Camping

 

We took our 2nd annual camping trip to Fort DeSoto last weekend. We went about this time last year with the same crew. There are four families and two campsites. We didn't have as good of a location (on the campgrounds) but we had a great trip! There was biking, playing, eating, kayaking and s'mores...can't forget the s'mores!

 

Most of us rode our bikes out to the fort on Saturday morning. Some of the guys went fishing and John couldn't ride due to a leg injury. After exploring the fort we walked the beach to the pier. We were greeted there by dolphins! There were several of them swimming around the pier, it was pretty cool.

 

 

Later that afternoon we took turns taking the kayaks out and came across two playful dolphins. They were swimming all around us, it was awesome!

 

 

This is not a very good video as it was hard to catch them in action. You never knew where they were going to pop up!

 

We didn't get a great sunset but we were thankful for great weather our entire trip. It would have been nice if it was a little cooler but I was just happy it never rained.

 

 

Addie stayed home with Grandma and Papa again this year. I think she would have had fun but I'm sure she enjoyed the undivided attention from her grandparents. They even took her to gymnastics Saturday morning. She loves it when she has a crowd :) We will definitely include her next year though. We're going to need a bigger tent!

 

You can view all of our camping pictures here.

 

 



Weekend Recap

 

We hung out with our Carlton crew Friday night. Loren had fun Halloween activities planned so the kids all wore their costumes. Connor, Reid and Finn were all red Power Rangers this year. They had a blast bobbing for apples, decorating cupcakes and playing of course!! It's nice now that they are all in the same classes together. Reid, Finn and Connor are together and their siblings Brody, Blaise and Addie are in the same class together too! We were there late as the adults were having a good time too :) 

 

Addie started gymnastics back up again last weekend. She was a very happy girl :) Connor's t-ball game got rained out and unfortunately he won't have any more games this season. They scheduled the make up game for this weekend but we will be out of town :(

 

We took advantage of the gorgeous day we had on Sunday by taking a trip to Busch Gardens. We couldn't have asked for a better day and apparently the animals agreed! We saw more animals than we normally do. We saw cheetahs, a hippo swimming, giraffes, zebras and antelops just to name a few! 

Connor was excited to finally be tall enough to ride the bumper cars!

 

they have already started decorating for Christmas...the kids wanted pictures in front of each colored tree :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Halloween

 

The kids had a blast on Halloween. The festivities started at 9 am at school. Connor's VPK class opened up the celebration with their 'Good Morning' song (video below). This was followed by the traditional parade of costumes. This year they also had balloon animals and face painting. The balloon artist thought a pretty rose for the pretty princess was in order so Addie got a rose. Connor decided he wanted a flower too, at least she made it a masculine blue and green one :p The kids then broke off into their respective rooms for class parties. We said goodbye to Addie and made our way to Connor's class for their special surprise performance (they rehearsed all week!). They sang us another song and then held a costume contest for the parents. That's right, the adults had to dress up! His teacher explained that they had been learning about voting so this was their chance to practice and see voting in action. It was cute, the kids raised their hands for their favorite costume (though most raised their hands more than once :)). My Spelling Bee costume came in second, behind Megazord Firestorm from Power Rangers. I was proud of my homemade costume! A coworker gave me the idea and it was super easy. They then moved into party mode with various activities to do like decorating pumpkins, and eating of course.

 

 

 

That evening we headed out for trick-or-treating. Aunt Nancy, our other 'baby', joined us. The kids had fun but I was a little surprised that there weren't more people out. A good majority of the houses just left out a bowl of candy (as did we since we were out trick-or-treating). We returned home to half a bowl of candy so we couldn't have had too many trick-or-treaters. It was nice to finally go out in our own neighborhood though and good to meet more of our neighbors. 

 

Our camera has been on the fritz for several weeks now so we didn't get many good pictures this year. It's in the shop being repaired but sadly, we missed all the fun 'Fall' photo ops this year. Thankfully we still have our phones! You can view more pictures here. 

Happy Halloween!!

 

 

 

**My videos don't appear to be uploading....I'll keep working on it!**