Male Bonding

I took the boys camping back in September, and Karee finally forced me to slap together a posting about it (see her Halloween post below for more current happenings). We went to a YMCA camp at Possum Kingdom Lake, which was very nice (and also the subject of one of my favorite Toadies songs from the mid-90s).

Carter became a true Texan, having shot a rifle before he turned 4. The 15-yr old camp counselor was ready to hand each of us our own gun, but I promised Karee no one would get killed, so I helped Carter shoot. Cole wasn't a big fan of the noise.

After shooting, the boys did some horse-back riding, archery and swimming.

Later, we took a boat ride out to Devil Island for a little hiking. We came across what we thought was a dead tarantula, which was bad enough, but when we told Ranger Jim, he informed us that it was actually the shedded exoskeleton of a still-living tarantula. He was a little too excited about letting us know that they were all over the place down in those parts.

At the end of a long, tiring day, the boys chilled with some fishing. I'm not sure there were even fish near the dock, but the boys were thrilled for their first fishing excursion, and since we used minnows, they could always pull up the line to see a dangling little fish...

Halloweenee

Is it really November? October has been a blur...make that September too. We have had Birthdays, family in town, I went out of town, and about 20 different Halloween festivities. So before it is Christmas I will post pictures of Halloween....and hopefully sometime between now and then I will do a little rewind of what we did in the last 6 weeks (for the Grandma's out there).

The firm's Halloween Party

Carter's preschool Spider cupcakes

Caroline entertaining herself while I entertain 10 4 year olds at Carter's school party.

Cole's school Fall Festival (nice abs guys!)

Carving pumpkins. Carter wanted a "scared face" pumpkin and Cole wanted a happy pumpkin.

Before trick or treating

Look who I found on my doorstep

Any resemblance yet?

Don't take your eyes off your candy!

All this candy after only 1 street made for some happy superheros and a very happy Daddy.

Back to COOL...

Off they go...

Cole in his favorite Mavs shirt.

Carter informed me that 4 year olds wear collared shirts to school.

(that only lasted 2 days)

Caroline's reaction when she found out the boys were leaving her.

Her reaction when she figured out that the boys were leaving her (alone).

Caroline and Carter outside his school.

My little jam makers. These boys put down the jam in huge quantities...so now they are learning to make it themselves! Or until they spilled sugar everywhere and I turned on a video.

Last night of Summer...

It is officially the end of summer. I wish the temperature would concur. I think we have done pretty much everything on the list. I can't think of any pool we haven't swam in and we are down to just a few popsicles in the freezer. Do Mother's really cry when their kids go back to school? Maybe they are tears of joy. J/K...I will miss them...but not when I am grocery shopping, etc...

Since I was so bad about blogging I have grouped our summer pictures together. In the link you will find 4th of July, Cole's 6th Birthday, random summer craziness and our Jack Johnson concert with Cole.

Summer 2010:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/41660153@N05/sets/

Idaho Trip-July "Cowboy Up"

I generally try to avoid making Idaho sound all hickish (?), but this trip brought out the cowboy in all of us! You'd think being from Dallas we would have the cowboy thing down, but not so...it took a trip to the Snake River Stampede in Nampa Idaho to get these boys to their inner cowboy.

We had a great time in Idaho. It was an action packed trip with visits to the water park, rides on the scooter and corvette (Carter's 1st time driving), up to McCall for boating (Cole's 1st time on the board), the rodeo, and the icing on the cake was celebrating Papa's 60th Birthday (a mini-family reunion)! No minute was waisted on this trip, we had a great time.

Link to Idaho Pics:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/41660153@N05/sets/

Florida Trip- August

Our final trip of the summer was to visit Preston's parents. Unfortunately, Preston couldn't join us because of work...so off we (me and the kids) flew to Tampa!!!! (I was sorely outnumbered!) I think I heard the comment "you've got your hands full" about a million times. They were really thinking "you are crazy lady, and please don't fly on our plane again". But, it was all worth it. The kids had a great time catching up with old cousins and meeting new ones. We played in the pool, the ocean, the aquarium, and the Y, but their favorite activity was riding down the long driveway on their "cars". If it wasn't for the 8 fire alarms in the hotel they would have loved that too.

See our Florida pics here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/41660153@N05/sets/

tHReE's a CRowD

Getting Lucky

Well summer is officially here

...actually it has been here for over a month if you are going off of 100* temps.

I have learned a few things about surviving Dallas summers:

1. Wear ponytails everyday (doing anything else is a waste of time)

2. Icee Pops can count as lunch

3. Have the kids line up at the door before you open it, and you better not forget anything because we are not opening it again!

4. If you want to do anything outside other then swim it needs to be done before 9:00am.

5. Don't waste your time putting swimsuits away because you will need them again

6. Icee Pops can count as dinner

Cole started off the summer lucky by being paired up with the cutest High School swim team girl when he went to "swim safety day" with his class. If you ask him about Taylor he just beams.

Trophy Boy

Feeding Giraffes at the Zoo

There is some resemblance

Life in the carseat

Boys at the temple. This was the only shady spot that they weren't squinting from the sun.