Gardenfest of Lights

Lewis Ginter's Gardenfest of Lights was a perfect way to end our Thanksgiving Holiday weekend. We are excited about preparing for Christmas and after getting all of our decorations out, we were well in the Christmas spirit, so we were able to spend a fun evening as a family enjoying the light displays that the botanical gardens puts on every year.
Bethany carrying "her Mouse", which is what she affectionately calls her youngest sister.
Ellie was so excited by all of the lights she saw. I always remember how magical the holidays are for children when I see her reactions to things.
We had to really bundle up last night. Here are the 4 kids on one of the bridges
Felicia in front of the massive tree

The train display was neat with 3 different sets to see, instead of just one.

The huge Christmas tree in the Conservatory is my favorite part of the display. It is decorated beautifully and is sooo tall I can't fit the whole tree in my camera lens.The conservatory is also the place to go to warm up ! My camera lens was actually fogging over after coming in from the cold outdoors. It was definitely a hot chocloate night !

Our Thanksgiving

You may think my 5'7" , 125 lb kid is too big to get tossed into a pile of leaves by his father, but you'd be wrong ! Here is how we spent the earlier part of our Thanksgiving Day. The weather was so warm, we headed outdoors while the turkey cooked to rake and build some leaf piles.

Ellie loved this !!
My leaf jumpers !
When not doing our family things --playing games and watching Elf, raking the leaves, Bethany spent a lot of her holiday on facebook and her phone !! LOL
Felicia and her friend Val playing pool.

And, the star of the show, our 21 lb. turkey !! Mmmm.... First time I ever basted in butter and it was delicious !!

Time for Lunch !

Does this look appetizing to you? No, not me either, but this is the sandwich Sam made himself for lunch the other day --- it has ham, cheese and mustard, with tater tots and chicken fingers on it !! I don't think you'll see that on the Panera menu anytime soon, but he happily wolfed it down.

Felicia's First 5K

I found out about a local 5K race that is just 5 minutes away from where we live the night before the event. I mentioned to Felicia as something she and her cross country girlfriends might want to do for fun. They were all interested and in the end, my friend and I also joined in as well. The weather was absolutely perfect for a run, sunny, but not too warm.The girls had never run more than 2.2 miles in the season, so a 3 mile run was a good challenge and they did really great, all finishing in about 27 minutes. Felicia loved the snacks at the end of the finish line !!!

BFF's

Last weekend was almost as exciting as Christmas for Ellie. Her best friend, Sterling, whom she had not seen in over a year, came to spend the weekend at our house !! Ellie had her own calendar she was counting down the days on and nearly burst from the excitement of anticipation.Sterling arrived just a few minutes before the schoolbus brought Ellie home from school.
Two Peas in a Pod

They built this great fort to sleep in with help from older sister Felicia.They had so much fun, but they were sad to see their weekend end on Sunday. Hopefully they will see each other again soon!

Autumn's Beauty

Last week, the kids had a few days off from school and we took advantage of the time and great weather to visit a park in our area that we had never been to before. Point of Rocks Park has so many great vantage points to view the river, fields, marsh, and woods. You can see it all through your changing landscape as you walk further on the same trail.

Ellie finds colorful leaves as we start our hike


It just looks like we're in the middle of nowhere, so calm and serene. This park had great trails, but it also had two brand new playgrounds to play on once we came out of the trails.
Sam took over the photo taking for a while and snapped a shot of me by the marsh.


We love going new places and this park is only a 30 minute drive away. A perfect fall day to spend outdoors.