Last weekend we took a road trip down to North Carolina to visit Grandpa and Grammy on their farm. The G’rents had tons of activities planned for the weekend, so be warned, this is a long post!

Part One: Harper Makes a Halloween Cake
Grammy had a special cooking project for Harper: making a Halloween cake! Grammy apparently has a lot more patience in the kitchen than Mommy, because she let Harper literally do every single step by herself. Harper got to smear butter in the pan, shake flour over it, stir all the ingredients, pour the batter in the pan, ice the cake and decorate it by herself. She took her job very seriously and had so much fun doing it. She also made sure to sing her “mixing song” at the appropriate moments. We have no idea where she learned it, but we suspect that she made it up herself. It goes “Mixing up, ay-oh! ay-oh! Mixing up, ay-oh! ay-oh!” 

Part Two: Grandpa Takes Harper on a Gator Ride
While the cake was baking, Grandpa took Harper for a ride on the Gator (Roman was napping and missed the fun). Harper has been talking about the Gator (“dat green fing”) since our last trip to the farm, and was not about to miss a ride this time. Grandpa’s puppy, Sky, also likes to ride on the Gator, so the three of them took a tour of the farm:

Part Three: The NC State Fair
Portman’s real motivation for taking this trip was to visit the NC State Fair. I have been talking about how huge it is for years and he never believed me… until this weekend. After feasting on a disgusting amount of deep fried food, he declared that it was “the best day of his life.” Oh, and the kids had fun too! They got to see lots of cool animals, hold baby chicks, and Harper got to go on lots of fun rides. Roman passed out for over three hours at the fair and missed most of the rides and food. Shhh, don’t tell him.
Bacon and cheese hot dogs:

Grilled corn on the cob (we had to buy him two whole ears):
 
Holding the baby chicks:
 
Gross, gross, and more gross:

Harper rode a roller coaster all by herself!
 
Trying to win a goldfish:

Part Four: Grandpa and Harper Make a Scarecrow
While I drove into town to have breakfast with an old friend, Grandpa and Harper made a big scarecrow in the workshop. Daddy took a long video of the event, so we will post that as soon as we get a chance to edit it. Here’s a photo of the final product:

Part Five: Harper Makes “Music” in the Pond
Harper loves to take walks to the pond when we are at the farm, and this time she discovered that acorns and walnuts make really cool sounds when you toss them into the water. We spent lots of time collecting treasures and tossing them off the dock. Some of them can “swim” (walnuts), but some of them sink. It’s all very exciting!
After all of our fun, we were SO happy to come home on Monday. We had a great time, but it is a heck of a lot easier to be at home! We are starting to realize why large families don’t travel much. Roman is a terrible sleeper on the road, and was up for several hours both nights that we were gone (which is also why he napped through most of the weekend fun). We love being at home where we have everything we need, everyone is in their own bed, and it is entirely child-proofed!