Pumpkins, cupcakes & chili

Presenting...the Korey family pumpkin, "The Friendly Monster":

Sarah was kind enough to send a picture from Emma's birthday cupcake celebration at her house on Tuesday. One more pic of the birthday girl...
And we are also proud to announce that Amanda's White Chicken Chili has been renamed Amanda's Award-Winning White Chicken Chili! Tim's office had a chili cook-off today, so we submitted our favorite recipe for the contest. (Well, mine...Tim doesn't eat beans.) Ours was voted the best of all 12 entries. Since I put all of the ingredients together and Tim had to plug the crock pot in at his office, add the cheese at the end, and stir, we are calling this a group effort. Here is Tim, proudly accepting the award:
Trick or treating tomorrow, rain or shine. Pics to follow, as usual. Happy Halloween!

Three years old

Emma officially turned 3 years old at 1:30 yesterday afternoon. Hard to believe that much time has flown by so quickly!

We started off the day with a trip to the doctor's office for her 3 year checkup. She weighs 30lbs and stands 36" tall, which is just about average (a tiny bit on the small side) for her age. Dr. Dewling complimented her on being such a cooperative patient -- apparently not common at age 3 -- and said that we have an "amazing" little girl. Of course, we could have told her that! Emma was a super-trooper when she got her flu shot and didn't even flinch or shed a single tear. Not what I expected at all! We left the office with smiles on our faces, a "Birthday Kid" sticker on her shirt, and a Halloween eraser from the prize chest. Quite a successful morning!

Because she was such a fantastic patient, we stopped at the store on the way home and she got to pick her very own birthday balloon. No one should be surprised to learn that she chose the Dora balloon!

It was such a nice day that we met some friends at the playground in the afternoon. The kids climbed, ran around, went down the slides, rode in the swings, and we even saw a heron down by the neighborhood lake. It was a lovely fall afternoon to be outside.

Emma had Cooper & his family over for her special birthday dinner of mac & cheese and pizza. After dinner, she opened the rest of her birthday presents. Cooper kept a close eye on the action.Grandpa H called to tell Emma happy birthday while we were opening gifts, so Emma took a break to chat for a minute.

She got a bunch of really great stuff, but the crowd favorite so far has been the Dora cell phone from Great Aunt Dee Dee & Great Uncle Ken. For the first time ever, I had to utter the words, "Emma, please don't use your cell phone at the table." Certainly won't be the last time I say that! (Notice also that she is holding the mouth part to her ear and the ear part is on top of her head...guess she still needs a little more practice...)One last birthday wish...

Farmhouse birthday bash

Last Saturday was the big birthday party for Emma and her friends Cooper & Macy at the Farmhouse In The City. We knew as soon as we picked the cakes up on Friday night that this was going to be something special. Look at these (completely edible) works of art!

Cooper and Macy both live on our street, so the kids all have a bunch of the same little friends. We invited some of our own special friends too, like Audrey, Jonah, and Asher.



To start off, Miss Robin showed the kids to the dress-up room, which was full of clothes -- mostly for girls, but there was a small corner of boys' clothes too. Emma found a pink tiara and a pair of fairy wings, and Cooper was nice enough to find her a pretty pink horsey to hold while he rode on a brown one.
After dress-up, the kids picked their own pumpkins and a piece of pottery and decorated them with paint & glitter. This is right up Emma's alley, and she was definitely in her element.
After painting, we went outside to pet the chickens.
I couldn't believe it, but Emma actually reached out and pet the chicken several times all by herself!
Then Miss Robin announced that the birthday fairies had left lots of birthday treasures on the farm. The kids each got a goody bag and went around on a scavenger hunt searching for treasures from the fairies. Emma had some company as she searched:
(Not sure why this one picture keeps coming out so small...sorry!)



Finally, it was time for snacks and cake. Given her past birthday history, I wasn't sure how Emma would handle being sung to by a large group of people, but again she surprised me and did just fine.

Turns out those farm cakes were not only cute, but yummy too!



Emma was so happy to have lots of family there to help us celebrate.



Tim has posted way more pictures (104 total) on his Flickr page. As usual, he got some really great ones! Click here to see them.



The celebration continues this week: Today we took cupcakes to Sarah's house so that Emma could celebrate with her friends there. Tomorrow, the actual Big Day, we start off with a trip to the doctor for her 3-year check-up. It will sure be interesting to see how she's measuring up these days. Then tomorrow night we'll open the rest of Emma's presents and have a special birthday dinner with two of Emma's favorite things -- mac & cheese and pizza!



Of course this weekend is Halloween, so there will be more celebrating on Friday and Saturday. The last week of October is never a dull one in this house!

Fun at the fair

Last Friday night was drizzly and chilly, but we braved the elements and headed to the Cumming Country Fair for Emma's first fair/carnival experience. It helps that the fairgrounds are only about 15 minutes from our house, so it's not like we had to make a long trip to get there and back.

Emma was in awe pretty much the whole time we were there. She wanted to ride on everything, even after we tried to explain to her that she was too short for most of the rides. She was convinced that she could handle riding the up & down bumblebees or the little caterpillar roller coaster all by herself without crying. If you know Emma at all, you know that this is not a very likely scenario! We'll never know for sure because she didn't get the chance. We did, however, let her ride (accompanied) on the merry-go-round. She absolutely LOVED it, but she couldn't understand why it started to slow down after awhile. Once she pieced together that stopping meant the ride was over, we were in for a serious meltdown. Poor girl. Fortunately, the promise of funnel cakes covered in powdered sugar was enough to get her past the moment.

There are a bunch of pictures here -- that's the same photo album as last time, just scoot past the pumpkin farm pictures to page 3, where the fair ones start.

We realized recently that posting the pictures here or on Facebook doesn't convey the great quality of the new camera, since you can't see the large versions. For this, Tim has created a Flickr account where he posts nice large versions of some of the best pictures, including some I haven't even put up here. Check often, as he is adding new pics all the time! Here is the link. (Hint: when you go there for the first time, add it to your Favorites so you can pull it up easily next time.) If you already have a Flickr account or register for one (it's free), you can even make comments on the pictures.

The rest of our weekend was fairly uneventful, until we got to church on Sunday morning and found out that Emma's Sunday School class would be performing a song in the late service. Seeing as how she has never stood in front of a large crowd before, much less while being expected to sing and dance, I was skeptical about how she would handle it. To my -- and Grandma H's and Great Aunt Martha's -- surprise, she did great! She didn't sing, but after the first minute or so, she actually started doing some of the little motions. It was so cute! Aunt Martha caught a few seconds of video on her phone, but it's tiny and hard to see any details. I'll try uploading it soon and you all can see Emma's first musical performance for yourselves. Aunt Martha & I both cautioned Emma that if she keeps this up, Grandma H will have her signed up for the church choir before she knows it...

This week we're getting ready for Saturday's big birthday bash. Something tells me we'll have more than a few pictures to share!

Pumpkins & waterfalls

We took a trip up to Dawsonville to visit Burt's Pumpkin Farm and Amicalola Falls on Saturday morning. We were worried that we might get rained out, but the rain held off and the cloudy skies (not to mention a certain college football game we aren't talking about) kept the crowds away, so we ended up with a perfect morning of fall activities!Emma had a really hard time choosing her pumpkin, but she ended up with a great one. Those of you who know how particular she is can understand what a long, drawn-out process it was! She also enjoyed the hayride through the pumpkin patch. And Daddy enjoyed taking some great pictures with his new camera.

Three pumpkins and a loaf of pumpkin bread later, we drove down the road to Amicalola Falls to see the waterfalls. ("Just like by Grandma & Grandpa K's house," as Emma says...although we tried to explain to her that this one was MUCH bigger!) Tim got some great shots of the water, the leaves, and the beautiful views.

We're having some technical difficulties loading pictures today, but you can see a bunch of great pictures from our morning by clicking here.

We are going to try and get over the the Cumming Country Fair sometime this week, so hopefully we'll have some more pictures to share soon.

Scarecrows

Fall is finally here! In order to celebrate, we headed into downtown Alpharetta for the Scarecrow Harvest festival on Saturay. A bunch of local elementary school classes submit scarecrows which are judged and then put up along the streets of town for the rest of the month. We had a great time looking at all of the scarecrows, listening to live music, walking through the farmer's market (where we bought a wonderful tomato that made a yummy caprese salad later that night), and -- Emma's favorite -- doing the children's art projects.

Emma made a little scarecrow and also a fall-themed door hanger:A couple of the scarecrows around town:
On the way home, we decided it was time to pick up our own scarecrow for the front yard, along with some other decorations.

Today we scoped out the place where Emma will be having her birthday party in a few weeks. Between the art projects, the dress-up clothes, the scavenger hunt, the bunnies & chickens, and - of course - birthday cake, I think the kids will have a blast!

In other exciting news, we got a brand new camera yesterday. Daddy's been taking pictures pretty much non-stop since then, and he's gotten some really nice shots. Here's one of our faves: (click to see full-size) You can see more random pictures here.