totally love that he likes Santa. It comes and goes because last year he cried. This year I couldn't keep him away. I just hope he still loves him next year! 

 

 

Santa came to our house and Camden had TONS of presents! He even got a neat little table which I think will come in handy for drawings and crafts in the future.

 

 

Camden received tons of toys, both small and large (a couple basketball goals, car, etc.) as well as lots of clothes. I made sure he got lots of things he needed: socks, pants, and shirts. The only thing I need to stock up on is next year's winter coat and snow suit once they go on clearance. 0:)

 

 

My mom had a gorgeous tree this year so I took lots of pictures by it. I am not sure they are going to keep it since the white stuff kept falling off and I'm sure it was a pain to clean up. Either way, it made for some amazing pictures! 

 

 

 

We didn't have a white Christmas, but we did have a white week-after-Christmas. We received about 5-7 inches of snow the day after Christmas and then a few days after that, we got another 6 inches. It was very snowy and luckily I had the entire week off for vacation I wanted to use before starting school again.

 

 

Camden didn't like the snow at first and didn't enjoy when his hands got cold (understandably), but once he saw Brad and the dog playing and having fun, he warmed up.

 

 

 

Of course the dog had tons of fun in the snow! He is such a princess when it comes to rain and won't go outside, but when it comes to snow he turns into what I like to call a snow bunny.

 

 

 

I hope you and yours had a wonderful holiday and ring in the new year with good health and happy hearts.

Strawberry Pickin'

Every year I always want to go to Spencers Farm and pick strawberries. I usually never get around to it because the season goes by quickly. This year I was determined to go because I wanted Camden to be able to experience it. We had so much fun, as you can see, and we got a ton of strawberries (that quickly were eaten).

Camden kept eating the strawberries we put in the bucket, but somehow we managed to distract him and pick enough to weigh.

I love this picture (above) of him picking his own strawberry! He knew exactly what to do and we all had a great time! I'll also be going back this week for more since we are out and I want more to freeze, too. Plus I have more recipes to try and no more strawberries. 0:)

The main difference (if they're even comparable) between fresh-off-the-farm strawberries and the store-bought kind is the taste. The fresher they are, the juicier, sweeter, softer, and smaller. Trust me, though, we got some huge ones off the vines, but the baseball-sized strawberries where you get 5 in a tin at the grocery isn't what I think of when I think fresh; or delicious for that matter.  If you've never been picking, I highly recommend it!! It's fun for the entire family and the best part is, they encourage tasting them. Although, I'm surprised they didn't want to weigh Camden before and after. ;)

Here were our pickings! We weighed about 7 1/2 pounds and it was only $14.00!!! I can't wait to go back this week!

How is everyone else spending their summer?

First trip to the park

We have been extremely busy lately (you will find out why here in a few days) but have been making time to take Camden for walks with the nice weather. A week or so ago we wanted to see how he did at the playground and as luck would have it, there was nobody else there when we went so we had the place to ourselves!

We decided to take Cam in his new wagon that Grandma Laura (my mom) gave him for Christmas. He loved the wagon ride and we might even take him to the zoo with it, since it has a canopy for shade and the seats lay flat so we could lay him down to sleep in it.

Well he absolutely loved the park!

Daddy loved pushing him on the swings and as you can see, he loved it, too! I'd like to think I'm getting a little better at taking pictures since having my first photography workshop back in February.

This was Cam's first trip down the slide. He wasn't quite sure what to think but as long as he was on our laps getting ma-ma and da-da hugs, he didn't really care that much.

These two just melt my heart! Since the weather has been cooperative, we have been walking every day either before or after dinner and also have been spending more time outside (grilling!) This has also been a positive motivator for me to get exercising again and continue losing some of this baby weight.