Marcel's Surprise Date

In early September, I found a great deal on corn maze tickets (thanks to FabulesslyFrugal.com) and knew I had to get them.  They were only good for the first 2 weeks of the season so I sat Marcel down in front of his computer and ultimately his schedule and said, "Find a night where you have 5 hours for a date."  I think before my birthday I posted about us but if this wasn't included it should have been.  Marcel is at marching band on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday nights and all day Saturdays for competitions, church on Wednesday, so he spends Mondays at home but I have been working at Famous Footwear on Monday, so we have Sundays after Marcel gets home from church to spend together.  Thus, I knew if the date wasn't scheduled before I bought the tickets, they would never get used. 

We picked Sunday, October 3rd and that day when we got home from church, I was so excited because I hadn't told Marcel what we were doing and keeping the secret was getting too hard.  I got online to get the address and discovered they were closed on Sundays.  Good thing we scheduled a "back-up" day!

Date day was last night.  We headed to dinner at Harry's Bar & Grill in Meridian.  It was fun to try a new place and I loved my club sandwich (except since when do they come with raw onions, or onions in general) and Marcel seemed to like his Reuben.  All the way to dinner, Marcel was guessing where we were going, like go-karting, etc, but once we got to the restaurant he admitted that earlier in the day he figured out where we were going.  I felt sad it wasn't a surprise when we pulled up to the farm, but I did what I could!

Before heading out to dinner



Tickets in hand and ready to start

We didn't realize that going on a Wednesday night meant being there with just about every youth group from the Boise area.  It was crazy!  Somehow, though, we made it through the maze without too many kids with us.  They sort of just did their own thing. 

We made it to the bridge in less than 10 minutes and then shortly after found ourselves at a checkpoint.  That's when we realized there was a map we could have used and then hole-punched it at each checkpoint (there were 12!).  We made it our mission to find all 5 on the right side of the bridge (the blue in the picture) WITHOUT the map.  We just walked aimless until we ended up at all of them. 

After 45 minutes or so, in our attempt to find the 5th checkpoint, Marcel said, "You did it. I'm lost."  See, once we made it to the bridge Marcel decided that I had to be the one to make all the decisions in which fork in the road we took because I couldn't keep track of where we'd been but with his strong sense of direction he could and if I made the decisions it would take us longer.  Last year we went to a haunted maze with some friends from Pacific and I told Marcel that it isn't the same because you sort of just get pushed through the maze.  The point of the scary one is not to get lost, but in a normal corn maze you should be lost!

  

On the bridge.  I LOVE this picture.  The sun makes us look so beautiful!

On facebook, Ruth said she thinks this one could be in a magazine.  That made me happy!

At one of the checkpoints we found!

Happy to be lost TOGETHER

After making it out of the maze we went on a hayride.  Marcel wanted to do it first but I was so afraid of not having enough time for the maze so we did it after.  There was beautiful lightning along the way!  It was also how you got to their pumpkin patch.  We're going to go the generic way and probably just get our pumpkins at the grocery store and not do it until it is closer to Halloween, so it feels like fall outside.

Marcel wanted to have the tractor in the background

When we got home I decided it was a great fall activity, but told Marcel, "I haven't had any crunchy leaves yet."  I love when the leaves dry up a bit and fall on the ground.  Nothing like hearing the crunch of leaves under your shoe.  It is the ultimate sign that fall is here and that it is sweater weather, and time to curl up under a blanket with a cup of toasted marshmallow hot chocolate!

Happy Halloween

Our lives have been so busy that we nearly forgot about Halloween this year. I believe it was Monday night when we looked at our weekly calendar and realized we had made it to the week of Halloween and so we tried to find time to carve a pumpkin, deciding on Friday night, only to realize a few hours later that my crazy work schedule wouldn't allow it: I worked 4-7pm and then 8pm-2am. Plus Friday we went to Safeway for pumpkins and they had none. Between work last night I went to Fred Meyer and they had just a handful of very destroyed pumpkins. This led us to the decision of not having any this year. I'm very sad about today being Halloween and I'm not going to be carving a pumpkin this year. We have decided that our life will be a bit different and maybe the jobs we'll have in Idaho will allow a decent amount of time to spend together so we don't forget about holidays!

Speaking of Idaho, we're planning on being there in 7 weeks from today, which means I only have 6 more weeks of work! And the way they have both been going I am so excited to be so close to being on to bigger and better things, even if I'm not quite sure what they entails.

October...so far

The first weekend of this month, Marcel had a concert, actually 2! Both his symphonic and jazz bands played and his mom was able to come down. Marcel had promised Snoh that after the concert he could go on stage. He found plenty of percussion instruments to try his hand at before having to stage for some pictures. This was my favorite! It was a decent weekend except I worked (made sure to have the night off for the concert) and Snoh was sick all day Saturday.

Friday, Marcel had no school so I made a big sacrifice and took the day off from both jobs :) He did end up having to spend some hours in the theater for one of his classes, but our night plans were not affected. We went to: on Sauvie Island. We planned on going there since Marcel had never been to a corn maze, but he and his friends voted for the haunted version, which I told him does not count as being to a corn maze, since they pretty much force you through the maze--not many opportunities to get lost. Maybe next year, while we are living in Idaho, he can FINALLY experience a real maze.

A real bonus to the maze: We ran into my old friend Megan! When we were trapped in the room at the beginning learning all the rules, I leaned to Marcel and said, "It's Megan" to which he said, "No it's not", but in fact it was and we were able to go through the maze together and had a few minutes to catch up afterwards. What a great surprise!

We got to the maze before his friends did so we were able to spend some time in the market and
take some pictures on our own. This is what we ended up with:


(I would like to point out that the picture of Marcel isn't as good but it wasn't my fault--he changed the flash setting for me!)

Fall is finally upon us and while I had plenty of jackets, that did not keep my nose from being cold. Marcel was just very grateful I remembered some gloves, because I am not a very happy cold person. While we were dying in our apartment in the 90+ degree summer weather I thought I was ready for the cold, but I have since decided the only good thing about this season is the crunchy leaves I get to step on (oh, and how pretty the trees are) but the weather is stinky!

We are having a great month so far and are very excited for what fun could still be had in this month! We are getting ready for our big move in December and can't wait for what that will bring us!

The Seasons Are Changing

Yet another quick post...I'm not borrowing internet from the laundromat, but instead from Pacific University, so it is fast enough not to drive me crazy!

My favorite season is fall. I love the weather, even with the Oregon rain I've come to love, and I love the colors of the trees, but by far my favorite thing about fall is: stepping on leaves and hearing the crackle under my shoes. Marcel laughs about this, because I'll go out of my way to step on a leaf and am quite disappointed if the crackle doesn't satisfy me. Today on my way to check our mail (which is something else that brings me great joy every day!) I found one leaf on the ground and I did in fact walk a bit crooked in hopes it would have that awesome sound to it. To my great surprise it crackled! It let me know that fall is quickly approaching, which I can't wait for after the long and miserably hot summer we've had.

I was looking for a new blog background because I do like to mix it up every once in awhile and this one was entitled "Crackling Leaves" and although it isn't my favorite background in the world, it seemed just right after the morning I had.