Medieval Times

I mentioned in a previous post that we went to Jubilation and won some silent auction items. One of the items were tickets to Medieval Times. We drive by the castle about once a month on our way to here or there and the kids have been asking forever if we can go, so this worked out perfectly.  Here is tiny Abbey (look closely - she is the pink dot in the picture) next to the castle.  She was in awe of it, though slightly disappointed at the lack of princesses in the castle! 

We cheered on the red and yellow knight...here is Ben getting his crown.

Go Red and Yellow Knight!

We got there early and had some time to spare before being let in to our seats.  Juliette seemed to enjoy all the pre-show festivities.

But we had to make our own entertainment while waiting....

Then we finally got to our seats. 

We could have not bought Juliette a ticket, but she wouldn't have had a seat or a meal...turns out that would have been completely fine as she spent the entire time in my lap.  She also only ate part of a roll.  So yeah, I think we wasted money on her ticket!

Ben, however, couldn't get enough of the food (after finally getting over the fact that there were no utensils to use).

Juliette then fell asleep and missed the whole show.  Oh well, at least Ben and Abbey enjoyed it!  We will go again in a few years probably.

 

Derby Time

Since Ben is now a Tiger Scout, we got front row seats to the Derby! The Pinewood Derby that is...what, is there another kind of Derby?? We have been looking forward to this for a while now. I remember my Dad and brother building cars and Paul remembers building his own cars with his Dad, so this was a real treat to experience it as a parent, especially with a kid like Ben who gets so excited about things like this! He got very into building it, decorating it, and making sure everything was ready for the big day!  Here he is with his dragon inspired car...

And here he is ready to watch his car's heat!

On your mark, get set...

Oh the anticipation!!!  GO!!!

Although his car did not win, he was still thrilled with the experience! 

Checking out to see who won...

A lot of the cars had really cool designs too, although some were obviously taken from online ideas (as there were multiple that looked very similar).  So although Ben didn't win a design award either, we give him props for coming up with an ORIGINAL idea :)
And there was food there too.  The girls mostly played with their friends, but after a while, Abbey took it upon herself to pass out food to anyone that was left!  What a great hostess!

All in all, a very fun afternoon.  And I think we have a few ideas to incorporate into next year's car!

Circus!

Our good friends, the Weck's, invited us to go to the circus with them. Ben has been asking to go to the circus since it came into town (and we missed it) last year, so we jumped at the chance. 

It was a great time.  The kids were fully entertained and I can say that the circus has really improved since the last time I saw it (in high school).  And we actually did see one of the performers get hurt in a stunt, which was not good to see, but made you realize just how dangerous these acts can be.  The guy was standing on a flexible balance beam that was being held by two people in the air.  The guys holding it basically bounced him up to do 3 back flips, which he completed, but instead of landing on his feet on the bar, he then landed on the bar...between his legs...yeah, ouch!  He basically could not move.  People ran over and lifted him off the bar, but he stayed in one position as they quickly carried him off.  They did announce later in the show that he was ok, but that was a bit scary!  Besides that instance though, everything else went as planned as far as we could tell!

Unfortunately it was a long show and everyone was about done by the end, so we did not get a family picture or a picture of all the kids together even.  This is about as close as we got, which as you can probably tell, is me trying to convince the kids to turn around and smile at Daddy for one quick picture...it did not work and this is the picture we are stuck with!  Oh well, I tried :)

It was a fun afternoon though!

Tiger Scout Outing

The day after Jubilation, we had a Tiger Scout outing (luckily not until the afternoon). We met up at Cantigny, which is a park and museum dedicated to the 1st Infantry that fought in WWI and WWII. We went on a hike around the scenic park and learned a lot in the museum. They also have huge tanks you can climb on, which was very cool for a bunch of 1st graders!

 

 

Here is the Tiger Scout group!

Then they got awarded tiger beads for their hike and history lesson.  Great job guys!

It was a gorgeous day and a really fun way to spend the afternoon.

Jubilation

A few weekends ago we went to a big fundraiser at our Church/kids' school. It is an annual fundraiser called Jubilation and each year they have a different theme...this year's theme was Snowflake Ball.  It is a sit down dinner, live and silent auction, and dance. A lot of our friends decided to go this year and get a table together. It was a lot of money to go, but it was so worth it because we had so much fun!  This is Paul and I all dressed up and ready to go!

Love these ladies!

Not sure what we are doing, but I thought it ended up being a cute/silly picture!

This one's better.

Very good friends of mine.

A bunch of 1st grade moms.

1st grade dads.

Then Paul and I hit the dance floor.

 

This was our group.

It was so much fun.  We bid on a few things in the live auction, but didn't come home with any of that.  Instead we quickly saw how much money people were throwing down and we quickly left the auction race!  We did come home with a few things from the silent auction.  And we stayed until the very end of the night because we were having so much fun.  Luckily, Aunt Domi took the kiddos for a sleepover at her house, so we got to sleep in (and thus function) the next day when we picked them up.  Thank you so much Aunt Domi!  We don't get to do things like this very often, so that made it even more fun.  We can't wait until next year! 

Baby Brendan!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I was able to sneak away for a quick weekend to Cincinnati with Madgie and Patch to meet baby Brendan...oh and see Chris and Ginny too :) As soon as I got there I stole the little guy from Madgie...

Oh he is so cute!

Brendan  gets to know Patch.

What a proud Daddy!  Look how happy Chris looks :)

Here he is awake and playful!

 

Almost a smile!

The family surrounding the newest member!

Beautiful Mommy!  Seriously, can you tell she just had a baby two weeks ago?  Definitely not!!!

Madgie, Chris and Brendan...

I held him as often as I could throughout the weekend, although I did have to share with Madgie and Patch.

3 generations

You can tell how much Brendan loves his Aunt Katherine.

This picture cracks me up!  Who is up there talking to me?

Madgie rocking Brendan to sleep!

It was a great weekend and I can't wait to see him again at Christmas!  And the kids are so excited to meet him then too!