Father and Sons

I thought that I would take a moment to let everyone know about the first Father and Sons adventure that Samuel and I had this past weekend. It was great. We had a great time exploring and throwing rocks in the near by stream. I was fortunate to get off work a little bit early on Friday so I packed up our things headed up to a place called 'Paradise Canyon' about 30 min from our house. However; on my way up (almost to the campsite) I realized that I had forgotten Samuel's blankets. I was torn, do I drive home and get the blankets or do I let him have my sleeping bag. Luckily I didn't have to do either. I called Audrey and she called a friend, that was about to leave his house, brought a couple of extra blankets for us to use. So crisis avoided.

We finally were able to set up our tent and get situated. Then we headed down to the river where Samuel discovered that there we a lot of rocks. So all he wanted to do was throw rocks into the river. He was in heaven.

It was fun having our friends camping next to us so that I could talk to the other fathers and Sam could play with his friends. We built a campfire and like any good father would do I allowed Sam to eat about 20 marshmellows and 5 starbursts (I made him have a limit on those). Surprisingly he did not have a hard time falling asleep. In fact he was asleep by 9:30pm.

The next morning was full of more rock throwing. I did manage to get him interested in taking a hike with me so we did some exploring of the woods. Then he wanted to go swimming so that is what he did. As you can probably tell, when I am the only watching him he gets to do pretty much whatever he wants to do. This probably is not the best thing but at least he is happy.

All in all it was a good trip and I am excited to continue the tradition of going on these trips every year. I am happy to report that there were no injuries sustained by a member of our party and that everyone went home healthy and happy.

Here are a couple of pictures that I was able to take while there.

Here we are on Saturday morning about ready to go down to the river to throw some more rocks.

Here is Sam playing in the river building a dam with some of the other kids who were there. Yes I did let him play in his pants.

Surprise, it's Grandpa!

Grandpa came for a quick surprise visit last week and it was so fun to see him. The kids were thrilled to have him here again, if onyl for a few hours, and I know that it was nice for him to see Grant again. Thankyou for the Halloween bags G-Ma and G-Pa! The kids put them together yesterday and had a great time. We'll post pics at Halloween time so you can see them.

P.S. - Grant is learning to crawl! He'll do about 3 little crawls now before he stops. He's learning so fast I have a feeling by the end of this week he's going to be all over the place. It's amazing how they quietly learn and put things together and then boom! all of a sudden they just take off. It makes it feel like it's happened all at once. He is so happy to be able ot move around on his own now. You can see in his face that he feels like one of the big kids now and he is thrilled!

Day Out With Thomas

So we found out that Day Out with Thomas was coming and we had to take Samuel. We wanted to take him anyway but before we had a chance to talk about it Samuel saw what we were looking at on the computer and freaked out in a happy way. There was just no way that we could deny him. Lucky for us by the time we bought the tickets we only had to wait 4 days because that was all he talked about (and threw fits about) non-stop!
We were a little worried because there was a huge storm the day before and morning of and rain threatned all day, but fortunately for us it held off. The air was a freezing (for us!) 58 degrees but it was refreshing. We picked Lillie up early from school (she thought that was way cool) and headed out. Let me tell you, when we arrived and Samuel saw Thomas pulling in from a distance, well, I just don't know if I've ever seen him so thrilled. You could just see how magical it was for him and in that moment I decided that even of the rest of the day was terrible that one moment was so awesome that it made it worth it. Fortunately the rest of the day was awesome. While we waited for our train ride we went to the gift shop and bought t-shirts for L and S and they played with the train tables. It was a little hard at first for S to get used to playing with the trains with so many other children but he figured it out.

I thought this next picture was classic though. Man S was playing as nice as he could be and this kid came up and tried to steal James right out of his hand. S fought him for it though and then the kid threw a fit so his mom made him leave. Good. I like it when parents take responsibility for ther children. Waiting in line for the train. Everything was so smoothly run. There was so much to do and you never felt like you were just waiting around. Good scheduling Sir Topham Hatt!
Oh my goodnes, Samuel could barely contain himslf that he was actually getting on Thomas the Train!
Lillie was actually really excited about the whole day as well. I'm glad that she was able to come. But now she keeps saying that we went to Thomas for Samuel so now we need to go to Disney World for her. Yes Lillie, those are totally comparable!Okay, this is the new face that Grant makes for the camera and I love it! And he was such a good boy all day!I love Thomas the Train!Both S and L really loved these tattoos and have kept them on for a while. Their pretty upset that we're making them wash them off before church.

S was just as excited to meet Sir Topham Hatt as he was to meet Thomas. Thanks Sir Topham Hatt for bringing your engines to the "Big City" so we could meet them. We had a great day!