A Maize Maze… also known as a Corn Maze

So far, every year we’ve made it a point to take Abug to a corn patch; this year was no different. The funny thing is we’ve gone to a different one each year… but we may have found the one we’ll continue on with… maybe. The one we went to this year was pretty darn awesome!

But let’s back up just a bit. I made it a point we NEEDED to go either this weekend or the weekend before Halloween because otherwise we had too much planned and wouldn’t make it, so we went the 15th.

We met up with Jared and Karen for lunch that day and then went to Exeter, MO, via Rogers, AR. We ate lunch in Neosho, drove to Rogers, and then headed to Exeter. Sometimes our crew doesn’t always make sense, but we decided to go to the Williams Sonoma down in Rogers before heading to the corn maze.

Abug slept all the way to Rogers. When we got out, daddy grabbed her and her diaper leaked all over her skirt and his shirt. Yuck… lol. Don’t worry, I got some on me too. Luckily this is a shopping center so he ran to JC Penney for a new/clean shirt, we cleaned up in a bathroom, and then went to Crazy 8 to get the buglet some new clothes. Whew!

From there we headed to Exeter and that’s where our story really begins :).

We got there and bought our armbands. Abug grabbed my arm and immediately drug me to the zipline. Sadly she is too little for the zipline so off we went to the slide. I’ll bet we spent most of our time at the slide, but we convinced her to leave the slide and go to the little tricycle track for those 8 and under. She still hasn’t mastered riding a tricycle so daddy walked around the track with her.

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Kansas from Cedar Vale, Kansas

Does that title have you scratching your head? Well…. Meet Kansas….

Okay, I’ll explain. So a year ago we had 3 colts born… Blue Jeans, Flash, and Cadillac. All stud colts. All yearlings now. We have a lot of horses so this summer we decided to sell a couple off. We posted Flash and Blue Jeans up for sale just to see what would happen. Early in the summer we had a guy hit us up about a trade, horse for horse. We weren’t real sure we wanted another horse, we wanted to disperse some so we kind of said thanks but no thanks.

About a week ago or maybe 2 now though, we rethought that and hubby hit the kid up. I say kid because now we’ve met him and I think he’s probably 18… that’s a kid to me ;). Anyway…. we got some more info on the horse. He’s a 7 year old broke gelding who is just grade. Now grade means no papers. All of our horses are registered. Does that matter? Really only when you go to show maybe.

We kind of wondered why the kid wanted to swap a broke horse for an unbroke stud, but we didn’t question it too much. After some discussion, we decided to do the swap. We got a broke horse out of the deal and sometimes they’re easier to sell anyway if we were to decide to sell him.

Karen and Jared came over on Tuesday of that week to help us try to get a halter on Blue Jeans because he wasn’t broke… not one bit. Not even halter broke. It didn’t work in our favor.  Thursday night my dad went back out with us and we finally got a halter on the colt after a lot of trying. It wasn’t an easy feat but the minute we had the halter on him, his attitude changed. We had him leading in 20 minutes. It was crazy.

And our only real casualty was dad’s arm. Some how dad’s arm got struck by Blue Jean’s front leg. Ouch!

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Roll-Out Sugar Cookie Tips/Tricks

Hello, happy Foodie Friday. I mentioned last week that my daughter’s birthday was in June and we did a Minnie Mouse theme. I made cake as well as cupcakes and cookies. The cupcakes and cookies were for one birthday party (at the lake, cupcakes make for easy transport and distribution) and the cake was for her other birthday party (with family at home).

I took cake decorating classes, but we never really worked with cookies. I had to do a little research on how to decorate cookies and I want to share some tips and tricks that I learned, plus my favorite recipe for making sugar cookies for decorating. I have a whole other favorite sugar cookie recipe if you aren’t decorating with icing!

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Underwater Pumpkin Carving

I typically get sick twice a year… this year I think I’m at 3 times. Blech! I’m so over this! Anyway… A couple weekends ago we had our annual Underwater pumpkin carving. Yes, I said underwater, because who doesn’t want to carve a pumpkin underwater? Don’t answer that.

The surface temperature topped out around 78˚. The water temperature wasn’t bad at all either. I heard the thermocline was down around 30 feet. I couldn’t get past 3 feet because of whatever this is. My ears were jacking with me so I carved my pumpkin basically laying right under the surface of the water.

I’ve been bugging hubby for family photos all summer long so finally we found a weekend when we had Tbug and it just so happened to be this weekend. We got up early (although not as early as I would have hoped, my fault) and went to the lake to do photos. Not quite where I wanted to take them, but sometimes you have to roll with the punches and I was happy with how they turned out so it’s all good.

That morning it was a big chilly. Abug got cold so Tbug zipped her up in her jacket with her. I turned around and this is what I saw.

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12 Tips to Baking Great Cakes

I wrote this blogpost a month ago for a guest blogpost on a website. They didn’t use it, they didn’t tell me they weren’t going to… so I’m posting it here since I did spend quite a bit of time writing it :). Hopefully you enjoy and maybe find a little useful information to boot!

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My daughter is huge in to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse right now, especially Minnie Mouse. Back in June for her 2nd birthday we decided to have a Minnie Mouse themed birthday party. I took cake decorating classes back in 2008 because I had nothing better to do with my time, so I learned all the techniques on decorating cakes. I might be a little rusty these days, but I still have all that arsenal in my back pocket to come in handy one of these days. Now I’m going to share some tips with you on how to decorate your own cake to look professional.
For my daughter’s birthday I decided we were going to have Minnie Mouse Cupcakes, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse cookies, and then on her actual birthday a cake. Yes, she got two parties. Sometimes it happens.
So my tips on making the Cake… from get this… a box mix. Shhh don’t tell anyone!

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Dude’s Daylight Donuts {Joplin, MO}

I’ve been on the hunt for the best donuts. Have I found them? Maybe… But I can tell you one thing for sure… these donuts are AWESOME! And they’re Daylight Donuts so they should be like the ones we get from Daylight Donuts in Carthage, but they aren’t.

A while ago I asked my dad where his favorite donuts were from and we got into a huge discussion. Then last week he had to be in Joplin for some work training. On his way from training to work, he brought a donut by for us to try from Dude’s Donuts. The next day was Wednesday. That’s Donut Day :). So we decided to try donuts from there.

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Black Rifle Coffee Company

Up until a few years ago, I wasn’t a coffee drinker. In fact, it didn’t happen until like 2011 or something when Mark and I went on the Showboat Branson Belle and it was complimentary with dinner so I decided to try it. Mark looked at me like I grew a horn out of my head and after I said, hey that’s not bad, he tried it. We both converted to the “dark” side. Pun intended :). haha

So now jump forward to 2016. Are we avid coffee drinkers? No, but we do like the occasional cup of Jo.. wonder where that term came from anyway. Maybe some research on my part is required. Anyway, somehow Mark came across this company that is a veteran owned called Black Rifle Coffee Company that is based out of Salt Lake City, Utah. He never told me how he came across it, but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is, he found it. And I mentioned it is Veteran Owned… well note on the package that 5% of the profits go toward veteran organizations. Bam!

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Happy Birthday Daddy!

My daddy falls into this category! His birthday was yesterday (October 9th). Sadly, we were busy with the underwater pumpkin carving that we celebrated on Saturday night. He said it was okay but it kind of bothered me that we did.

My parents got their birthday (joint)/Christmas (joint) present a week earlier. I don’t think I’ll reveal what that is just yet since my mom’s birthday isn’t until December and then of course there’s Christmas… haha. I mean they already know but… My mom’s birthday gets overlooked a lot anyway because of Christmas and our trip to Ft. Worth each year, so maybe I’ll reveal their present there… what do you say? December 5th. Mark it on your calendar because I know you’re dying to know… lol. (more…)