Friday Favorites: Amazon Tour Week

We had a pretty good week despite 4 days of rain!  We managed to squeeze in some hiking, a fun field trip, and my husband and I also had a COUPLE of dates-- as in more than one!  How was your week?



Alec and I were out of the house nice and early on Friday for his annual physical.  As soon as we finished up at the doctor's office we headed home, picked up his brothers and headed out to meet up with our friends for a hike.  We had beautiful weather and a wonderful day catching up with friends we only get to see a few times a year. Funny enough we hiked this exact same trail last year on Halloween. We found the squirrels and chipmunks were so cute and playful while storing up nuts for the winter.  The boys played Bears Vs. Babies (a card game from the makers of Exploding Kittens) and had a ball!



The colors were just stunning!






I ran a bunch of errands Saturday morning and Alec began a baking marathon.  Making cupcakes, piping chocolate "legs" (explained later in the post I promise!), and candy corn blondies.  I worked on a Christmas craft in the afternoon making a really cute candy cane wreath from Dollar Tree supplies (the finished product will be shared on the blog Nov. 11th)!  Later in the afternoon my husband and I headed out shopping and to dinner.  We ended up at two different malls before we found everything we needed; a funeral appropriate outfit and shoes for the both of us.  We ate dinner at TGI Friday's and splurged with a brownie sundae!  It was delicious.



Sunday morning it was pretty rainy and dreary but my husband owns a small hydroelectric plant and part of the "fun" of owning one in New England in the fall is getting to rake leaves out of the grates a few times a day.  He offered breakfast out for anyone that wanted to help him-- turns out it was just me!  After a delicious cinnamon apple pancake breakfast we headed out to rake.  I'm not strong enough to run the BIG rake for the grates but I do help push all the leaves and sticks we rake out of the grates back into the river (we pull out any garbage and throw that away).  Luckily he lent me his raincoat as it began pouring by the time we were done.


Once home I spent the afternoon letting the hem down in Alec's karate pants-- he's grown 4" in the past year and I am forever buying him new clothes but he is due to go up in belt level soon and will need all new uniforms then and I'm trying to make this one last until then.  Alec worked on putting together his spider cupcakes.  He piped spiderwebs on each cupcake, used two different sized M&M's for the bodies and painstakingly put 8 legs on each spider-- all 24 cupcakes!





I was up bright and early on Monday and managed to squeeze in a Pilates workout and clean the bathroom before starting school with the boys.  We finished up all the schoolwork in time for lunch and then headed out to a new hiking place to meet up with our hiking group.  We ended up getting a little lost and our hour hike turned into two.  Luckily it was a beautiful day so I didn't mind at all!  There is an old abandoned mine and we found so many salamanders out and about in the rainy, muddy leaves.






Alec had his homeschool karate class and Halloween party on Tuesday.  Once home we finished up our schoolwork for the day and since it was rainy, I let them watch TV the whole day.  The younger boys watched Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix while Ian decided to buy the latest season of Alaska the Last Frontier and start watching that.  Around dinnertime  I headed out to meet with the photographer and pick out our favorite shots from or photo shoot; they should be ready in under 3 weeks and I can't wait!  They came out soo good (and I typically hate any phots of me!).  We ended our night with a scrumptious bowl of hamburger soup.




Alec had an orthodontic checkup bright and early on Wednesday morning and then we had an unexpected doctor's appointment with Ian.  We thought he might have Lyme disease after he noticed a bite on his leg Monday night that began swelling along with feeling just overall icky.  Lyme is so prevalent in our area that it's one of the first things we suspect; thankfully the doctor is fairly confident that he does not have Lyme.  My mom came over in the afternoon for a visit and then Alec and I ran out to the library and a few other errands.

The boys and I were up bright and early on Thursday. We had an appointment to tour our local Amazon fulfillment center.  Sadly pictures aren't allowed inside but we were so glad we got to see how it all works!  Ours is the only center in the United States that is called a Non-sortable center (there are 6 types of distribution centers and you can read about them here).  Basically for us this meant that our center doesn't work with small items and does not have the use of robots but rather lots of small fork lifts and other lifts they use to "pick" the items out of the "bins" for shipping.  We were really impressed with both the facility and Amazon's employment practices (as told to us by their employees).  After our tour we headed to lunch at Longhorn and ended our day with a viewing of Hocus Pocus and eating some sugary snacks.



The centers are named after the nearest major airport so our local one is called Bos7 





Comments

  1. My brother works for Amazon and it is always interesting to hear him talk about him putting the items in the bins and all the walking he does. Looks like you had a really busy week. Thankfully this week was quieter here but with the cold snap not sure how many hikes we will be doing. I feel like we kind of have missed fall with temps in the 90s at the beginning of the month, lots of rain and now 32 this morning!
    www.chezmireillefashiontravelmom.com

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh wow; 32 is cold! We've had a few chilly mornings but thankfully it still warms up nicely most days.

      Delete
  2. We have several Amazon Fulfillment centers near our home. I love this idea, I need to check into whether we can take a field trip with some of our co-op friends!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We were encouraged to make group tour reservations; they said they've had church groups, boys and girls scouts, etc. I was thinking it would be fun to make a homeschool field trip but most of our friends either don't drive that far or have young kids and I think 6 was the cutoff for being able to go on the tour.

      Delete
  3. My kids would love seeing the Amazon center. I don't think we have any nearby though. I can't get over your fall leaves!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks! It was really neat and the boys already asked if we could check and see if we could find a small sorting center on one of our family trips so we could compare the two different ways they run these fulfillment centers.

      Delete
  4. Such great pictures. Loving all those beautiful fall views! The cupcakes look so fun and I'm sure were delicious too! How fun that you got to tour Amazon!
    Ellibelle's Corner

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you! Those cupcakes were delicious and the Amazon tour was a lot of fun.

      Delete
  5. I'm so glad you liked the Amazon tour. I really learned a lot when we visited this summer!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It was great! We learned a lot too and I already thought I knew quite a bit about their process to begin with.

      Delete
  6. Sounds like a great week! The fall colors on your hike are just beautiful! Here in Virginia it has still been so warm that the trees have just barely started changing colors.
    Those spider cupcakes look great! And how fun you were able to tour an Amazon fulfillment center! I had no idea they did tours!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The center near us just started doing tours this year and they're working hard to get the word out about them. We actually had a huge storm rip through are area last night and now most of the trees are bare. I miss all those beautiful colors already.

      Delete
    2. What beautiful colors on those trees!! We had that last week here. My son is a black belt in karate, he just loves it!

      Carrie
      curlycraftymom.com

      Delete
    3. We had beautiful colors this year. I'm not sure if my son will make it to black belt or not since we're not sure how well it will fit into his high school schedule but we sure are going to try.

      Delete
  7. The autumnal colors there are spectacular! There is no place that has more beautiful fall foliage than New England. It's so nice you can hike through that and enjoy it as a family! Colorado's fall was beautiful but short this year, as we had an early frost and then snow 3 times in October! I think we broke a weather record.

    Your Halloween cupcakes were so cool, and so was being able to tour an Amazon fulfillment facility!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh I am so thankful we have not had snow yet! I love fall and am always so sad those years it's cut short.

      Delete
  8. You always do the most interesting things as part of your children's education. Great field trip to Amazon! Those cupcakes are just adorable. Wish I had someone around here who liked to back candy corn blondies and cupcakes. Or maybe I don't as I would soon eat my way out of my clothes!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Aw, thank you! I do try really hard to give away most of our baked goods so I don't eat them all and did really well this week just eating two cupcakes and NO Halloween candy!

      Delete
  9. Love the cupcakes. Beautiful.
    www.rsrue.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I had to applaud his patience as I would never have picked something so intricate. He did a great job though.

      Delete
  10. You are one busy momma! What a fun week. The fall colors are gorgeous.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Thank you for sharing at #OverTheMoon. Pinned and shared. Have a lovely week. I hope to see you at next week’s party too!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Those spider cupcakes are super cute. Love the nature pics.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Favorite TV Shows Growing Up in the 80's and early 90's

Dollar Store Candy Cane Wreath

Things That Make Me Laugh

What's Up Wednesday in November

Share Our Lives-- Where I Shop