Sept/Oct 2018 Recap & Catch Up ~ We're the Baldwin's!

It feels like I should have written this post soooo long ago because here we are almost 3 months after the fact and my calendar says we didn't do much but I know I was swamped at the time!

September started out fun with my dad visiting for the last week of August through Labor Day weekend. Usually we're just a couple beach bums whenever he's here and this trip was no different We spent lots of time at different beaches with "Poppy" and Tatum had her first pony ride at the Oldsmar City Festival! My dad treated Brian, Tatum, and I to a day at Adventure Island Water Park when Brian had a random Friday off and Tatum loved it!

I coordinated a cultural potluck social at church and it went off beautifully! Sooo many yummy foods from all over the world. We have a very diverse melting pot at church which made the event turn out wonderfully. Brazil, Philippines, Hawaii, Great Britain, France, Italy, Albania, Kenya; it was awesome!

I landscaped our front yard by ripping out all the plants that had been there before and removing the white rocks. We bought new (low maintenance) plants and mulch and pavers and really cleaned up the house. (Pictures to come later with other remodeling)

We bought a new car and sold our Jeep to a friend from church for his daughter. We loved the car so much but it got terrible gas mileage and we decided it was better for our family car to be good on gas, so we bought a Hyundai Tucson! It feels so tech savvy compared to my Jeep and the gas mileage is more than double so it was definitely a smart decision... Gotta give Brian credit for that one!

Throughout the months, meetings with architects and the Clearwater Planning and Development office to approve our addition plans were sprinkled into every week it seems. We finally got the permits approved and in hand and it feels like one of the biggest accomplishments of 2018!

October came and we filled it full of autumn festivities. Brian and I took Tatum to Hunsader Farms down near Bradenton and we all had a great time! We let Tatum choose her own pumpkin to paint and enjoyed the fair food.

The next week, Tatum and I flew to my parents homes for a week and we used every spare second visiting friends and definitely made the most of our trip! We went to Summers Farm in Frederick, MD with my friend Brittney and her littles, Harper and Camden, where we played in corn pits and on hay slides, saw goats, took tractor train rides, and had too much fun. My oldest friend, Chelsea, got married on October 20th, and we got to see all my best friends from high school and some from college at her beautiful wedding. My mom and stepdad and I took Tatum to yet another pumpkin patch, her third of the season, at Orr's Farm Market. I would 1000% recommend Orr's to anyone and everyone. It's kind of in the middle of nowhere outside Martinsburg/Hedgesville, WV, but the prices were amazing and their activities were so cute! For $6 you could take a tractor ride through all the apple and peach orchards to the pumpkin patch where you could choose your own pumpkin and they had other games and things to do. Tatum picked herself out another pumpkin that she painted with her Mom Mom and Pop Pop while the adults carved ours that evening. My other friend Brittany brought her little, Boston, over that week and we got some more fun little friend play before we headed back to my dad and stepmoms to fly home to Florida.

Once back in Florida, we had a few days and our church Halloween party before my mom and stepdad came to see us for a week! My stepdad has his own contracting business and is going to help us do the renovation to this house, so despite having drawn all the plans for us for the architect without ever having seen the house, he wanted to see it before we started work on it! However, their time here was not down time this trip either. We painted our ugly duckling of a yellow house a beautiful light gray color and it only took us a few hours (less than 3)!! The next day, he built us a deck in our backyard and I'm already loving it! Sooooo nice to have space that's not just right into the dirt when you walk into the backyard. We did have a little fun while they were here, going to the Saturday Morning Farmer's Market in St. Pete and Tarpon Springs for yummy Greek food before ending the day at the beach! Mom and Joe gave Brian and I a much needed date night and we went to BJ's Restaurant and Brewhouse and caught a movie. They were also here for Halloween and got to take Tatum trick-or-treating with us and my cousin Joe and his family. Tatum really got into the spirit of things this year and it was so fun!