Halloween 2013

Happy Halloween from our haunted house to yours

Getting out of a fire

What would your kids do in the event of a fire?  Mine, who knows?  I would hope they would get out and run away.  What they really would do might be different, so it never hurts to practice what the should do.  And pray we never face this situation.



The kids went in a camper that they had converted a bit to smoke and mimic fires.



Gracie did not quite know what to think so she just threw up and ran out.  I did not expect that reaction.  But the rest thought it was funny.  The fireman was trying to tell them to cal 911.  And teach them how to talk to the fireman  on the other end.  But why he is having them call from in the house I don't know.



Smiley though just grabbed them phone and kept yelling you stink I hate you.  He was trying to be funny but he wasn't and missed the point of the practice.  Gregory finally got the crawl at the bottom to get out.



I guess any practice and exposure is better than none.  And they had a good time

God is the G in my GPS

Back to our end of season last camping trip.  It seems like a long time ago now since the weather has turned so much drastically colder.  I had friends, tons of friends who went camping last weekend in everything from tents to cabins, Halloween camping apparently is BIG here, or maybe we got in on this cool new fad all together this year, yup that's me a trend setter.  Well I would not have gone this past weekend, it warned up to the high 40's for the kids soccer games.  No thank you I do not want to camp in that.  Well I suppose a nice cabin with heat and hot tubs I could make an exception.

But now two weekends ago it was nicer and much warmer even the tiny bit further up north we went, still had beautifully perfect weather.  Of course this is the day after the nor'easter that set us back and caused us to go a day later.  I had planned the whole thing around the campground's Halloween activities.  We went there so the kids and us could spend time together having Halloween fun.  Sadly with such busy life even though I spend a lot of time with the kids it is not always "enjoying them" time.  I might be having fun watching them at their soccer games but it is just me bouncing between 2 games with the tiny team in tow trying to keep those little ones from crying and running on the field with the knowledge that as soon as this ends we have to pack up find affordable quick food that is not fast food so we can make it to baseball, I can't say it is enjoyable, not unenjoyable but not "enjoying them" time. Since it was Columbus day everyone had at least 1 extra day off and both boys had bys for their soccer games.  This would be time for us to get away and enjoy them.  Play with our children, create memories with our children and not worry about outside stresses of work, school and sports.

Since we arrived a day late and got lost getting there we missed most of their activities.  I was disappointed but I would not let that ruin our trip.

But first let me tell you about getting lost.  Because the Lord reaches out to those who are lost and has for me many different times.  This campsite was not hard to find it was just straight up the highway and follow another one left along the river to the campground.  Sounds easy and I was familiar with both these highways it should be just over an hour of easy driving for our caravan.  We have to take so much stuff for 7 people that we always have to take 2 vehicles full.  But one is usually pretty full of bikes, wood, coolers and a grill the other has to be full of the rest of so much stuff.  (I hate all the preparing, packing, unloading, and washing that camping involves.  It takes so much time and we ALWAYS forget something.  This time it was marshmallows and chocolate, not to bad really.  But try telling that to disappointed kids or realizing I had to pay 9 bucks for the forgotten items at the camp store)  With a campsite so easy to find I gave Jay the GPS and said he could lead.  We made it pretty far doing well but our turn was closed for a detour.  The detour was a few exits up and once you took the detour turn there were no signs to say what else to do.  We pulled over to a grocery store parking lot where he got out of the truck very upset, kicking tires, throwing a fit, saying that's it were going home blah blah blah.  I am surprisingly good with directions.  Not good with not speeding or filling up the gas tank but I usually can find my way.  By the time we pulled into the grocery store parking lot we were well off the path.  I said don't worry follow me.  I used his phone and jotted down a few directions with paper and pen as the gps was of no help.  It would not move beyond telling us to go on the closed road.  I pulled out of the parking lot heading west as I knew I needed to be west of the Susquehanna and from what I jotted down I was looking for 7th street.  I started going and kept going and never saw it.  I kept going looking for any recognizable names from what I wrote down.  I never saw any.  But the whole time I was praying.  Please Lord get me there.  Don't let this not happen.  The kids need it, I need it, I need your help.  I kept blindly driving.  I even turned off the road at on point on to another for who knows what reason.  I just felt that was the way to go.  No signs looking familiar yet.  Finally I hit the farm show complex I knew where I was and I knew how to get home.  it would have been so easy to turn left and go home but I kept praying and just decided to go straight hoping it went the right way but having no clue.  Left was home right was towards Hershey straight...fingers crossed!?  Prayers.  And what do you know we were on the second highway we needed to be on!!!  I did it God did it.  The G in GPS has a new meaning.  Oh I was relived!

This whole fiasco added an extra hour to our trip and we left much later than expected.  We missed the trick or treating, we missed the crafts, we missed the site decorating contest.  But it was okay.  The kids still decorated our campsite spooky how they wanted.  I now had bags and bags of candy since we did not get to hand it out the kids were happy to eat it.  And we did make it in time to see the golf cart parade, it was cool and they threw out candy at the kids.

We carved pumpkins we all relaxed and started enjoying ourselves.





I did not know there was a costume Halloween party that night but we had plenty of time to make it to that.  And we did.  I am so glad we did it was the second best highlight of the trip, first was Lake Tobias .

We arrived there all of us dressed up.

Me and the girls were bumble bees.



Faith even won for best costume!



She got a pink wand and a orange tutu/petiskirt as a prize.  She was so happy.  She was adorable.  They all were her, my kids the rest of the camping kids.  I am not saying she won because she was the perfect size for the prize.  But I am happy for her.



Smiley was a rocket ship that refused to wear his costume most of the time.



Jay was waldo.



He made so many people smile and laugh at his costume.  I think he had the best adult one.



Gregory was a guy from call of duty.  I did not put face paint on him because I really did not want to have to deal with that while camping it would have been everywhere and Evan was a vampire.

They had the best time ever at the party dancing the night away.



When it was time to leave I had the hardest time dragging them out.





I had to promise I would take us back next year.



What a dancing troop I have.



Even baby cakes showed us her moves.  She is such a JOY





Yup it was fantastic.  So much fun.  I was enjoying my kids, enjoying my family and having the time we were looking for.

up and away

As with all boys mine love things that fly planes, rockets and helicopters.  Sadly they have never been on any.  They want to fly bad especially to go to Disney but flying a family of 7 is thousands and thousands  of much more money than we have.  The other day they had the chance to "play" on the life lion helicopter.  Hopefully this will be there only time on it unless they are the doctor or pilot.  I don't know what it is called in other states, medic vac maybe, but in PA the trauma helicopter that will rush you to the hospital is called Life Lion because Penn State, Nittany Lions, Life Lion- Life Line, you get it I probably did not have to explain this.  But they though it was pretty cool.

Smiley a pilot?  Maybe he is good at video games and the panels and so many control in addition to the ipad looking screens the pilots said it is not that much different than playing video games.  I am not sure whether to be scared or encouraged?

They are sitting where the patient lays it is small and confined.  I was expecting more space like an ambulance but nope.  It is not bigger than from Gregory's bum to head.  They slide the gurney in there like a pizza in the oven.

I really can't imagine these two as doctors or pilots.  I could imagine them flying then saying hey look at that cool tree lets see how close we can get to it and not crash.  And if they did the doctor in them would just put ice on the boboo (yes they are still young enough for it to be a boo boo, although Gregory has told me he is now on to the och-es and scrapes stage, next to come the cuts and bruises) until they got distracted and started eating the ice like a bag of popcorn.  It is weird but happens all the time here..boys.

I do hope we can fly soon and I always hope it is not on life lion.

Lake Tobias

We headed back to Lake Tobias during a last hoary of a camping trip for 2013.  It was Columbus day weekend so we all had an extra day to send together.  Camping in October in PA is hit or miss.  Last week temperatures were in the high 80's.  But there are other times that it has snowed.  This week was looking nice with the exception of some rain in the forecast.  More like an early nor'easter and it brought more than some rain.  It poured 2 days non stop and caused lots of flooding especially where we were going along the Susquehanna River.  We actually had to call and cancel a day then take the rest day by day.  But the weather got better.  In fact it was beautiful.  In the 70's during the days and only down to the 50's at night.  It was not to bad and we had a big fire we kept burning.  We had lots of wood left over from summer camping trips and we did not want to store it over the winter so we burned it all.  It was nice and warm and the kids cuddled by it morning and night.

We were supper excited to go to Lake Tobias again.  It is a zoo wild life park with really good insurance I assume because they let you mix with and touch all sorts of animals that could eat you.

The have tons of big animals like longhorns, Watusi, ox, buffalo, animals you don't find around here.  But that taste good and they thought the same thing about us.





Yumm



Apparently white buffalo are sacred, I don't think you could eat them. There were a handful of those.  I wonder if they have white meat you know like brown cows make chocolate milk.

These stupid goats tried to eat my baby.  They were chewing the pants right off her leg.  Luckily she had these two big brothers run to help her after they laughed for a second.  After I took the picture and realized my two fantastic rescuers there were not doing much of anything I ran over and kept hitting the stupid goat till he left her alone.  It along with a couple dozen more kept trying to eat everything we had we were batting them off the stroller and kids until I had enough and just left that part.  What nuisance creatures.



Obviously she fared okay.  They had two camels that were walking around.  I kept yelling hump day at my oldest two but they were not amused.  I was not amused and horrified when Smiley in a pouting fit made a straight shot to me cutting between the camels legs and under his belly.  My jaw dropped and so did the handlers.  We were all expecting the worst but it happened so fast.  Luckily the camel just stood still.  Nothing happened, whew!



We moved on to animals behind cages after that.  However you can still pet and touch them.



I did not know zebras did not bite.  I am thankful zebras do not bite.  The ostriches with them however did.  I did not let the kids get to close to the ostriches.



They had no trouble sticking their head through that fence.



Oh mercy my attempt at getting a picture of all of them.  I easily took 20+  and this was the best.



What grumps.  We had 4 temper tantrums/break downs that day one from each member of the tiny team and one from there dad.

There were a couple of animals that were kept out of reach.  They amused baby.





Well all of us.



And as you see by what has to be super strong wire they were not kept that far away.





They had the lions, tigers and bears, oh my, in cages like this, and the alligators you could touch, snakes too both while being held by handles though.  Otherwise the snakes were behind glass and the alligators well I guess they are hoping people are not stupid enough to jump the low fences they were in.

It is such a cool place.  We all love it up there.  It reminds me of the we got a zoo movie.  A family run smaller animal park.  And thanks to the government shutdown Gregory's class was supposed to go to the national zoo on Friday but since it is still closed he gets two head back to Lake Tobias again on Friday.

Some princess pictures

Faith is growing and so much fun.  She is smart really smart.  Considering she is two and a half I am amazed by her vocabulary, though, and reasoning.  She is equally as beautiful as smart.



Although we do have to get her off the binky, I hate it.





She loved her big bowed hairband.  She would put it on a say so pretty.



Humm what to be for Halloween a rocketship or Thor?  How about Thor flying a rocket.