Foto Phriday - 10/19/12

This is my eighty-fourth Foto Phriday post. The pictures today are from Juliana's birthday party and the Apple Squeeze Festival. Full set with all 58 photos can be viewed here.

In the last Foto Phriday, I told you about how we celebrated Juliana's birth on her actually birthday, but we had her birthday party on the following Saturday. It was Disney/Pixar's Brave themed, so Bethany made this awesome birthday cake for her. Yep, that bow and arrow is made of fondant.

We were so lucky to have such nice weather for her party. Sun was out, I actually started sweating, and Bethany even got a little sunburn. We wanted to have the party outside, so it turned out perfect.

This was the main reason we wanted an outdoor party for Juliana. We borrowed an inflatable playground from someone and it ended up being a huge hit. The kids loved it. Here is James taking a head-first slide.

Doesn't matter what time it's at, food is a must at any party, so my mom was nice enough to get a bunch of Costco pizzas. As expected, the kids ate two bites and then went immediately back to playing.

We invited all of Julie's preschool class and plenty of them showed up. Got to meet a lot of the parents. All of them were very nice, but we seem to be the youngest parents.

We had a scavenger hunt for the kids to find their goodie bags, which included their own toy bow and arrow sets and snacks. Here is Emma and Rae Anne trying to figure out the next clue.


A video of singing Happy Birthday to Julie. Not sure why she was so frowny here. Probably just wanted to go back and play.

And then it was time to open presents. Julie got a ton more toys, but this seems to be her favorite. It's a collection of a bunch of My Little Pony toys.

I knew it was going to be darn near impossible to get all the kids together for a picture, so I didn't try. This was the best I got in a shot-notice basis.

The next day, we went to Steilacoom's Apple Squeeze festival. Steilacoom is a small town out by Tacoma and they have an event where you can press apples to make your own apple cider. It was very busy.

We wanted to do the apple pressing, but they ran out of apples, so we didn't get the chance. Seems like pretty poor planning. We'll have to try earlier next year, or just go to an apple farm and do it sometime.

They had a ton of different manually operated apple presses. Pretty interesting that there are so many different designs. There was even one motorized one, but that seems like cheating.

Here is where all the apple scraps go after squeezing.

They have an old drug store there that they have converted into a soda fountain shop and I got to use my antique preset on a lot of the shots I took in there. Loved how they turned out.

Here's one of the workers making some cream sodas.

Not sure if the soda fountain actually worked or not, but it was still neat looking.

With both of my girls at a viewpoint in Steilacoom.

Is that really what my hair looks like from the back? Yuck!

My good friend and co-worker Randy Torres kicked off his tour with Anberlin a couple weeks ago. They played at the Comcast Arena in Everett, opening for The Smashing Pumpkins. Was a huge Pumpkins fan back in the day, so I was excited to hear some of their old songs. I also really like Anberlin, even before I met Randy, so I just had to see them play, too. Got to watch the second half of the Pumpkins' set with most of Anberlin. That's the bassist on the left, next to the founder, president, and CEO of Tooth & Nail Records, Brandon Ebel. Andrew is peeking out there from behind and then Randy. Finally, me and the drummer from Anberlin. All of them were super nice guys and really fun to talk to.

I was giving Coral some tummy time on a blanket one night when she kept rolling herself over while pulling the blanket. She wrapped herself up pretty good into a little baby burrito. Had to get some shots of it. To see more pictures of her, the Apple Squeeze festival, and Julie's birthday, please view the full set.