Just The Mays Family: Apple Festival and Princess

Last Sunday we went to the Ellijay Apple Festival. I gotta admit, the festival itself wasn't a ton of fun. Last year they had like 4 booths with art projects for kids. This year they had one, and then a ton of inflatables. I am sorry, I am not paying $2.00 for Samantha to go down a slide-ONCE! I will take her to Pump It Up later and she can ride down the slide until her heart is content. Anyway, so all Sam got to do was make a candle. Needless to say, she got bored quick, which turned into grumpy. So we left and went to BJ Reece Apple Orchard. Once we found some apples-They were seriously almost out of apples.-it was fun. Samantha enjoyed picking them. (She has been looking forward to this since last year!) It was neat, but the part I am looking forward to is baking with them. We always make an apple pie and cobbler for Thanksgiving and freeze them. After that, we got to go to the petting zoo there and go on a 15 minute hay ride. Those were both a lot of fun too. We went to dinner at some small BBQ place. We had all been craving a BBQ baked potato. And then went to Starbucks to visit. When Starbucks closed, we went to Waffle House and stayed there until 1:30 (AM). (We were with my Dad.) And we didn't get home until 2:45 in the morning. (We left at 7:30 that morning! So we were gone like 19 hours.)

On the way home it was storming, so all the windows were up, and Sam was sleeping, which was great for me, because Jessie and I had opportunity to have a REAL conversation! Uninterrupted! It was mostly about a newscast we saw earlier about a Meningitis outbreak and about the election. We discussed the positive and negative about both parties, and I told Jessie that I will not choose Obama, PERIOD. (Not that he was going to vote for him.) Simply because in the short time since he has passed the law for Pregnancy Medicaid to pay for abortions, the statistics have gone from 1 in 3 women to 1 in 2! So we discussed that some. And we talked about Rob Bell's book, "Love Wins." Very eye opening book. It makes you want to research for yourself. It is his views on Heaven and Hell based on what he has read in the Bible. He provided proofs for the reason he sees things the way he does. He sees the Bible as a unit, not in pieces. It is just a great book. Not sure how else to explain it. Jessie is thinking of reading it. I also purchased another book by him called, "Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith." I am not that far into it. Just started it. So not sure what I think of it yet. Anyway, it was just-nice, to have a conversation with Jessie, a real, serious conversation, not just about what we did today or Samantha rambling off the same stuff over and over. Makes me miss our dates. I don't care how much money we have this paycheck, we are going on a date soon, even if we just go walk through a park and eat at Taco Bell. Sorry, I got to rambling about our conversation. I was just so excited.

Anyway, on to the second batch of news....We got us a cat....Yep, they tricked me. For years, I have been saying no animals because we weren't allowed to at the apartment, without like a $500.00 deposit or something. (I didn't tell him we could do a deposit.) Anyway, so now that we are in the house, we agreed to let Sam have a cat. (That was our only option because we are not good with caged animals. We forget to get them out and give them attention, and most of them are boring anyway. lol And no dog will be in my house, but we have no fence out back.) ANYWAY, so Jessie and I had a deal where we were going to do one of two things, 1. Get her a cat for Christmas. or 2. Get her a cat once I finally get pregnant. We were going to take her out and make a big deal about how she is going to be a big sister AND she will have her own cat to take care of. We were going to take her out to shop for cat items and everything. I thought it would make it easier for her to get used to the idea. (She acts excited now, but I just don't see her being totally happy once we are talking about baby stuff a lot.) But it doesn't matter, they ruined my cute idea. lol We were out walking last night and this cat is following us around outside and Jessie and Sam BEGGED to keep it. It was really cute and it just loved Samantha, so we asked everyone around if it was theirs, and they all said no, so we brought it in.

Then we made a late run to WalMart because I did not want that cat scratching on my furniture at night. We got a few cheap things, something for it to scratch on, a toy, then a bowl and litter box, and food. We only spent $10.00 on everything. I told Jessie that Sam and I will either decorate everything because it is so plain, or I am going to order a cute bowl and such off of Etsy. They have some adorable, personalized ones with fake diamonds. That would be fitting since Sam named her PRINCESS!

We decided to let it get familiar with the house, and it took right to it! First of all, it has not used my floor as it's litter box-yet. Second, it has not scratched anything! And third, it slept with Samantha ALL NIGHT last night! When I was putting Sam to bed, she kept asking for the cat to sleep with her, and I told her that she is just now getting used to the house, and not to expect it tonight, that maybe she would later on. Next thing I know, it jumps up on the bed and curls up in her Boppy! So they slept together, which helped Sam get to sleep and stay asleep in her bed.

I really hope it wasn't someone's cat. It didn't have a collar. Nobody knew who it belonged to. And it was just running around outside in the cold, so we took it. Right now it is curled up beside me. I really like this cat.

Third thing, Jessie is having a Halloween party with his friends this weekend, so he has been working outside a lot. He finally did one last law mowing for this season. And him and his friend, Josh, cleaned out a bunch of brush on one side of the house, and now we have a ton more yard. And since we own about an acre of land, it extends way out into some woods, so Jessie is going to clear out a trail for us to walk down and explore. And then he is going to put a bench at the end so we can sit and let Sam play. It won't be super long, but I thought it would be neat.

Number four, we have been doing more Fall activities lately. We made sugar cookies that I was very proud of this year. Idk if ya'll remember when we lived in the apartment, we made Fall sugar cookies and they burnt. I have not attempted cookies since then until now. We also did some acorn math activities I found on Pinterest. She has been obsessed with the acorns in the back yard, so I found an activity for them. One was writing down numbers with chalk and counting out the correct number of acorns for each number. The other was small, medium, large. There was a venn diagram activity, but I render that activity pointless, and then we did a number maze also. No acorns for that. Just used it for counting.

That s about it for us. Although, I cannot wait to take Sam Trick or Treating! And after that means the REAL holidays are coming up. I am not a huge Halloween fan, but Thanksgiving and Christmas, for sure! The nice weather, the time with family, cooking a big meal, the shopping, the smell of a real Christmas tree. Heck-going to pick out the Christmas tree and family ornaments. Gosh, I am excited!