In search of the perfect family picture, a museum and a party

Family pictures... where to begin?  When my sweet friend Sacha got married in May and her photographer began posting pictures I thought, wow, I love these, I want her to take pictures of our family.  I messaged the photographer in June and we planned to do pictures in October.

On July 30th we got together with another sweet friend of mine - this one a photographer herself, and she took some family photos.  I thought about cancelling the October shoot, but I really wanted some fall pictures and well, is it possible to have too many family photos?

Fast forward to today, the long awaited for shoot but we messed up.  We didn't get up early enough and the photographer didn't have time for us to be late (shocking).  We hustled as fast as we could, we were supposed to meet the photographer in Barrie at 9 a.m.  We left the house not knowing if it would all work out.  After a brief cell phone conversation with the photographer confirming that it just wouldn't work out, I decided that I wanted to see the location she had suggested and Ken obliged, so we drove up to Barrie anyway.

It was so cold this morning and so overcast and the outfits that I had put together - casual but all co-ordinated weren't meant to be covered up by jackets.   I almost called to cancel the night before when we saw the forecast, but I just hoped the forecast would be wrong.  That combined with the hope that we'll reschedule helped ease the pain of our lost session.

Even though there isn't one of the four of us all together we still had fun wandering around the train tracks and taking some pictures. I thought given Kate's train obsession a photo shoot by some train tracks would be awesome.

As we were driving to the train track location we drove past the Simcoe County Museum.  After taking some pictures we decided to check it out and as fate would have it, we got in for free thanks to "Doors Open Ontario".  The Museum is pretty awesome for a County Museum.  We all enjoyed it.  The indoor exhibits were good, but it was all the stuff outdoors that was awesome - lots of buildings and machines!
Kate kept calling the Long House a monster house... not sure how I felt about that.

Kate LOVES train trestles. 

Kate is looking at a train track.  There was a red button beside the window which made the train go around the track.

Kate who is used to trains moving was freaked out by the train, we kept telling her it wouldn't move...

Ken had to pick her up.

 

The school house was cute.

There was a cow on the chalkboard.

The fall colours are SO beautiful this year!

The bell beside the school was so loud, it scared all of us.

 

Have you ever seen a steam tractor?  

We both had to try out the penny-farthing.

Fun!

From there we went on to the "toy store" to buy a present for Cooper, then we had a gourmet lunch at McDonald's and then on to Keswick for Cooper's party.  Cooper turned three a few days ago.  His Mom Shawn is one of my friends from high school.  There are all of three people that I keep in touch with from high school and wouldn't you know that we all had babies within a year of each other.  So the party, Shawn threw Cooper an awesome garbage party, it was awesome.  Every time I go to an awesome theme party I think, eek, I'm never going to be able to do this.  I want to have cute parties for my kids, well maybe, if someone like Shawn helps me!  From the decorations, to the food, the food containers, the cupcakes, Shawn did it all and it was so great!

Me and Shawn!