Labor Day and Elk County trip

Before I get to the main post I have to share this picture of all my little ninjas... they're super scary aren't they?! :P

Labor day my family all got together for a meal and fun.

mom and dad grilled salmon and chicken. We had orzo pasta, salad, zucchini bread, chips and salsa and pumpkin roll and cookies for dessert!

After we ate my mom told us about a game she wanted everyone to play that involved shooting mini marshmallows at each other. The kids and the guys all got really in to it :P

Later in the afternoon a lady from my parents' church came to take family pictures for us...

oh what a nice family of four we have...

oh wait, we're missing someone :P  Katy was overly tired by the time it came to pictures and just was not cooperating well at all.  It was very frustrating!

We got one OK picture though. I like Chase's face in this picture :)

My wonderful parents:

Grammy and Pop-pop with all the grandkids:

The whole family...

(notice Katy trying to escape from me... ugh)
We only had a few days of school the week after Labor day, and we also had our first day back at co-op.  It's a good thing we have Peaches to help Chase keep caught up on his work :P

Chase also had his first game of the fall baseball season:

It was a game that was almost an hour away.  We drove all the way down there and they played half an inning before they called the game on account of the storms moving through the area.

So we had to basically turn right around and drive home another hour.  Oh well, most of his games are at home, 10 minutes down the road, so I can't complain that much :P
An updated picture of the secret garden hideout that I made the kids this spring:

The morning glories are doing so well right there!

The first weekend in September we took a trip out to Elk County, PA with our friends Chad and Sheila and Keith and Ronda.  It's a really pretty drive there:

We got there later in the afternoon on Friday, set up camp and then just hung around the campfire the rest of the evening.

Keith and Ronda joined us bright and early on Saturday morning and after a big breakfast of french toast, sausage, scrapple and eggs we took the kids over to the sand pit:

Later Ricky and I took our kids down to the lake and Ricky and Chase fished while I watched the girls wade in the water. 

The kids said they wanted to swim in the freezing cold water, so we went back, got our swim suits on and then they went swimming.  I don't know how they stood it, it was so cold I didn't even want to wade around in there!

We had an early dinner on Saturday... burgers over the fire:

Then we went out looking for elk.  We were not disappointed either!  Big bull on the drive up to the viewing area:

We got to where we usually take a little hike and kind of sat in our vehicles for a while, unsure what we should do because it was raining a little. We had seen some elk on the way down in and decided to hike just a little.  Right after we started hiking the rain stopped and we had a really nice walk then.  I wanted to get a picture of all the bearded husbands:

silly guys...

they could be male models or something, don't ya think? lol.

Ronda and baby Archer:

I loved all the pretty wildflowers.

All the ladies:

Ricky found us a tiny elk:

actually it was a really big bull and his cows.

We stood there and watched them for a while and even got to see the bull bugling.

Right after we got back into our vehicles to head down the road it started raining again!  We went over to our favorite diner and got dessert and hung out there for a little before heading back to camp.

The next day we had a late breakfast.  We discovered a skill of Keith's this weekend to tell outlandishly funny made up hunting stories.  I like this picture because of Joanna's face...  All the kids (and the adults as well) really enjoyed his stories.

The kids had a blast this weekend, fishing and exploring the woods around our campsite.  They also set up about a million of these "traps" to see if they could catch a chipmunk or squirrel. 

We started packing up after breakfast and were pretty much ready to go around 2:00.  Everyone else was ready to head home but our kids wanted to go to this little wood shop that we had gone to in the spring.  So we went over there and looked around for a while and then went to the store/restaurant in Benezzete for late lunch before heading home.

I had the most delicious fish sandwich ever.  We got home after 8 and had to unpack some before we could hit the hay.  It was a short camping weekend but packed with lots of fun!