Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving we went and visited Brother John and family in Virginia.

This is Brother John and his fam-damily.  

Brother John lives in a cool house and has lots of kids and animals so we always have a great time.  Not to mention John and Lynnie are pretty entertaining too.

Here is a close-up of what was going on up on the porch.  Grace was busy gathering all the leaves.

Brian and John supervised the frying of a turkey while Lynnie and her mom and sister supervised pretty much everything else.  I was in charge of crimping the pie crust and making a scavenger hunt to entertain the kiddos while the rest of the adults were busy.  Now you understand why I invited myself to their house.

This is the scavengers. I think they were a little tired after I made them scavenger up the long drive way twice, catch Trigger the horse to take a note off of its halter, visit the scary cellar and the cemetery and several other distant places.

Adam was too busy chasing chickens to be bothered with scavenging.

We actually got to break out some cool-weather clothes.

Grace enjoying the swing.

The day after Thanksgiving we hung out and the farm and rode the pony and horses.

Do you like the improvised lead rope rein?  I think Trigger is too old and tired to run any where.

Merry the horsewoman. Too bad both Brian and I took care of lots of animals in our youth, now we really never want animals. Except chickens, everyone loves chickens.

What a great place to store the children, in the animal feeder.
John and Brian are deep in conversation.
John says "I like cows, do you like cows?"
Brian says "Of course I like cows, red cows."

Cousin Ava demonstrating her goat riding skills or rather her goat dismounting skills.

 

On Saturday we visited the moon.   Okay, so only the Air and Space museum, Adam thought it was the moon.  Grace had a fear of going into any of the aircrafts, she thought they would randomly take off inside the building.

Jacob won a paper airplane contest.  His prize a green helio-twisty-thing-a-ma-bob. 

Next we ate some hot dogs and pretzels from a street vendor and then went and visited the Native American museum.  Adam and Grace practicing their basket weaving skills.

Merry, cousin Ava and Adam's head.

Brother John supervising Jacob and Nathan's crafting.  Some random people made our blog too.

We took a driving tour of some of the monuments, because it was too cold for my pregnant self to hike around the mall.

Then we went home.  All in all it was a great trip, maybe we will invite ourselves again next year.

12 years later

Happy 12th anniversary to us.

Halloween Preview

 Jacob as a ninja.  I think he just wanted the weapons to go with the costume.

 Grace as a princess.  She was the easiest this year as she wanted to wear a costume from our dress up box.

Merry as Little Red Riding hood.  She insisted her basket have real food in it.  I had to put a couple of loaves of pumpkin bread in the basket to get her to use it.

Adam was asleep so hopefully I remember to take a picture on Halloween.

Random October Stuff

Merry and Adam showing off their dance moves to the Cha-cha song- I have no idea what the real name is.

Grace watching from the stairs.

Halloween cookie making.

I think that is supposed to be a mummy in a coffin.

Grace with her owl.  She kept this for days because she said it was too cute to eat.  I finally had to throw it away.

Adam only licks the frosting off.

A group shot from the corn maze

Jacob loves to be in pictures.

Octoberish stuff

 

We visited the corn maze/pumpkin patch.

A balance labyrinth took a while to solve with Adam as the counter weight.

The chickens

and goats had to be fed.

Trying out the swings.

More swinging.

Hopefully we will find the way out.

(Remember when I dressed my kids up to go to the pumpkin patch, totally does not happen anymore.  I am not even sure Adam coordinates at all.)

A bird's eye view.  Adam kept repeating "wrong way Dad."

 

Nice and sweaty in the Florida October weather.

A little dirt digging.

Then on to selecting a pumpkin, or climbing trees.

 

Merry was the pumpkin rolling champ and won me a bag of kettle corn.

Grace with the perfect pumpkin. 

And now it is time to go home.

fishy, fishy, fishy

We visited the aquarium yesterday.

 Checking out the jellyfish.

My favorite was the red drum exhibit.

After all the hours I spent fishing with my Dad, I couldn't help but want to reach in a grab a fish.

See I caught one in 1996.  Mine is slightly smaller.  Now you see why I wanted to take one home.

I am sure Brian has caught some too.  I will have to find a picture.

What life is like for the oldest and youngest child.

Who doesn't love seahorses.

This is the real reason we visit the aquarium.

About 1 hr to look at the fish.

Then 3 hrs at the splash pad.

Whatcha lookin' at?

Adam at 2.5yrs

When we came home from church, Grace begged me to take her pictures in the purple flowers.

Since it was still too hot for me to chase her around outside, I opted for our living room instead so I could get to my Sunday afternoon nap.  Adam, being a great fan of anything Grace (or as he calls her Dracie), ran to get his picture taken first.  Merry and Jacob were too busy chasing lizards to be bothered.

Adam at 2.5 years.

 Adam then didn't want to move so Grace opted to sit by him.

 He loves his Dracie.

Some other random pictures.

The aftermath of chocolate cake making.

I must have just wiped down the counter because it is way too clean.

 Cake batter makes me happy too.

One week later.

I thought that I let Adam bake in clothes, but apparently not.

(Jacob was very precise in distributing the cinnamon and sugar over the dough.)