Deer Festival

We headed to the cabin last weekend for Deer Festival 2012  in Monticello GA. Mom/Mike, Haley/Joel and their boys, and Peyton and his girls all joined us. The kids enjoyed playing together and our boys just LOVE being outside at the cabin. They do boy stuff all day - help the adults "work", use tools, play with sticks, collect rocks, etc. Its heaven for them.

 our littlest roll tide fan

 lunch at deer festival...BBQ, corn dog, chips, fries, lemonade...

 mommy and the littles

 big daddy with avery and her lady bug!

 bounce house baby!

 all 3 of our did this bungee jumping thing and loved it...

 graham got to jump by default....saeran was supposed to go but had a major meltdown so he took her turn and loved it!

 cousin love!!

smiley griff on his  pony

 and toothless avery on hers

the big kids had a tea party on afternoon

We enjoyed our first deer festival..it was good ole fashioned redneck fun!

Happy Halloween!

 Happy Halloween 2012!! We had 4 oh-so-cute trick or treaters this year!

 We have the cutest Cowboy Woody ever, a toothless Little Mermaid, a very tired little Bunny, and a wild Ninja!

 you have to agree that he is the cutest Woody ever, right??

 Griffin the ninja

 Carsyn was not about to smile. You can tell by her eyes that she is so tired!

 this is how Carsyn went trick-or-treating!

Our  Snaggle-toothed Little Mermaid!

 Avery's friend Emily lives on the street behind us so she and her mother joined us for the evening.

 this is how he rolled

he was oh so proud of all his loot even though he had no idea what most of it was!

Griffin's School Party

 When school started this year, I realized that having 4 kids is going to stretch me thin when it comes to volunteering in their school classes. Its just not possible to be really involved in any of them.  I have cut myself some slack though and am OK with just doing what I can do. This year, I signed up for 2 parties for each of the big kids. And I'm reading to Avery's class about once a month and eating lunch with her in the cafeteria 1-2 times a month. I know it will get even harder to be involved once the little 2 are in real school!

So for Halloween, I helped out with Griffin's class party. The kids did a craft where they made a bat, tracing their hands to use as the wings.

 Then we had mummy juice boxes and mummy cupcakes for a snack.

 and played a "where is the candy corn" game...

 This is one of Griffin's good friends - Elaina. They are in the same gymnastics class for the second year  and in the same school class this year.

Here is his class - minus the 5 kids that were out that day!!

Playgroup Halloween Party

We hosted a Halloween Party for our playgroup today. Lots of little boys age 3 and under!  And 3 little sisters....Even though it was chilly and windy, we played outside all morning; enjoyed some yummy Halloween treats; and decorated our pumpkins.

 mummy juice boxes

 Halloween cupcakes

working on his lawn mower

 Graham and Cole, decorating their pumpkins

baby girl, all bundled up!

Disney on Ice

Yesterday afternoon,  Brent and I took the Avery and Griffin to see Disney on Ice for the first time...and they loved it. Avery's favorite was seeing the Little Mermaid and Griffin's was whole second half of the show which was Toy Story.  Graham was home with a sitter but he would have had a fit to see Mater and McQueen!!

Some of the Toy Story crew

 Waiting for the show to start!  We let them each pick out a souvenir - Griffin picked out a light up sword and Avery picked an Ariel doll...could have predicted both of those!

 We were literally rink side - floor level - less than 10 feet from the ice! We had lots of eye contact and waves from the characters!

wide-eyed!

Trout Fishing

One of our new mountain traditions that we started this year is taking the big kids trout fishing. Since Graham + water = disaster, I stayed back with he and Carsyn while Brent took Avery and Griffin fishing with Big Daddy and their cousins. Everyone caught 2 trout.

 reeling one in!

 what a cutie!!

 dinner!!

 One of Avery's catches

and one of Griffin's fish

Baby Shower

 We were lucky enough to have Hannah and Landon join us in the mountains this year. They live in Utah so they don't normally make it to the mountains and we don't get to see them very often.  AND, since they are expecting their first baby in January, we had a little mini baby shower while we were all together. It was wonderful to be able to celebrate with them!

 Baby Girl McBrayer is due to arrive on January 19 - Landon's birthday!!

 Ann, Merritt, Hannah, Haley, LeeAnn

Only with my brothers could you get away with a  Baby Bottle Beer chugging contest!!

 Loving all the baby goodies!

 Thanks for the story Uncle Doons!

Camden, using yarn to guess the size of Hannah's belly

This little man took a long nap so he was the only kiddo to get to enjoy the ice cream sundae bar!