Jim:
Gram, the kids and I headed to Sope Creek Park, which has a maze of trails. This is at the primary trail head, where the girls demonstrate that it's chilly while Lincoln demonstrates his complete disinterest in cooperation.
As a useful point of reference, the green lines are the park boundaries, the purple is the primary biking/hiking trail, the black are the "no bike" trails, and the red outline highlights our chosen path. Note that this is about 3x longer than I had originally planned - around 5 miles in total.
One of the key reasons our hike was so lengthy is that Scarlett took charge with the maps, which were conveniently located at every trail intersection. She would point out where we were and which direction we needed to go to stay on course. We pre-planned the route, and a quarter of the way through everyone (Gram included) asked to change course and extend the hike. Once decided on, Scarlett faithfully kept us on course, with Victoria "taking point" once we were headed down a path and following the appropriate blazes. They're getting to be such experts!
At first the kids all hiked ahead of Gram and I quite a ways, but eventually they fell in. Lincoln spent a good portion of the hike walking with Gram. Note here that he's carrying one of many sticks he would encounter on the journey, while Gram is holding the walking stick he chose and provided for her at the beginning of our trek.
At one point, Lincoln just had to show me this specific stick, which he explained excitedly looked "just like a dun (gun)". We later worked on the appropriate way to hold a gun stick.
About 2/3rds of the way through the hike, we reached the top of a particularly severe climb and chose to take a brief rest by this fallen tree. The kids all failed to see the humor in my exclamation that "there's a fungus among us," no matter how many times I repeated it.
One of the very cool things about the Sope Creek park is the numerous intersections with various creeks along the way. This was a little ways off the path where we took a rest and the kids spent a good amount of time finding various objects to hurl into the 12 inch-deep creek.
Near the very end of our hike, we came upon this large pond and took an opportune moment to capture approximately 57 photos of Gram with the kids, of which this is the best.
Near the pond and a little ways off the trail, we came upon this turtle. He was a bit camera shy and seemed to have a broken leg (perhaps from some previous camera trauma, explaining the shyness).
The girls pausing briefly to take in the beautiful scenery.
After lunch at IHOP, we stopped by The Home Depot to pick up some pumpkins (more on them later), but had to check out the new Christmas area. When we got to the rocking horses, there were a couple other kids with their parents, but they somehow found their way off the horses as my crew descended and took over.
Meanwhile, Waverly and I played at home for quite a while, then Nana kindly chatted with her while I got dressed. As soon as I had her strapped into the carseat, she was fast asleep and so I ran all of the errands I could that didn't require me to actually exit the vehicle (Starbucks is an errand, yes?) and then spent a blissfully quiet thirty minutes in the parking lot of Hobby Lobby sipping my iced coffee and scrolling through news stories on my phone. As previously noted, Waverly is not a fan of falling asleep, evidenced here with full pouting lips as she snoozes ;-)
Once awake, we headed into Hobby Lobby to browse for a few craft items I was hoping to find for our upcoming Passport Club gathering. Because I'm a chatter, I ended up in a lengthy discussion with a 70-year-old woman about her travels to Russia and was quite late to meet Nana at IHOP for lunch, but she was very forgiving. She snagged a booth for us and we were able to enjoy a nice lunch out together which was a nice treat! I was so sad this picture came out a little blurry, but I love it anyway! Nana was wrangling Waverly, who is in that in-between stage where she neither wants to sit placidly in someone's arms, nor is she quite big enough for a highchair.
But when she got out of line (she didn't), I was sure to show her who's boss by schnuffling (this is a technical baby term that you may not be familliar with) in her neck. You can see this straightened her right out, hehe
Friday afternoon, the kids had started in on "Can Charlotte spend the night tomorrow?" and with our calendar wide open, it was hard to say no. Especially when Scarlett goes through point for point on all exactly why this weekend makes the most sense. She gets all into her persuasive, logic-based pitch and starts talking rapidly and ever more earnestly. Anyone who knows her can picture it now, lol. While sometimes it can be exasperating, I actually kind of like it - I like the tenacity it demonstrates and also appreciate her coming to the conversation with all her ducks in a row. To any extent, I was happy enough to let them invite their friend over and from 4:15 to 5:00 p.m. the kids buzzed around the house watching the clock in eager anticipation. Waverly loved all the excitement in the air, and especially how they all kept gathering around her as she played in her exersaucer!
Once Charlotte arrived all the way from next door, I let the kids run around for a bit and sort out their sleeping arrangements while Waverly rolled around on her blanket. She has been rolling from belly to back since she was two months old, but she just mastered the back to belly roll and is now rolling all around! I think she looks quite impressed with herself.
We had planned to carve pumpkins this weekend and it was easy enough to incorporate our friend into the fray. They were more than excited to get underway but humored my request for a couple of quick photos first ;-)
Charlotte was quite amused with Lincoln's "casual photo pose" faces.
The first thing we did was let the kids select the pumpkin faces they wanted via some options online. Scarlett and Charlotte both picked a cat, Lincoln picked something (can't recall what it was and it became irrelevant anyway), Victoria picked a semi-scary face with crazy eyebrows and we picked a cute face for Waverly. Once the tops were cut open, it was time to dig out the pumpkin guts! All of the kids both loved and were horrified by this, hehe.
"Ewwww!"
"GUTS!"
Jim was in charge of cutting the tops or "lids" as I refer to them, and I drew the faces. We all worked on gutting and skinning the insides of the pumpkins. Victoria watched her daddy like a hawk as he was cutting into her pumpkin - supervising to ensure it met her standards.
The kids were all shrieking in disgust! lol
Scarlett really liked squishing the innards in her hands.
Victoria was the last kid to gut her pumpkin, as she had spent the longest searching for just the right pumpkin face to select. She was just about to take the first gooey handful out...
"Nasty!"
As the pumpkins were finished being cleaned out, I was busily carving away - I'm far from an expert, but I really enjoy the process of drawing/carving up the face. I managed to still get a few more pictures though, even with icky pumpkin hands. I loved looking over to see the boys both diligently working together.
Charlotte had a BIG pumpkin, and it took her quite a while to get all of the insides out of that sucker!
I'm all for kids doing their own carving... however, while pumpkins aren't super expensive, they also aren't exactly cheap. So I had told them at the beginning of our endeavor that they were welcome to do any and all carving that they wanted, BUT, I could not fix anything they did; once you cut, you can't un-cut as it were. The girls decided they all wanted me (or later Jim) to do the actual face carving, but Lincoln... well, of course he wanted to take a knife right to his ;-) The girls were all more than willing to help him mangle his pumpkin.
Over the next hour the poor pumpkin was made into a boat, a salad bowl, and more, but everyone's favorite was using it as hat :-p Pumpkin Head #1~
Pumpkin Head #2~
Pumpkin Head #3~
Pumpkin Head #4~
He piled some of the pumpkin guts back into the "bowl" and mixed with copious amounts of leaves, dirt and other random yard foliage into a "salad."
Jim offered to do the clean-up outside so that I could head in and make dinner for the pumpkin crew. I was unsurprised to find Grammie and Waverly performing acrobatics in the kitchen ;-) Those who have spent much time with Waverly know how she loves to be flipped upside down and you have to watch, because if she's sitting in your lap facing you, she is prone to just sort of heave herself backwards whether you are prepared to assist in a flip or not! lol
Nachos for dinner, as requested.
For dessert I let the kids pick two chocolates each from the remaining Ghiardelli chocolates (their treat from the outlet mall the previous weekend) - they had fun making their selections.
Finally it was pitch black outside and we traipsed back down to the pergola for the grand reveal. Jim was waiting with a lighter stick and I had the kids line up and turn around away from the pumpkins while he lit them. Then they turned around to see their creations! So much fun :-) From left to right: Scarlett's, Victoria's, Waverly's, Charlotte's, and Lincoln's (of course we had to stick a tea light in his pumpkin-salad-bowl-hat, lol).
Then they spent 10 minutes dancing/hopping around the pumpkins in glee :-)
It was pretty chilly out, so we went inside and they warmed up with hot chocolate, air-popped popcorn, and a movie - a great sleepover evening!
