Tractor Party

It was at some point this summer, that I decided to start planning a tractor birthday party for my little guy!  He is turning three in less than two weeks, and he is obsessed with any and all things TRACTOR!  An obsession I wholeheartedly endorse!  Anyway, I figured if I was going to do this, I was going to give it my all.  I had no idea how many ideas I would come across that I just "had" to do!   Luckily for me, most of the ideas I came across on the Internet and Pinterest were pretty easy to replicate and just took some time!   I started my planning/crafting weeks early and used my blessed nap times in addition to some early morning hours.   Here are some of the things that went in to this party, based around the very things that he enjoys and loves! 





 I started with the invitations.  Rummaged through all my materials and came up with just barely enough paper to make all my invitations, surprisingly enough they went perfect with my intended theme.  Printed the text on vellum and secured with metal grommets and tied with hemp for a rustic look.  We went outside searching for the ideal fall picture, using Daddy's old cowboy hat and his trusty John Deere ride on!  I just love this picture!  Luckily, we bought a photo printer last year on Black Friday for pennies and this came in quite handy for printing them off! 

The thing that took me the longest was definitely the favors.  I was so excited to put these together for his friends!  First, I found the buckets on sale at Target, simply by chance one day and bought all they had and I think I spent less than $6.00.  At $.30 a piece, I figured I could decorate with them and and thus sparked the idea for the favors!

 From there I came across tractor candy molds on Amazon, which were also a good deal.  We had somehow seemed to accumulate a ton of those little crayon packs in the last year or so, you know the ones you get at restaurants, or at expo, conventions etc.  Anyway we had a lot, plus also I went to our local thrift store and found a couple packs of used crayons for about $.25 a piece. The birthday boy, saw my need for help one day and filled the need by loading up all the crayon papers into his dump truck and then hauling to the trash can!  Such a helper that boy!  Melted them down using a double broiler type method, kettle with an inch of water and then a tin can placed inside where I melted the crayons down.  Heated to melting and then poured into the molds.  This can be done WAY easier with silicone molds, but I could only find the tractors in plastic.  Big sigh!  This took me a while!  Packaged inside treat bags and stapled shut with card stock paper and free John Deere tractor printables, I found by searching online.  The lollipops were made my using the other tractor mold  I bought and melting down chocolate wafers using the double broiler method again.  In my opinion, the melting of chocolate by this method is a very tricky process.   I much prefer melting in a crock pot for a much more even and constant melting temperature.  I have almost never had success with this in the microwave either!

The tags for the favors were cut using my Sizzix diecutter and coordinating colors of cardstock, all things I had:) Coloring books printed on our printer, using free printables I found on line and secured together with green and yellow ribbons from my stock pile. Also made up some bags of "spare tractor wheels" in case you needed some extra nourishment on the way home!  And if you asked Evan what he wanted for his birthday, the only thing he would tell you was cookies and ice cream!  A couple days before the party it switched to a blue car and a blue truck.  He got the cookies and ice cream and he got a blue matchbox truck, so he did pretty well!   

Decorations were high on my list but I didn't want to spend a lot and I figured if I was outside the landscape of fall would provide most of what I needed!   Again, by chance at this same thrift store, I found pre-cut quilting squares in the perfect color combination.  What are the chances?  I wasn't sure what I was going to use them for but figured I would think of something. Definitely came home to Pinterest that of course and came up with a bunting!  Perfect!  Now of course I altered it and instead of using triangles, I placed the squares side by side instead, but it worked out great and with the pre-cut squares each bunting took me less than 20 minutes to sew together.  Balloons completed the look!  


 If you are two and three years old, what can be more perfect that a hayride to a farm???  It helps that we live just on the other side of a farm and had easy access to get over there!  Mr. E and I frequent this farm regularly so we knew what to expect from our friend Spurs, the horse! Borrowed a trailer from a friend, some hay bales from another friend and made their day!

I spent almost the entire day prior to the party cooking up a storm in my kitchen!  The cake was made from two separate cakes baked in individual pans, (in John Deere colors, of course!) and then layered together with chocolate icing!   Iced and then decorated with the same toys my son loves to play with, pre-washed of course and he had a very hard time letting them go for the next 24 hours!   Very simple cake and yet, he LOVED it so much!!!  Crock pot potato soup and macaroni and cheese in my dutch oven, both made the day before, left me ample time to prepare/decorate outside the next morning while my food was slowly heating inside:)   Hot dogs, chips, pretzels, cookies, crackers, and ice cream rounded out the meal and the ever popular Cake Pops finished it off!

A corn table was the only other real source of entertainment, and perfect for this group!   My husband made this for me using leftover materials, some heavy five gallon buckets gave it lots of stability, we got corn from the feed mill and all my son's toy tractors completed the scene!  The tarp underneath the table was a must!  My little man's shirt was another one of my creative endeavors for this party as well.  The black shirt came from the Dollar Tree and the letters cut using my Sizzix Cutter again out of the same squares used for the bunting and then ironed on with iron on transfer fabric! 

A nice warm fire pit was absolutely necessary on this chilly November day, but overall we couldn't of asked for a better-weather day this far into Fall in Pa!

The presents were a big hit for him at the end of the party!  There was so much excitement prior, I doubt he even had time to think about the fact that this was yet to come!  So many nice things bestowed to him by his loving friends and family.  He was SO blessed!  And the very last thing given to him was this big red barn that his Daddy and I made for him!  The anticipation that had been building for us to give this to him was so great!  We had spent HOURS working on this during, nap times, after he went to bed, before he got up in the morning!  Mr. E was quite annoyed when we wouldn't let him out in the garage while we were working on it!  We were just so excited to see his reaction and hear his excitement!  He loves it and has been playing "farm" endlessly!    











All in all, my favorite single moment from whole day was singing Happy Birthday to my very special little guy!  Pretty sure it was probably his favorite too!  He just could not wait for this moment and the anticipation had been built up pretty high!  While we were getting the cake ready, he sat ready, poised in his chair at the end of the table waiting!

I can only imagine what was running through his head....but I know his squeals of delight and clapping after we sang to him were the only thing I needed to hear that day to make me feel AMAZING!  I would do ALL of it over in a heartbeat just to repeat that moment!  I just LOVE seeing that happiness and excitement on his face!  It's a rush of adrenaline for me and I definitely teared up hearing everyone sing to him!  Amazing! 

I didn't have much of an allowance to pull this party together and you probably won't believe me when I say that ALL my receipts only totaled just over $80!  That does not include things like condiments or plastic ware, the wood for the corn table, etc because those were all things we had.  I tried to use all reusable items that we had for decorating, serving etc to keep the costs down.  Plus, all things used will be repurposed  like the corn to feed the deer through the long cold winter!  Now that also does not include the barn we made for him!  That actually added up to be quite a bit more than we intended, however we figured if were were going to do it....we were going to go the extra mile to make sure it was one that would hold up for multiple generations!

So there in a nutshell is my Tractor Party for a 3 year old!  Sorta sad that it's already over!  Not sure what his interests will be next party time...but I will certainly be excited for the challenge of creating it to be special for him!!  So much fun to give that to him!!  
 

The Fravels: Adventures in New York

About five weeks ago, my phone rang early am before my normal alarm clock, Evan typically sounds off.   Josh says, "my truck blew up and I'm sitting along the side of the road". 
"Excellent".
It's been mission, "find & get a truck ASAP" cause in his words,  "I can't work like this".  Understandable!  The short story is we found one in New York and finally had all the stuff we needed to go purchase and pick it up yesterday morning @ 10am.  We left immediately! 

Drive up through NJ was easy driving, all together in one car and the two year old in the back is an excellent traveler, who I should also applaud just starting potty training a little over a week ago and gave us no accidents the whole day!
Through the Holland Tunnel and BAM! when you come out you are in New York City!  Basically seems like more people and cars than there is square footage of space to move...."lock the doors"....NOW!  Big trucks way to close to us, natives making traffic lanes where there aren't supposed to be traffic lanes, people walking EVERYWHERE, a homeless guy just laying in the middle of a sidewalk as people walk around him.  Sad! 
"Watch out!"  Almost got clipped and a guy in the road stops to wipe the scuff marks off his white sneakers. 
It's not for everyone, we love our slice of Ephrata.  Although, I would imagine that you would not feel alone there (at least in the physical sense) which I suppose might be a comforting feeling in some ways.   We pass a random vendor selling belts along the side of the road...that's it, just belts.  Wondered how many belts you have to sell each day to make that work out for you? 
Evan loved the BIGness of it all.  The bridges, the tunnels, the multi-level roads criss-crossing each othe, the planes, the trucks.  OH the trucks!  Especially when we took the truck route and we were the ONLY passenger car in the lineup!  Oh my!  I thought we suddenly looked extra small!
 And then suddenly we were back in the "suburbs" and staring at this enormous truck we were going to buy!  "Oh my gosh it's gigantic!

 Ok looks great!  Purchase and we are off.  But not before they tell us that traffic is going to be a nightmare.  Gee thanks!  Off to the Bronx!   Back through the city, now driving a commercial vehicle and lots of signs saying passenger cars only:(  Funny how we hadn't noticed them before.   Thank you God there was an angel at the BP station that helped us figure out where we could drive to continue on our way, but not before a guy with a coffee cup knocked on my window begging for money at a very SLOW and nasty stop light.  Seriously buddy!  I almost just had a heart attack right there!  I used an inhaler for the first time today!  More bridges, tolls, tolls and more tolls.  Cars EVERYWHERE and close calls with them.  Josh has got our cell phones GPS's velcroed to the dash and we are on speaker phone with each other the length of the trip and we finally get outside the city to a Home Depot where we can park this beast!  Because wait, we haven't been through enough yet.  We're actually going to go back in there and attempt a Yankees game!  We leave our new (new to us) commercial truck in the middle of nowhere and hope we find our way back to it with this handy little street address we got off our phones.  I hadn't yet prepared myself well enough to pay out the nose in the next hour.  I'm not sure how people survive in New York City, I think there is even a fee for standing still!

Regardless, we donated $35 to the parking garage and all I could stomach at the ticket office and walked into Yankee Stadium for an AMAZZZZING experience!  It was pretty awesome!  The lights, the sounds, the fans, the stadium itself!  We paid for an experience and an experience is what was given to us!  The place erupted with excitement around every corner!  It helped the Yankees were on FIRE!  What a night! 
Ok but here is my tip of the day.  Ready?  You do NOT go to a Yankees game wearing any other team logo or speak badly of the home team.  There was this guy behind us that made this mistake and let's just say a very large section of the stadium was chanting some unkind words and sending him some unkind messages for an extended amount of time.  He definitely was not helping himself with his retaliation attempts.  I am pretty sure the night didn't end well for that guy!  He had a lot of enemies and they looked mean!  We headed out!

 

We saw them win division championships and booked it to get my Jeep from the garage before the other fifty thousand people left the stadium, easy sailing out of the city beating all the traffic and found the truck, still with all its tires and other important parts!  Yay!  Headed home following Josh, now down one cell phone and exhausted.  Josh had a tail light out and we pull over to get some coffee, as does the cop that is pulling me over!  Excellent!  Apparently, my brake lights were out and there is dense fog.  He gifts me with a ticket and tells me that I shouldn't drive it anymore.  Well the truck only has two seats, there are three of us and McDonalds doesn't have sleeping quarters.  It was sometime after midnight.  I thank him and admire my brand new souvenir!  Josh appears at my window with an iced frappe and finds one extra bulb in the glove compartment and we drive away VERY cautiously and I tried to avoid using my brakes.  In hindsight, we thought it was divine intervention that I was the one that got pulled over being that Josh was carrying a weapon last night!  Not sure how that would have gone over when he disclosed that he was carrying a firearm, even with his license to carry!  Oh dear God!  I am so glad we prayed in the driveway before we left!  More hours of driving, energy drinks, eye drops, stumbling into a Hess station where I thought about doing jumping jacks and opted for cold water in the face instead and completely obstructing my view of what time it was all night.

Finally rolling to a halt, only by the grace of God, beside the garage at 2:35 this morning was almost a miracle.  Still shaking from all the energy drinks and the brisk air that had been slapping me in the face to keep me awake the last hour,  I kissed the ground and passed out on my pillow!  That ranks right up there with some of the craziest things we've ever done!  Checked it right off of my list of things we are NEVER doing again!  (Definitely in favor of going back to New York...just not in the same fashion we did yesterday:))  T'was a fun day though!  Making memories every step of the journey and arrived home safely with our precious cargo, which was all we had asked for anyway!  Love my life with my guys!  Wouldn't trade the experiences we've had for any other in the world!  Sure is good to be home though! 

God is Good; All the time!

As hard as I try to grasp it, there are some things in life that will never quite make sense to me. Watching parents lose a child, in a life cut short through tragedy is by far the hardest thing I have ever had to endure! It is an unimagineable experience to watch people that you care about go through such pain! It's absolutely devasting! It hits you like a brick in the face....just sucks the breath right out of your chest and leaves you broken and hanging speechless! A dense "fog" covers everything thing as your mind just starts begging for answers. I just DO NOT understand! A parent should never have to bury their child! Seeing the pain in their eyes and imagining the torture in their hearts. Watching them cry for the son they will never again be able to hug or say "I love you" to and for the young future which is lost. Holding them in your own embrace, weeping together in the loss of their precious child.

It. Is. Heartbreaking!

It takes your heart and it crushes it! It. crushes. it! And it makes you crumble to the floor. It doesn't seem real. It isn't right. It isn't fair. As a parent, it's the worst thing you could ever imagine. Everyday you wake up just thinking that you will wake up from this nightmare and everyday you wake up and are faced with this same horrible reality.

BUT...

what is the most humbling thing in the world is to stand with them in this tragedy, as they worship the God who has given us freedom over death. The same parents who were "robbed" of a son, just days later stand before us in awe and reverance of the one who gave His life for us. When we should be there holding them up....they are reaching back with the resounding message that "God is good; all the time"! They can stand because they have assurance that their boy is sitting in the presence of Jesus today! Praise the Lord He lives! Death isn't the end, evil will not prevail. What a strong message to send and to preach it through the mourning, in hopes that through his death another can be saved! Praise God that we have a choice in this life and I pray that if you don't know Jesus, that you seek Him. Hug your children! Tell the people that you love, that you love them. What if....YOUR words are the only ones they hear?? What if...no one else is bold enough to say it? Don't leave your words unspoken because you are ashamed at what someone might think. Because when you get the courage, it might be to late!
http://youtu.be/6TifjgRgs5U

Evan

Evan is just fine but will be having surgery at the end of August. They say this will be harder on us than it will be on him. As tough as it will be to watch him go through this, we trust that God is with him and will be there beside him, protecting him, when we can't! So thankful for an otherwise healthy little boy and all that he brings to our family! A HUGE thank you, for your prayers for Evan!

Our prayer would be that God would bring peace to all the those children and their families that struggle with horrible disease and sickness everyday!

Thank you,

Josh & Mary

Not letting the "Fear of the Unknown" cripple me!

An e-mail that I sent out to family regarding Evan.
I thought you might want to read exactly what it is we are going to be evulated for on thursday. Please keep us in your prayers thursday...there is no easy way to walk into this! It's downright terrifying to have to even consider that you might have to put your child through anything! Just ignoring it, has been the only way I/we have managed to get through the last 4 weeks without dwelling on the "what if's". Trying to stay as busy as possible this week to keep my mind off it.
Four weeks ago, I took Evan for his 18 month Dr appt. Well to get straight to the point, he has a condition called Hydrocele, and it basically means he has fluid on his testicle that should not be there. Although it is not always swollen or inflated, as it was that day, it could indicate an underlying problem or more commonly, the need for a surgical repair to close it. You can Google this, and come up with a whole bunch of stuff that will freak you out, but I wouldn't suggest doing it! The short end of it is that, as many as half of little boys are born with an opening that hasn't closed and it allows fluid to pass through, resulting in a fluid build up and a swollen testicle. Most will close up by a year, Evan's didn't. So, on June 30 @ 2:00 we are headed to Penn State Children's Hospital in Hershey to see a pediatric surgeon. (yep when I heard the Dr. say Evan followed by Pediatric surgeon in the same sentence, my heart felt like it was going to pop out of my chest too!!)
There is SO much information out there....but we are making a choice not to focus on ANY of it, until we see that Doctor in Hershey. We aren't even going to talk about it, until we know more! His Ped. assured this worried Mama that they will not do anything invasive or otherwise on that day. He is simply going in to be evaluated. We don't want to alarm anyone, but we just wanted to let you know so that you might be in prayer for Evan before we head to that appt. You can join with us by praying that the opening closes and that any/and all resulting issues or underlying problems, self correct before we get there!!! Please Lord let this be the case and let us close the book on this as quickly as possible!!! Also for Josh & I, or me in particular, to remain calm and not dwell on it!! It's scary to think about, that's why we aren't. We know that God is in control - just a little hard to stay calm when it's your child they are talking about!! Thank you Lord for entrusting us with Evan and for the joy that he brings into our lives!

Fall 2010

Josh joined Evan and I for a hike today. We had a great time in the woods....Riley can hardley stand still long enough for the pictures. What another BEAUTIFUL fall day - LOVING this weather and don't want it to end!
On another note, teething is BRUTAL for Evan and making him feel just terrible - Poor baby!!




And here is the rest of my harvest for the year. I potted a few things to bring inside - mint, chives and I left my scallions and some of the bell and banana pepper plants up....maybe I can get a another week? We tore out the rest of the garden =( So sad to see summer go this year!!! Making sweet potato fries for supper tonight with my huge sweet potatoes! Notice Evan helping me.....Showing me his animal cracker...he pulls on my shirt when he needs another one!

Here we GO!!!!!!

It has been a crazy couple months...but what else is new? Here were are ready to leave for vacation and NOW I find a few minutes to put it in writing. Ridiculous?

Anyway....before we broke ground last year, we went to OBX. This year, as we are wrapping things up...(hahaha) or living here at least, it feels like we are at least closing this chapter of the book and we are ending it with another trip to OBX (one of the best places on earth to relax, at least that we can afford). We are so ready to relax....I can't even begin to describe. Having our first child and building a house (and all the financial stress that involves), moving three times and put them all into a nine month 9 span...and what you get is an emotional hurricane! By the grace of God we pulled through this, still standing - barely, but humbled beyond belief. I could write forever about all this, but I won't. I will just say that God didn't just open one door for us.....he opened quite a few, all at once and continues opening them leading us down more paths then I ever imagined. It's nerve wracking - and I am trying to get better at just focusing on one day at a time.....but that is SO hard.

Since May we have got half the siding up on the house, all the interior doors and hardware on, cut up 12 cords of firewood to heat this joint, put all the porch columns and railing on the porch, and a host of other things that I can't even think about. Josh has been AMAZING this year and pushed though more than he thought he EVER could! I am deeply inspired by his motivation and his desire to give us a home here!

Evan learned to crawl, stand, feed himself, talk baby talk, PLAY, and he took his first step the day after he turned 9 months old. He is an amazing little person to and I cherish everyday with him!!! He has just been such a beautiful addition to our family and we are just so in love with him!

So here we go, in less than 24 hours...to spend our first week together as a family - I couldn't be any more ready then I am RIGHT NOW - I don't even care that I didn't pack yet!
Thank you God for giving us this time together!!!!!